Nintendo cease-and-desists developer of a Pokémon modI don't know which angle to concentrate on:
A. At this point I'm glad I decided in 2000 to make original things from scratch rather than hacks. Now I have somewhere to point people who PM me begging for hacking help.
B. So what sort of fan creativity is acceptable? If none, I'd advise against patronizing that company in the first place.
Luckily, most game hacks are very low quality, and not very interesting, and they can fly under the radar. It seems only high quality, and highly publicized game hacks get picked on by Nintendo.
With the release of NES classic...many of these old games are still being sold by Nintendo, so it makes sense that they want to protect a current revenue stream. I would tread very carefully on this thin ice, my friends.
dougeff wrote:
Luckily, most game hacks are very low quality, and not very interesting, and they can fly under the radar. It seems only high quality, and highly publicized game hacks get picked on by Nintendo.
I beg to differ. But I'd also rather not get into a long discussion about the "whys" behind their actions.
dougeff wrote:
With the release of NES classic...many of these old games are still being sold by Nintendo, so it makes sense that they want to protect a current revenue stream. I would tread very carefully on this thin ice, my friends.
I've said this for years, but nobody listened. Oh well.
Contrast this with Sega's attitude, where romhacks of Genesis games are
officially supported by the company.
C&D's on ROM hacks and fan games are nothing new and have never been frequent. Every time it happens, everyone acts like it's some kind of game changer. Worst case, they crack down, lose good will, and those still interested in hacking their games adapt their approach: fly under the radar until a project is released.
Some companies have a mindset such that they are willing to spend their goodwill on quashing what they see as illegitimate competition. They call it "knowing when to fire a customer." Look at the major record labels, who successfully sued users of file sharing for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars (
Capitol v. Thomas;
Sony v. Tenenbaum). Those suits didn't stop people from buying CDs and paid downloads from bands on labels distributed by those companies, nor FM radio broadcast license holders from continuing to spin[1] their recordings.
Like it or not, the majority of almost any entertainment publisher's revenue comes from people who don't care about the publisher's attitude toward fan creativity.
[1] A "spin" is an airplay that is not paid for as an advertisement.
So how about we all create our own fandom with our own music and characters and everything and share it together like some kind of a public domain fanbase or at least a Creative Commons / BSD licensed fanbase?
I'd be willing to invest some effort in creating a shared universe for NESdev.
A fairy tale crossover world like that of
Shrek or
Fables or
Once Upon a Time or
RWBY or
Cheshire Crossing would be a starting point because the original
Grimm/
Perrault/
Lang/
Andersen versions of the characters are public domain. (Hence why Sachen didn't have to pay anyone for
Little Red Hood.) Even a talking donkey is PD if his characterization doesn't resemble Eddie Murphy, as talking donkeys form part of the plot of Collodi's
The Adventures of Pinocchio. I've suggested doing fairy tale world before, particularly in discussions about "Let's make a fighting game", but I seem to remember others saying it'd still be too much work.
tepples wrote:
I've suggested doing fairy tale world before, particularly in discussions about "Let's make a fighting game", but I seem to remember others saying it'd still be too much work.
Interesting; I've been contemplating how a fairy tale fighting game would look like, but I wouldn't imagine it being for the NES. It'd be funny to see Alice and Dorothy Gale in a brawl.
If the mod/rom hack was called "Briefcase Creatures" or admittedly something more catchy, then Nintendo would not have cared.
As soon as you try to introduce to the public a creative work using an active trademark belonging to another company without authorization, you're going to get legal action taken.
Nintendo has to take legal action to say that Pokemon(tm) Prism is not an authorized work and cannot use the word "Pokemon".
Nintendo has to take legal action to say that the author does not have permission to use the stylized Logo related to Pokemon.
The sky is not falling.
In the law you HAVE to take action no matter how big or small.
Because let's say there's an egregious blatant misuse of the Pokemon logo on some toy. The lawyers representing that toy company can point out, hey... uh... why didn't you take legal action against this or that or these other things? Hmmm??? And so it goes.
whicker wrote:
The sky is not falling.
No one seems to think it is. Honestly, I think this is the least bullshit thing Nintendo has done related to copyright, (not saying much) but I'm probably just saying that because I really don't care.
whicker wrote:
Nintendo has to take legal action to say that Pokemon(tm) Prism is not an authorized work and cannot use the word "Pokemon".Nintendo has to take legal action to say that the author does not have permission to use the stylized Logo related to Pokemon.
Oh yeah, thinking about it, I guess that's all they can go after the person for, because the rest of the game uses the old assets. Now, this is just a stupid question, but say if the patch included redone graphics for the Pokemon, would that be any "less legal"? The advent of the internet really seems to have messed with a lot of copyright related issues. I've always wondered, if you downloaded the trial version of a program that expired after a certain amount of time, would it be illegal to open it up with a hex editor or something and modify the program to where the timer never expired? I don't know what you'd be charged for (not that it would be found out though).
whicker wrote:
In the law you HAVE to take action no matter how big or small.
Because let's say there's an egregious blatant misuse of the Pokemon logo on some toy. The lawyers representing that toy company can point out, hey... uh... why didn't you take legal action against this or that or these other things? Hmmm??? And so it goes.
So the argument goes. But, for example, SMWCentral is still up, despite having probably thousands of hacks with a name called Super Mario (something).
Another theory: Nintendo's next generation Pokémon game is planned to have a Pokémon Prism version, and they wanted to get rid of this ROM hack in particular well ahead of the release of that game.
nitro2k01 wrote:
But, for example, SMWCentral is still up, despite having probably thousands of hacks with a name called Super Mario (something).
Except when
Super Mario Maker came out, there was a huge set of takedowns on YouTube of videos showing hacks.
I'm still waiting for Rachel Simone Weil to get back to me as to whether a Pokémon-free reskin is feasible.
I don't know much about Pokemon or this hack in particular, but if the comments I've seen about it are accurate, it sounds like the patch included characters ripped from another official Pokemon game. So it's pretty important if you're going to be distributing a patch, to be sure you own the contents of the patch.
I'm pretty sure the whole game patching thing was settled when Nintendo utterly lost their court case against the Game Genie. But if your patch includes stuff created by others, all bets are off. Just because they couldn't win in court though, wouldn't stop them from making threats.
The creator of the hack pretty much summed it up, "shouldn't have made the trailer". Nintendo couldn't have complained if they didn't know about it. And like whicker pointed out, when trademarks are involved they pretty much are required to take action or risk losing their trademark. Unlike copyrights.
To be fair, most fan games and romhacks are using somebody else's intellectual property without their permission.
Why does that matter? In the United States, when you buy something with "Mario" written on it, you already have a good idea of what to expect, and it's because Nintendo is able to stop others from using their property without their permission. Compare that to, for example, the Dendy where "Mario" could mean anything, including pirate originals, and nobody had any way of knowing what Mario was actually supposed to represent.
Although Nintendo's choice to take down gameplay videos and flag videos that use game music (also usually gameplay videos) seems like a step too far by US-cultural standards, it's actually not outside of the boundaries to want to make sure the Pokemon logo and Mario aren't used in things they don't have control over.
The selective enforcement of trademark infringement seems suspect as well; why did a high-brow Pokemon fangame get shut down while SMWCentral and Lunar Magic continue to thrive? It could be due to SMW romhacking having a large Japanese fanbase, but I don't have anything to base that on.
Finally, most C&Ds would be resolved by just removing the infringing elements (usually logos and characters) and replacing them with something else that cannot legally be mistaken for the trademarked things. Take Cities: Skylines and Planet Coaster for example; they're very obviously someone else's clones of Sim City and Roller Coaster Tycoon, but as similar as the gameplay elements may be, none of that needs permission to be used, and as it turns out, neither game needed to piggyback on the source work's names or marketing in order to compete with (and actually surpass) the originals, hence no mention of sims nor tycoons anywhere.
Nintendo should sue everyone with the name Mario.
psycopathicteen wrote:
Nintendo should sue everyone with the name Mario.
As absurd as that may sound, here in Brazil there's a famous singer named "Roberto Carlos", who recently sued another guy named "Roberto Carlos" for naming his company after himself. The singer lost, obviously, but still.
@Drag
My opinion on the subject would be that they make millions every year out of pokemon (the kids got their fix this Christmas..) but not from super mario world. In that context, Pokemon related non official derivative work with be go after first since there is a big money incentive.
@Tepples
If you are going to do a hack of a game like Pokemon which is not something that have the option to do game mod anyway, don't expect any blessing from the company. Like mentioned above, since it's a very lucrative ip, they will shut down anything that can impact the brand.
And nintendo is an old company with a very old way of thinking. This is the last thing I would expect from them, to allow rom hacks. And if you don't believe me then just check super mario run business model.
Anyway, if you do a rom hack, don't expect too much from those still popular ip.
Banshaku wrote:
they make millions every year out of pokemon (the kids got their fix this Christmas..) but not from super mario world.
Why are you being specific about Super Mario World, but not the about the Pokémon game Pokémon Prism is using? Is it because most Super Mario World hacks don't advertise themselves as being new games? I really don't know.
Drag wrote:
why did a high-brow Pokemon fangame get shut down while SMWCentral and Lunar Magic continue to thrive? It could be due to SMW romhacking having a large Japanese fanbase, but I don't have anything to base that on.
I doubt that has to do with it. It probably has more to do with trying to block every Super Mario World hack being made would be a hopeless effort. I really don't understand why they'd be going after a Pokémon hack though. I guess that leads to...
Banshaku wrote:
they will shut down anything that can impact the brand.
Do they really think this will negatively affect sales of Pokémon Sun and Moon? If they do, they have a serious disconnect to reality.
Banshaku wrote:
if you do a rom hack, don't expect too much from those still popular ip.
So F-Zero's fine, right?
Banshaku wrote:
And nintendo is an old company with a very old way of thinking. This is the last thing I would expect from them, to allow rom hacks. And if you don't believe me then just check super mario run business model.
The problem with Nintendo is they've proven time and time again that they just don't know how to adapt to evolving markets. It seems increasingly so that they're sill trying to chase the ghost of the Wii. Look how well that went last time.
Oh yeah, and about where Super Mario Run's business model has gotten it:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ny-country
So adapting to market realities is another one of the ways SEGA does what Nintendon't.
tepples wrote:
So adapting to market realities is another one of the ways SEGA does what Nintendon't.
Arguably, Sega's and Nintendo's realities differ a lot.
8bitMicroGuy wrote:
So how about we all create our own fandom with our own music and characters and everything and share it together like some kind of a public domain fanbase or at least a Creative Commons / BSD licensed fanbase?
There's
Floraverse where the whole comic and everything derived from the comic is Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licensed and it already has an established fanbase.
It's probably far from the only freely-usable fictional universe out there.
Nice. The story is a bit scary, though. But what's mostly scary is that if I'm gonna make any crossovers of that universe with any of mine or someone else's such as in a fighting game where all OCs/avatars of us Nesdevians are playable characters, the game with all its contents will need to be ShareAlike licensed. The big problem is that the Creative Commons license doesn't prevent rule 34 or sexualization or profanity or blasphemy while I wish that none of those things are ever made of my work. A ShareAlike license allows all usage purposes and prevents me from disallowing anything because it's a copyleft license. Therefore, a ShareAlike license is not good. A good copyleft license would be one that has a list of rules about moral standards such as the PG-13 rating. The main reason why I mentioned the BSD license is because of the freedom it brings so that I'm not forced to give out to someone the rights to make perversions out of my work just because the OSI standards say that open source licenses don't discriminate against perversion. Yay, neutrality/tolerance/insertAnyWordThatCausesALogicalFallacyCausingYouToApproveAPerversionBlindlyLikeAnIdiot *sarcasm*. I've probably made someone angry right now, but I don't really care. Nothing will change my opinion on perversions and I'm not letting any of my work be desecrated under the excuse of "artistic expression". I'm sick of searching for innocent and cute fictional character things from my childhood on Google Images only to find porn that the search engine couldn't filter.
8bitMicroGuy wrote:
The big problem is that the Creative Commons license doesn't prevent rule 34 or sexualization or profanity or blasphemy while I wish that none of those things are ever made of my work.
I may also wish that none of those thing will be applied to my work but I do not believe that I should be allowed to stop it if people wish to do; it should be freedom of speech you should not be allowed to stop it, and should be allow to any freedom of speech that you want to.
If I was a country ruler, I'd say that personal peace is of a bigger priority than freedom of speech, but... It seems that people's freedom without responsibility has ruled over. Freedom without responsibility equals chaos and that's why all unregulated freedoms will end up lustfully, corrupting young people who seek awesomeness through the unknownly perverted Google Images search engine in order to recruit them to support the lust just like zombies turn humans into zombies. The majority is lustful so the majority will use the freedom of speech to cover up their lustful behaviors, but not just that, but to hijack someone's dear sweet innocent cute dreams into rule 34 without permission. I'd say that that freedom violates the freedom of purity of the creator and the freedom of children and teens online who just want clean awesomeness. When I get a lawyer for my video games, I'll insert a term into my EULA that forbids and punishes rule 34 just like how Nintendo punishes fan game developers.
Bottom line, have as much fun as possible, but avoid impurity, blasphemy and immorality like a plague and you'll be okay.
Now let's return to the original subject.
I would like to see a romhacker make a hack which only changes around the information already in the game so that there is nothing infringing on any trademarks or copyrights in the patch. Then take that case to court when Nintendo gives a C&D and prove to them that a patch which contains only a list of changes does not violate anything. In fact the patch should be the ownership of the person who created it and if Nintendo tries to block it then Nintendo should be counter sued.
Perhaps Nintendo wants the public to forget about its old products so that they don't unfairly compete with its new products.
tepples wrote:
Perhaps Nintendo wants the public to forget about its old products so that they don't unfairly compete with its new products.
What about the copyright of the games? And the hardware patents? Expired after 20, 30 or 70 years? Or... more?
There are no expired copyrights on video games. Not enough time has past since the beginning of the computer age.
8bitMicroGuy wrote:
Bottom line, have as much fun as possible, but avoid impurity, blasphemy and immorality like a plague and you'll be okay.
That's the thing though, a ROM hack that contains explicit imagery is just as illegal as one that translates a game from Japanese to English. One could even argue that the latter is even more damaging to the copyright holder because it could be sold in piracy and mistaken by less discerning individuals as legitimate.
If Nintendo ever e-mails anyone about their fan project this is what they should say:
Nintendo: Dear Game Dev, we see that you are making a fan game with our intellectual property. Sorry, but we will have to give you a C&D.
Game Dev: Before we go any further, do you mind talking for a while?
Nintendo: Sure what's up?
Game Dev: Did you own a monopoly with the NES in the 80's by forcing all 3rd party devs to only make games for your console?
Nintendo: Yesh
Game Dev: Did you license and sell Shaq-Fu and Superman 64 knowing that they were terrible games yet did it anyway just to make money off innocent gamers?
Nintendo: Yesh
Game Dev: Did you censor the blood in Mortal Kombat 1 for the SNES fully knowing that it should most definitely have blood in it?
Nintendo: Yesh
Game Dev: Did you illegally break a contract with Sony regarding the Super Nintendo Playstation CD add on?
Nintendo: Yesh
Game Dev: Are you out of touch with the current video game market to the point where you are taking down and monetizing youtube videos when no other company is doing this?
Nintendo: Yesh
Game Dev: Do you really think that a bunch of basketball players will play basketball and then after the game is over that they will then sit down and continue to play basketball via the Nintendo Switch with those tiny two inch long mini controllers all while still being at the basketball court when you fully know that the battery won't even last long enough for a full length basketball game?
Nintendo: Well... not really.
Game Dev: So what do you have to say about yourself after reviewing your history?
Nintendo:
Game Dev: That's what I thought.
Of course, that entire exchange relies on the assumption that anyone at Nintendo's legal department is capable of feeling shame, so try it at your own risk.
Erockbrox wrote:
If Nintendo ever e-mails anyone about their fan project this is what they should say:
Nintendo: Dear Game Dev, we see that you are making a fan game with our intellectual property. Sorry, but we will have to give you a C&D.
Game Dev: Before we go any further, do you mind talking for a while?
Nintendo: Sure what's up?
Game Dev: Did you own a monopoly with the NES in the 80's by forcing all 3rd party devs to only make games for your console?
Nintendo: Yesh
Game Dev: Did you license and sell Shaq-Fu and Superman 64 knowing that they were terrible games yet did it anyway just to make money off innocent gamers?
Nintendo: Yesh
Game Dev: Did you censor the blood in Mortal Kombat 1 for the SNES fully knowing that it should most definitely have blood in it?
Nintendo: Yesh
Game Dev: Did you illegally break a contract with Sony regarding the Super Nintendo Playstation CD add on?
Nintendo: Yesh
Game Dev: Are you out of touch with the current video game market to the point where you are taking down and monetizing youtube videos when no other company is doing this?
Nintendo: Yesh
Game Dev: Do you really think that a bunch of basketball players will play basketball and then after the game is over that they will then sit down and continue to play basketball via the Nintendo Switch with those tiny two inch long mini controllers all while still being at the basketball court when you fully know that the battery won't even last long enough for a full length basketball game?
Nintendo: Well... not really.
Game Dev: So what do you have to say about yourself after reviewing your history?
Nintendo:
Game Dev: That's what I thought.
They would be so moved by this impassioned plea that they would release all of their properties to the public domain in repentance.
Attachment:
mario.png [ 29.37 KiB | Viewed 2554 times ]
OH NO! CALL THE AUTHORITIES! SOMEONE DREW FANART!
Nah, this is my own unique expression of Mario, and since I drew it myself, I own the copyright to it, even though Mario's not my character. If I use this picture to promote my own platformer game, then Nintendo can force me to stop using this picture to promote it, but they cannot stop me from making my platformer (even if my platformer ends up still using a similar character). If I'm just showing this picture off by itself, then Nintendo can't do much about it since I made this and it's distinct from their artwork of Mario, and pictures by themselves don't compete with video games.
The part I'm not keen on, however, is if I used this picture to sell my own merchandise, like if I mass-produced this as a bumper sticker, or put this on t-shirts, or on backpacks or whatever. I believe Nintendo would be able to stop me from doing so, on the grounds that I'm using the recognition power of their trademark to promote my own goods, but this is a question better answered by an actual lawyer. It seems like there's a way around it though, given what you see whenever you walk into Hot Topic...
I just have that fear that no matter what kind of theorizing we do, we will never be completely in the legal zone. But speaking of emulators and homebrew games, I believe that copyright doesn't protect game consoles or the hardware combination. Patents do that. And those patents have expired. This is for NES, SNES and GB, I think. This is not a legal advice, but what I'd love to see is a real lawyer going around ROM developer sites and giving free legal advice to everyone and defending all those who are sued by Nintendo and making Nintendo lose on so many fronts. I'd sooo want to hear from the Supreme Court that these ROM stuff are legal. What I'd love to hear is that it is not only legal in America, but also in Europe.
But regardless, sometimes I'm thinking about just moving to a completely different platform like PICO-8 the fantasy console which doesn't have DRM or any Nintendo-ish SOPAsticness. But enough of dreaming. What is SEGA's opinion on homebrew ROMs?
8bitMicroGuy wrote:
What is SEGA's opinion on homebrew ROMs?
Seeing as they're even sanctioning hacks these days, I don't think they're bothered by homebrew at all.
A proper Super Monkey Ball 3
needs to happen!
The original point of copyright law is to reward content creators and promote creativity.
8bitMicroGuy wrote:
The big problem is that the Creative Commons license doesn't prevent
CC is designed to prevent people from being able to carve out a segment of possibility and say "None may operate within this space"… so, feature, not bug.
Zepper wrote:
tepples wrote:
Perhaps Nintendo wants the public to forget about its old products so that they don't unfairly compete with its new products.
What about the copyright of the games? And the hardware patents? Expired after 20, 30 or 70 years? Or... more?
Lifetime of creator + 70 years in the US, or lesser of (95 years from publication/120 years from creation) It's quite absurd. They keep extending it at (allegedly) Disney's behest.
tokumaru wrote:
psycopathicteen wrote:
Nintendo should sue everyone with the name Mario.
As absurd as that may sound, here in Brazil there's a famous singer named "Roberto Carlos", who recently sued another guy named "Roberto Carlos" for naming his company after himself. The singer lost, obviously, but still.
McDonald's filed a lawsuit against MacDonald's Family Restaurant, located in Grand Cayman. McDonald's lost the case, and in addition, was banned from ever opening a McDonald's location on Grand Cayman. This ruling still stands today.
though, note the other cases where they're basically trying to lay claim to the entire McPrefixed namespace.
I'll address the alleged Disney issue in a separate topic, as it's quite unrelated to ROM hacks.
If I ever get enough patient to continue on my broken NES project, I'll be glad to let people reverse engineer it for fandom purposes as long as they don't make anything immoral with it.
The reason why I can't get patient is that I get so inspired to think about mappers that have a pointer for each CHR tile to any part of ROM or RAM and about mappers that can dynamically render text on surfaces and whatnots... Then I realize that I'm just at the beginning and that I should make my first platformer game. It seems I'm good at theorizing about stuff, but bad at doing those things. If I was a director of a homebrew game development company, I'd be able to prove my theories by having lots of people actually doing them for me instead of me losing my inspiration during the process of carrying it out to a finished product. Has anyone had this problem?
About your "immorality" constraint: You could release the game's
program as free software, but release the
art assets under a non-free license that allows non-commercial use so long as the characters' sexuality is neither depicted nor strongly suggested. (Is this what you meant by "immoral"?)
We had a
previous topic about intractability of a large-scale game with a tiny team.
I don't think that's how it works. I mean, if by free you mean FSF-defined free, then it won't work. GPL covers everything just like a ShareAlike license. I can't have a game's program and its assets separate unless there was some kind of a dynamic loading system. But on the NES, that doesn't exist. I also heard that dynamically linking DLLs makes two programs one which means that dynamically linking two license-incompatible programs is a copyright infringement of both licensed programs. Same could be said for patching IPS patches. Like, imagine that I make a game engine and then provide a hacking tool for everyone to inject their own graphics into the game by using IPS patches. The mixture of a, let's say, ShareAlike'd program and assets that contain immorality restrictions. The license of the assets discriminates against wrongdoing, but by ShareAlike, everyone should use the program and all of its contents. By the ShareAlike license, whoever has the program mixed with the assets can use that license as an excuse to do what they please and bypass my immorality restriction.
My best method would be to hire a lawyer to help me write my own EULA for both software and assets. Until then, I could just say that my work is licensed under a BSD license, or if I use patented stuff such as something that I'm about to patent, Apache 2.0 license with a slight modification about this morality thing.
tepples wrote:
but release the art assets under a non-free license that allows non-commercial use so long as the characters' sexuality is neither depicted nor strongly suggested. (Is this what you meant by "immoral"?)
Yes, that's what I mean. I'd also append that I wouldn't like any strong language, obscene blood/gore, blasphemy or Satanic elements. The reason of this discrimination is that I want all Google searches, when a kid fan of my assets searches, show clean family-friendly and Christian-friendly content. I'm sick and tired of the impurity of everything, starting from the anthropomorphic fandom. Kids deserve a clean environment for anthropomorphic self-expression like I did when I was young.
8bitMicroGuy wrote:
Yes, that's what I mean. I'd also append that I wouldn't like any strong language, obscene blood/gore, blasphemy or Satanic elements. The reason of this discrimination is that I want all Google searches, when a kid fan of my assets searches, show clean family-friendly and Christian-friendly content. I'm sick and tired of the impurity of everything, starting from the anthropomorphic fandom. Kids deserve a clean environment for anthropomorphic self-expression like I did when I was young.
I don't think this is a battle you can win.
8bitMicroGuy wrote:
I don't think that's how it works. I mean, if by free you mean FSF-defined free, then it won't work. GPL covers everything just like a ShareAlike license.
It doesn't cover components of an
aggregate. For example, your operating system's application menu and the applications themselves are separate works, as are
a program and its installer. That's why Action 53 compilations have a list of which banks belong to which ROM files, with the equivalent to
an exec barrier identifiable as such in the menu's source code, so that they can be extracted and reinserted as separate executables in an aggregate.
A computer program and the data it reads are also separate works. This includes
a compiler and the source code it compiles,
an interpreter and the programs it runs, the
Doom engine and its WAD files, or the free part of a WLAN adapter's driver that runs on a PC and the "blob" part that it sends to a separate CPU inside the WLAN adapter to run there, even if shipped on the same zipfile, disc image, or other distribution medium. I see a ROM image as no different from a disc image in this respect, so long as program and data areas are distinguishable in a machine-readable way and data is never executed.
If you are the author of all copylefted components of your engine, and your engine needs to call asset-specific executable code (such as set piece scripts) that you fear others will use for immoral purposes, you can license your engine under a
GPL exception allowing linking through a controlled interface, specifying the API that executable assets are allowed to use.
Quote:
I can't have a game's program and its assets separate unless there was some kind of a dynamic loading system. But on the NES, that doesn't exist.
Tell that to any user of Mario Improvement or Lunar Magic, which inserts modified assets into the asset part of an existing ROM image, leaving the program part largely untouched. If you mark up the link script to designate
MEMORY areas as belonging to either "engine" or "assets", then their identity as separate works should become clear. To help enforce this separation at the assembler level, you could use one of the bits of a
MEMORY area's bank attribute to denote assets and then make macro wrappers for
jsr and
jmp instructions that
.assert that the target's
.bank attribute has the assets bit clear. But I'm not a lawyer; make sure to run this legal theory past yours.
Quote:
Yes, that's what I mean. I'd also append that I wouldn't like any strong language, obscene blood/gore, blasphemy or Satanic elements.
Each of which you'd need to have your lawyer define in detail.
I just got into an interesting conversation about the GPL and software licenses and linking and the combinations of stuff and everything.
I'm not a lawyer. If anyone is a lawyer, feel free to chime in and correct any misconceptions. With that said:
The IPS patch itself, provided it has no infringing contents, is legal on its own. You wouldn't be able to distribute both the IPS patch and the ROM together though. The copyright holder of the ROM wouldn't be able to get the IPS patch taken down, since it doesn't infringe on anything on its own; there's nothing in the IPS patch itself that dictates what it has to be used on, so you could use it on literally anything and get a derivative work from it. I could also use any IPS patch on the ROM and though I'd probably get garbage out, that garbage is still a derivative work and is just as infringing.
The copyright holder of the ROM would need to go after each individual who patched the ROM with the IPS patch. The patched rom itself infringes on the copyright, so you wouldn't be able to distribute it or sell it or do anything public-facing with it. It seems very precarious to be advertising the actual derivative work and saying "ok here's the IPS patch", so I really don't know where that falls in legality, but I'm pretty sure a copyright holder could tell you to stop, but even then, it's to stop advertising and to stop using trademarks, they can't really stop you from continuing the project.
Even if you had to pull all your advertisements and your videos and screenshots, you could finish the IPS patch and release it, and nobody would be able to do anything about that IPS patch because, as long as it doesn't contain infringing data itself, it's perfectly fine on its own. People using that IPS patch to create the intended derivative work, and then recording playthroughs and screenshots, that all can be taken down, but again, the IPS itself is safe.
At least CBS and Paramount accommodate their creative fans by offering
guidelines for fan works. Nintendo has refused to offer anything analogous.
To me, these guidelines are too harsh for my standards.
I found them a bit harsh too, but I can understand the reasoning behind most of them. The one that sounded just plain greedy is that you have to use official merchandise for everything, when available.
(IANAL)
The entire list is basically "Do not make products that are competing with Star Trek®, nor allow your creation of fanworks to give profit to makers of such products."
Being one-off, one-episode-length, no-series thing is a way of preventing establishment of a [competing] product-identity by a fanwork.
Only using amateur costumes/props, or official costumes/props when available means not allowing anyone to compete with manufacture of official Trek costumes/props.
It stinks of being run past their legal department, sure. But it's all quite coherent with the idea of copyright being the exclusive, sublettable right to make (and, thusly, profit from) copies of, and derivative works of, a work.
The extent to which derivative-works protection carveouts are moral is a separate question.
Drag wrote:
The IPS patch itself, provided it has no infringing contents...
...as long as it doesn't contain infringing data itself...
That's the big if. In this case, it seems they included pokémon and/or other elemebts from later generations, so that in itself means infringing material. It also seems to be compiled from decompiled source code rather than a hacked binary image, so things would potentially be moved around and a simple binary diff probably would do little to separate the non-infringing content. So a simple IPS patch would be out of the question. Maybe you could make a specialized tool which takes multiple ROM images and extracts whatever it needs, including graphics, and builds the final ROM image and confirms the checksum of it. But at that point we're far beyond trivial, both from a technical and legal point of view.
Bottom line, get into a fandom that supports derivative works under a normal common sense copycenter license or make your own franchise. Also, NEVER make copyleft work! It will cause issues! For example, my game has a character selection screen with modifiable characters. If I made a Let's Play with Floraverse characters in that, my video would be GPL as well as my own characters which are distributed under a no-porn-nor-blasphemy kinda license and that would make the pornographers and blasphemers to avoid my restriction. So GPL and ShareAlike crap means "YOU DON'T OWN ANYTHING!".
Let's get to the facts. Freedom Planet was a fan game, but now is a full original product. Stephen DiDuro supports derivative works as well as fan games and fan characters and game mods as long as it's non-commercial. I don't know what he thinks about fan art commissions and fan character commissions, but game mods gotta be non-commercial and only for those who have the license to the official game. For one to let fan games be made out of a game that was a fan game sounds like a Golden Rule respecting idea! According to this, I can say that Freedom Planet fan games are a way to go if you want to make fan games. But that's so hard! Look at those slope physics! It's nearly impossible! But I could say it can be possible to be done on SNES as a homebrew game or in SDL2 as a whole engine from the ground up or in Clickteam Fusion 2.5 if you modify the code of Sonic Worlds which is the engine of Freedom Planet. Someone tried to redo FP from Sonic Worlds.
8bitMicroGuy wrote:
Bottom line, get into a fandom that supports derivative works under a normal common sense copycenter license
I think you're misunderstanding what copycenter means. Copyleft means that there are restrictions in the license to force derivative works to stay copyleft, thus ensuring that they are available to the public. Copycenter means that this restriction on derivative works does not exist, and thus derivative works may be released under a more restrictive license, including both a copyleft license, and a commercial license. Copycenter does not mean the same thing as center in politics, but is a play on "copy center" a place filled with paper copier machines. It is meant to put minimal restrictions on the licensed works. A copycenter license is not suitable for protecting against porn and blasphemy.
8bitMicroGuy wrote:
Also, NEVER make copyleft work! It will cause issues!
How would this create problems if you have nothing against "porn and blasphemy"? This advice seems to reflect your personal morals, but how is this good advice for anyone else?
Copyleft open-source licenses, according to OSI, must not discriminate against wrongdoing and that includes porn and blasphemy (going to call it P&B for short). Therefore, a copyleft license would definitely allow that along with everything else.
https://opensource.org/osd Look at points 5 and 6.
But a copycenter license would be good if the fandom creators licensed their fandoms with it and then everyone could do with it whatever. Now, of course, there would be P&B, but that wouldn't affect my derivative works if I used my own license for them: a copyleft license that is not OSI-ishly open source, but open source to the point where it's all fair without P&B.
I guess that an anti P&B copyleft license for all open fandoms would be the solution then. However, I'd like it to be possible for those who make derivative works to make closed-source versions as long as there's no P&B.
It is a bad idea to include such clauses into the license. Such restrictions do not belong under the copyright law, if they are wanted at all; I would think free speech are more important. Just to do public domain or copyleft and it will do. I will not release my work under a "anti-P&B" license; instead it can just be public domain and you do with as you wish. I too would hope that you don't P&B, but I will not to stop you to do; the modified version will be your work, not mine; I did not write it so you can have the permission to make your own kind if you wish to do.
I've created a new topic summarizing discussion so far about
licenses that ban porn and blasphemy.
Where does the Big N get off suing people for things Id, Valve, and Sega all sanction? The choice has been made by others, and it's time Nintendo submitted to the will of the fans.
8bitMicroGuy wrote:
Copyleft open-source licenses, according to OSI, must not discriminate against wrongdoing and that includes porn and blasphemy (going to call it P&B for short). Therefore, a copyleft license would definitely allow that along with everything else.
https://opensource.org/osd Look at points 5 and 6.
But a copycenter license would be good if the fandom creators licensed their fandoms with it and then everyone could do with it whatever. Now, of course, there would be P&B, but that wouldn't affect my derivative works if I used my own license for them: a copyleft license that is not OSI-ishly open source, but open source to the point where it's all fair without P&B.
I guess that an anti P&B copyleft license for all open fandoms would be the solution then. However, I'd like it to be possible for those who make derivative works to make closed-source versions as long as there's no P&B.
Your license don't mean shit. Free speech comes before your copyright.
... Uh, the right to free speech does not provide the right to infringe copyright, trademark, patents, &c.
lidnariq wrote:
... Uh, the right to free speech does not provide the right to infringe copyright, trademark, patents, &c.
The judges make the call and I assure you, liberal American judges are in no mood to accommodate right-wing overreach.
It's about time people got money together and took the Big N to court over this shit. And you should know 8bitguy that BHDN has already vowed to desecrate your bits.
[citation needed]
Both halves. Good luck showing damages.
lidnariq wrote:
[citation needed]
Both halves. Good luck showing damages.
I mean winning the case on the defense, not winning anything directly from Nintendo.
Patch law has never been settled. Just because modders haven't been willing to meet the bullies in court doesn't mean the bullies will win. There is a lot of sympathy for modders nowadays. This dragon is nearly dead and all that remains is to shoot the arrow into that soft underbelly.
That said, I don't think character protections are dead. I just think people are ready to tolerate enhancements and insertions.
tcaudilllg wrote:
And you should know 8bitguy that BHDN has already vowed to desecrate your bits.
If they don't break the vow, they won't have a happy afterlife.
So I looked more deeply into the
Prism thing.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/12/ ... om-hacker/"It would have contained other tweaks, such as Brown's special monster types (wood, gas, wind, abnormal, and sound)"
I can understand Nintendo's lawyers taking action here. There comes a point when an idea is such a natural extension of the original that it inhibits the original's further expansion. In Nintendo's eyes,
Prism crosses that line. It makes more legal sense if you consider that the maker of
Prism could have potentially leveraged their fame on account of
Prism's popularity, to create a bonafide competitor to Pokemon, claiming the expanded monster types as exclusives along with, possibly, Pokemon's simple alchemy-based originals. It could have been them suing Nintendo.
Nintendo's actually been down this road before. Graal Online was based on TLoZ: LttP initially, then later removed copyrighted content once they had a player base in the thousands. But now Nintendo's in a bind because lots of the ideas they'd have used in an online Zelda game have already been claimed by the creators of Graal. So where Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest go, Zelda can't necessarily follow.
btw 8bitguy, there's something you should know about copyright and porn. The reason you don't see intelligent use of sex in porn parodies is because they have to be exactly that to be legal. They have to be nonsensical, but in so doing, they conclusively evade your reach. You don't have a prayer of preventing the parody of your hack. In fact, you've invited it and subjected yourself to likely opportunity-destroying ridicule and humiliation. Far from enhancing your product, you have cheapened it by denying the possibility of its artistic merit.
There are way better ways of being artistic and parodyish than just making porn. Making porn is like if you want to corrupt a mind of a child which will grow up and make more porn. Kinda like how a rapist corrupts a parent who corrupts the child who then corrupts their children. Porn is a virus. If you really wanna have fun, make something that kids will enjoy without feeling traumatized.
And please call me 8bitMicroGuy or just Micro instead of 8bitguy because there seems to be a guy called The 8-Bit Guy. Just for your information, I haven't known that he existed because I just had to make a quick username and I picked 8bitMicroGuy because I program 8-bit microcontrollers and Google didn't show me any name conflicts.
8bitMicroGuy wrote:
There are way better ways of being artistic and parodyish than just making porn.
You completely misunderstand.
The point is the porn.
The porn is the point.
Making it a parody makes it a legally defensible use of other people's copyright/trademark.
Everything else is irrelevant.
Except in the
specific case of the creator specifically going on record of
disallowing pornographic content, in which case the parody is
necessarily pornographic in order to be a parody about opinions about pornography.
Quote:
Making porn is like if you want to corrupt a mind of a child which will grow up and make more porn. Kinda like how a rapist corrupts a parent who corrupts the child who then corrupts their children. Porn is a virus. If you really wanna have fun, make something that kids will enjoy without feeling traumatized.
The kids are irrelevant. The porn is the point.
And the rest of your foamy "argument" wouldn't persuade anyone who didn't already completely agree with you.
8bitMicroGuy wrote:
There are way better ways of being artistic and parodyish than just making porn. Making porn is like if you want to corrupt a mind of a child which will grow up and make more porn. Kinda like how a rapist corrupts a parent who corrupts the child who then corrupts their children. Porn is a virus. If you really wanna have fun, make something that kids will enjoy without feeling traumatized.
He ought to be banned for this.
How is that a ban-able offense?
lidnariq wrote:
How is that a ban-able offense?
It's the same stuff those idiot pols in Oklahoma and Kansas say, and when people believe it, it causes stigmatism against rape victims. Which I don't think anyone with actual ability to work on an NES or SNES would actually believe it (unless they were indoctrinated from birth to be fundies, but that's just outside the norm here). But you don't want to encourage it.
If I wasn't clear enough that porn is bad, then I'm just going to quit from this topic and move on. And don't anyone dare talk something about me behind my back, you understand!? There will be flamewars. Not caused by me, but by those who say who should be banned and by those who use logical fallacies to achieve their own pornographic goals.
Your opinions on the matter have been made perfectly clear.
Your opinions on the matter do not affect whether generic cartoon porn of existing other characters can be defended as parody.
However, your opinions on the matter are, in fact, the very reason that it would be trivial to defend as parody a hypothetical pornographic creation based on a hypothetical character you made. Do you understand what parody is? Do you understand why I'm very carefully saying "defend as parody" rather than "is explicitly allowed by copyright" ?
Your threats are also particularly juvenile.
8bitMicroGuy wrote:
don't anyone dare talk something about me behind my back, you understand!?
Dang it, I was about to PM someone...
Gee I thought this was a site that was more about tech stuff, where even the general stuff had some merit. Seriously this bullshit belongs at RHDN. This guy isn't going to become anything anyhow (except a preacher or a lawyer (nah)), so why humor him? I think he's trolling.
I'd have thought my comment would have upset him more than anyone else, but I just saw that this discussion was going nowhere and wanted to have fun with it. However, I was really getting the "vaccines cause autism" vibe from what he wrote initially.
lidnariq wrote:
Do you understand what parody is?
This comic seems strangely relevant to this thread: (mildly NSFW, but it's just a giant foam penis)
http://oglaf.com/actor-n-bishop/To summarize: "BOOOO! BOOOOOO! This isn't satire! You're just whacking people with a dick!"
The much greater "NSFW" is the ad on the bottom...
Espozo wrote:
The much greater "NSFW" is the ad on the bottom...
Oh shit! Is there an ad!?
I've had AdBlock installed for so long, that I didn't even think of checking for them. Sorry about that.
tcaudilllg wrote:
Gee I thought this was a site that was more about tech stuff, where even the general stuff had some merit. Seriously this bullshit belongs at RHDN. This guy isn't going to become anything anyhow (except a preacher or a lawyer (nah)), so why humor him? I think he's trolling.
If I was a troll, you'd be crying right now.
The question is begged: when is a rom hack ok, and when is it not ok? Does there come a point when you trample the commercial rights of the game designers/publishers in the process of the expansion? Is it OK to sell a rom hack independently of the patched material? And if it is, does this also mean it's OK to create patches/add-ons for -any- software package?
To be perfectly safe, offer mods only when the publisher has made mod hooks available. This happens far more often for PC games than for console games.
I'd probably be fine as long as they weren't selling the hack, but if they were, I would most likely give a cease and desist, if they refuse, then I'd probably take legal actions. However, if they had completely original code and assets, then I'd be fine if they sold it. I've honestly always hated ROM hacking, mainly because it required no talent whatsoever. Now don't get me wrong, there are a few amazing ROM hackers who make amazing ROM hacks that go as far as to have completely different music, levels,characters, and occasionally change the code! But those people are hard to find when you have a bunch of crap hackers who only go as far as to change the graphics a little bit. There are so many immature people who make repulsive ROM hacks.
DementedPurple wrote:
I'd probably be fine as long as they weren't selling the hack, but if they were, I would most likely give a cease and desist, if they refuse, then I'd probably take legal actions. However, if they had completely original code and assets, then I'd be fine if they sold it. I've honestly always hated ROM hacking, mainly because it required no talent whatsoever. Now don't get me wrong, there are a few amazing ROM hackers who make amazing ROM hacks that go as far as to have completely different music, levels,characters, and occasionally change the code! But those people are hard to find when you have a bunch of crap hackers who only go as far as to change the graphics a little bit. There are so many immature people who make repulsive ROM hacks.
Just count your lucky stars that nobody has thought to sit down and write a competitive PD engine or maker for the older systems. That, my friend, would be the end of your job.
to be on topic..
CCC vs Atari and "Enchantment Kits" + Midway VS Namco and MS Pac-Man. While I think they both scraped away without setting legal precedent, most I would think they did so because the precedent was going to be bad for the Enhancement people. Who ended up with restrictions placed upon them in agreements. "Enhancement kits" is just a fancy name for ROM Hack.