Comment by basil-rash
2 years ago
Nintendo is in an interesting position whereby they are actually selling emulators as a product to this day. Which gives them more of a leg to stand on in these sorts of efforts, regardless of whether or not I personally agree.
Oracle v Google determined this in my mind, the emulator is implementing an API, the API is not protected by copyright law.
FWIW that case was about whether copying the interface file almost verbatim was fair use, not about the API itself, IIRC.
Right because an API is too abstract for copyright law, it has to literally be copied works.
I would say the opposite, it gives them less of a leg to stand since they cannot say that there's never any justification for emulation anymore like they said in the past.
Usually the justification for emulation is "the company doesn't sell this product anymore, it's abandonware"
Emulation’s legal whether or not some of the software on a platform is abandonware (which doesn’t justify anything legally, anyway)
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Nintendo historically took a harder stance than that basically saying that emulation destroys the player experience and even copying your own games isn't legal.
Seems like emulation is only fine if they make money out of it.
my justification is that intellectual property is an absolutely ridiculous concept and my actions are driven by my morals and values and not the frequently ridiculous laws of this country
That’s like saying I can’t make photocopies of my own ID because I’ve said in the past that identity thieves shouldn’t make photocopies of my ID.
Except they explicitly said that any emulation is bad. With your analogy it's like claiming ID photocopies are bad and then making your own.
And then emulation isn't stealing anyways.
Why would the owners of the copyright be restricted from selling their copyrighted works in whatever way they want?
In the past they said that there's never any justification for emulation and that it ruins the player experience, seems like it depends on how much money they make out of it.
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Emulators are legal in the US because of Sony v Connectix
some aspects (not all aspects) of creating (not using) emulators are not illegal by way of copyright laws (but may be illegal by way of other laws such as trademarks, patents, DRM) in the US because of Sony vs Connectix.
Sorry?
Don’t worry about it.