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Suddenly I feel stupid for complaining about CSS rotation not working when I was 18 or 20. It is interesting how Nintendo used existing trademark law to preven

Suddenly I feel stupid for complaining about CSS rotation not working when I was 18 or 20. It is interesting how Nintendo used existing trademark law to prevent reverse engineering before DMCA: games had to display the official Nintendo mark at a certain time or the boot loader would fail, they could sue unauthorized companies that displayed it for trademark infringement. Obviously I would prefer that they hadn't been so closed off but it is an interesting "hack".

qbrass 12y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade On August 28, 1992, the Ninth Circuit overturned the district court's verdict and ruled that Accolade's decompilation of the Sega software constituted fair use. The court's written opinion followed on October 20 and noted that the use of the software was non-exploitative, despite being commercial,and that the trademark infringement, being required by the TMSS for a Genesis game to run on the system, was inadvertently triggered by a fair use act and the fault of Sega for causing false labeling.
- cookiecaper 12y ago
  It seems like once people realized that the internet and computers were going to stick around for a long time and make serious money, reasonable decisions like this pretty much went out the window. Maybe all of those late-90s laws like the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act and the DMCA bound the judiciary's hands.
voltagex_ 12y ago
>"The first time they read 'Nintendo' we got it to return 'Argonaut', so that was what dropped down the screen. On the second check, our resistor and capacitor powered up so the correct word 'Nintendo' was in there, and the game booted up perfectly." This is a really good example of a TOCTOU [1] attack. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_of_check_to_time_of_use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_of_check_to_time_of_use

qbrass 12y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade On August 28, 1992, the Ninth Circuit overturned the district court's verdict and ruled that Accolade's decompilation of the Sega software constituted fair use. The court's written opinion followed on October 20 and noted that the use of the software was non-exploitative, despite being commercial,and that the trademark infringement, being required by the TMSS for a Genesis game to run on the system, was inadvertently triggered by a fair use act and the fault of Sega for causing false labeling.

cookiecaper 12y ago
It seems like once people realized that the internet and computers were going to stick around for a long time and make serious money, reasonable decisions like this pretty much went out the window. Maybe all of those late-90s laws like the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act and the DMCA bound the judiciary's hands.

voltagex_ 12y ago

>"The first time they read 'Nintendo' we got it to return 'Argonaut', so that was what dropped down the screen. On the second check, our resistor and capacitor powered up so the correct word 'Nintendo' was in there, and the game booted up perfectly." This is a really good example of a TOCTOU [1] attack. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_of_check_to_time_of_use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_of_check_to_time_of_use