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There are some absolutely insane ideas in the decomp space about how copyright works. You took a copyrighted work, did some lossless mathematical transformatio

There are some absolutely insane ideas in the decomp space about how copyright works. You took a copyrighted work, did some lossless mathematical transformations on it, and have created an artifact that reproduces the original copyrighted work with perfect fidelity every time. From a legal perspective, this is effectively identical to zipping and unzipping a copyrighted file. You won't have much luck claiming that the intermediate Zip file is somehow free of copyright. The legal problem is the original taint of using a copyrighted work (expressly contrary to its license), and the fact that nothing transformative is occurring here sufficient to enliven the defense of fair use. (Not even close, and no, this is nowhere near the realm of being arguable. The fact that this spits out a copyrighted work 'byte for byte' is a stake through the heart of any such argument.) Decomp projects are cool, but if you work on them, please be aware that you're taking a risk, and some video game companies are famously litigious, even for old games.

ferro_ 10d ago
If reverse engineering is legal, why wouldn't this be? By reverse engineering you take a closed source program and gradually figure out how it works, eventually ending up with source code that can be transformed into a binary that implements the same function. Reverse engineering would have to be illegal if what you say is true, because the source code you obtained from a copyrighted work is "tainted". There are also creative choices made in reverse engineering because there are many possible source codes that could compile to the same executable output. The author has to make countless choices around how to interpret assembly as higher level language constructs, and code organization in terms of functions and variables used. This isn't anything like zipping and unzipping some file, it's not a one to one transformation. As you can see we can absolutely have byte for byte identical output without having access to the original source code. I agree that it would be copyright infringement if you distribute the original game assets (sounds, fonts, textures, models), but I strongly disagree when it comes to the source code because of above factors. And clearly distributing reversed source code without those assets would not enable someone to even obtain the original binary. They'd need to already have them in the first place (e.g. by buying the game and dumping them). Also this is anecdotal but Nintendo is known for being quite belligerent with their copyright enforcement, they will take down various fan games in the name of protecting their IP. However to this day there are multiple full byte for byte decomps of Pokémon GBC games available on GitHub that haven't received so much as a DMCA takedown. Why wouldn't they care to take them down unless they couldn't do anything about reverse engineering? Nintendo still profits from reselling their old games after all (under their "Virtual Console" releases). The pattern repeats with Nintendo game console emulators, the only reason Nintendo is able to take some of them down is when these emulators include decryption keys for ROMs, they have never had a case for taking down an emulator on the basis of it behaving identically to the hardware they sell. Both in theory and in practice I fail to see why you would be right that game decomps are illegal or even in the gray area.

ferro_ 10d ago

If reverse engineering is legal, why wouldn't this be? By reverse engineering you take a closed source program and gradually figure out how it works, eventually ending up with source code that can be transformed into a binary that implements the same function. Reverse engineering would have to be illegal if what you say is true, because the source code you obtained from a copyrighted work is "tainted". There are also creative choices made in reverse engineering because there are many possible source codes that could compile to the same executable output. The author has to make countless choices around how to interpret assembly as higher level language constructs, and code organization in terms of functions and variables used. This isn't anything like zipping and unzipping some file, it's not a one to one transformation. As you can see we can absolutely have byte for byte identical output without having access to the original source code. I agree that it would be copyright infringement if you distribute the original game assets (sounds, fonts, textures, models), but I strongly disagree when it comes to the source code because of above factors. And clearly distributing reversed source code without those assets would not enable someone to even obtain the original binary. They'd need to already have them in the first place (e.g. by buying the game and dumping them). Also this is anecdotal but Nintendo is known for being quite belligerent with their copyright enforcement, they will take down various fan games in the name of protecting their IP. However to this day there are multiple full byte for byte decomps of Pokémon GBC games available on GitHub that haven't received so much as a DMCA takedown. Why wouldn't they care to take them down unless they couldn't do anything about reverse engineering? Nintendo still profits from reselling their old games after all (under their "Virtual Console" releases). The pattern repeats with Nintendo game console emulators, the only reason Nintendo is able to take some of them down is when these emulators include decryption keys for ROMs, they have never had a case for taking down an emulator on the basis of it behaving identically to the hardware they sell. Both in theory and in practice I fail to see why you would be right that game decomps are illegal or even in the gray area.