How about historians writing about Nintendo's development process by referencing the VCS history? Would they get in trouble?
I suppose they wouldn't copy it outright. But wouldn't it be useful as a reference to fix long-standing bugs, improve performance, etc?
Very cool. I didn’t remember that this had been a plot point in Halt and Catch Fire.
Spoilers ahead if you haven't watched the show (quotes from S01E01: I/O):
> Gordon Clark: A personal computer, like any other computer, is just a nothing box full of electronic switches and hardware. You know, the IBM, the Altair, the Apple II... it's all the same junk. Anyone can buy all this stuff off the shelf right now. It's called "open architecture." I mean, IBM, they basically don't own anything inside the machine.
> Joe MacMillan: Except the chip.
> Gordon Clark: Yeah, well, except what's on the chip. The BIOS is on one of these chips, we just don't know which one. The ROM BIOS is the only part of the machine IBM actually designed. I mean, it is the program, it is the magic. The bad news is they copyrighted it and they own how it works. The good news is there's a way around that, sort of.
> Joe MacMillan: Reverse engineering.
After dumping the BIOS, IBM decides to sue Cardiff Electric because Joe MacMillan tells IBM about their little "side project", forcing the company to dedicate resources towards actually building a IBM PC clone. In the meeting with Cardiff Electric's lawyer (Barry Shields), they agree to do a clean room implementation.
> John Bosworth: Why can't we fire these peckerheads?
> Barry Shields: Because then you'll lose this lawsuit. Fire them, shelve their work, you're essentially admitting guilt.
> John Bosworth: Okay, so what's the solution, Barry?
> Barry Shields: We legitimize the project.
> John Bosworth: What?
> Barry Shields: Go the other way. We say Cardiff Electric as a company has been pursuing PC development all along. You take Clark's findings on the BIOS chip, you tell an engineer to build a unit that operates and performs in exactly the same way, but you don't tell him how to do it.
> John Bosworth: Hell, I don't think we have one engineer capable of building a BIOS from scratch other than "Sonny Bono" over here.
> Barry Shields: And you can't use him or any other engineer we currently employ.
> John Bosworth: So we have to hire?
> Barry Shields: Yes, someone who doesn't know us or IBM, and certainly hasn't seen the contents of this binder. Essentially, all the law stipulates is that he can't be hands-on in the actual chip creation.
> John Bosworth: And we can't fire them.
> Barry Shields: No, not right now.
> John Bosworth: So we get out of this by actually building a PC clone? This is your brilliant idea to save our hides, Barry? For God's sake, man!
> Barry Shields: No. Actually, it was MacMillan's.
> John Bosworth: You son of a bitch.
And then later, when they hire Cameron Howe as the programmer to write the BIOS for their clone, there is a whole scene on her first day where Barry Shields interviews her to make sure everything is legal, and that she wasn't involved in the reverse engineering.
> Barry Shields: Answer honestly. This is for legal record. False answers put you at risk of perjury, you understand?
> (Cameron nods)
> Barry Shields: I'm sorry, you have to answer "yes" or "I do."
> Cameron Howe: Oh, yes, I do.
> Barry Shields: Have you ever attempted to disassemble or deconstruct any product manufactured by International Business Machines, more commonly known as IBM?
> Cameron Howe: Uh, no, I have not.
> Barry Shields: Have you ever attempted to reverse engineer any product or equipment made by IBM?
> Cameron Howe: No, I have not.
> Barry Shields: Have you ever attempted to reverse engineer any microchips, microcode, or any computer hardware while under the employ of a business or corporation?
> Cameron Howe: No, I have not.
> John Bosworth: Well, welcome to the tiniest, leakiest lifeboat you ever tried to paddle to shore in.
The rest of the season highlights how Cameron is placed in a "clean room" (aka the storage closet) without looking at the binder containing the dumped BIOS.
> Clean-room design (also known as the Chinese wall technique) is the method of copying a design by reverse engineering and then recreating it without infringing any of the copyrights associated with the original design.
If one of your engineers has to download and study the leaked source code, they've infringed Nintendo's copyrights.
Is this an accurate interpretation of copyright law? I thought copyright was meant to prevent books from being copied, not to prevent books from being read.
If you download a commercial ebook from BitTorrent without having paid for a licence, that's copyright infringement. Nintendo chooses not to put its source-code on the market, so you have no means of acquiring a licence to it. Downloading their copyrighted work in the absence of a proper licence, and in the absence of an exception like fair use (I really doubt that applies here), is copyright infringement, almost by definition.
When you get sent a DMCA or copyright strike for torrenting movies, their legal basis isn't that you downloaded the content but that you then seeded it to peers. This is also why Popcorn Time etc. (can) generate strikes, because you also serve as a seed and redistribute content to other users.
Otherwise, the MPAA would have a field day with this and strike anyone who used an illegal streaming site. Watched a leak on Dailymotion? Strike one. Watched a clip of a show on an unofficial YouTube channel? Strike two. etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Download#Copyright
The reason uploaders are prosecutor more is that they are easier targets (more evidence, more damages)
DMCA takedown copyright strikes are one specific part of copyright law, that applies to hosting services and safe harbor protections for them. There is much more to copyright law.
Copyright infringement tends to be a civil thing that rights holders can sue for loss of earnings, rather than a criminal thing that the police will prosecute.
In some jurisdictions the civil wrong can be tipped into a criminal offence. In England if you infringe copyright as part of a business that would be a criminal offence.
At least in the cases i've heard of. It could be one of those old wives tales kind of things though. I honestly don't know.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_64_technical_specific...
A little bit about their custom N64 GPU microcode is discussed here: https://thesolidstategamer.wordpress.com/2014/07/18/playstat... Edit: Developer interview here https://www.ign.com/articles/1998/02/27/journey-to-the-cente... and much more in-depth technical examination here https://olivieryuyu.blogspot.com/2020/01/introduction-factor...
Factor 5 did so many wild things to the GameCube, they have their own tag on excellent Dolphin blog: https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/tags/Factor5/
As someone who is in "emulation-adjacent" communities, just yesterday I ran into a giant new pocket of N64 drama I was previously unaware of.
It is allot of personal free time they put in to these projects so I guess it is understandable that they want to protect their work.
OT but this does take me back - who remembers the drama with Sparcade?
Now would be the time for Nintendo to seriously consider open sourcing some of this stuff so they have a chance to put it out there legally and in a way that benefits them, instead of the current situation where it only benefits shady outfits selling aftermarket raspberry pis loaded with illegal ROMs, that were never going to partner with them anyway.
Edit: Child comment has the video. Starting at 20:17, "We wanted to open source the system. So why didn't we? What was the problem? Well, the problem was that it's a deeply proprietary system."
And we're "just" a language runtime and a shell shipped in the OS. I can't imagine how hard it would be to unwind the proprietary bits of something like a GPU architecture running in a tightly integrated SoC with multiple vendors who are all deeply protective of their IP.
I say this all as someone who has been a proponent of open source for 15 years. And all the work was absolutely worth it, and deeply rewarding from a personal perspective.
But I can't say it would probably make the same sense for Nintendo to go through that effort with Pokemon or the N64 architecture.
I don't have time to rewatch it now but I believe the point of the talk was to promote Illumos as the true community-driven open-source fork after Oracle dropped the ball. This is exactly what I'm talking about: the community is often happy to pick up the slack and cover for the failures of these companies, but only when given the opportunity. Yes it's a lot of work, a lot of conversations and a lot of corporate politicking. But how can anyone get started when the relevant parties are not willing to even present an opportunity?
The decision to open source is not as dichromatic as it might seem. In between the "yes we want to open source" and "no we don't" there is a huge chasm of "IDGAF".
The hubris of those who believe other people should be forced to release their (not already subject to a copyleft license) work is the very antithesis of FOSS principles.
Now if this isn't actually the case and they're just using it as an excuse because they don't want to release it, and they want to continue playing this cat-and-mouse game with leakers and ROM sites forever, that's fine too, it's a little disappointing, but my intention is to present the idea that there is a different way.
Unfortunately, Nintendo has never done anything like this. Maybe some reputable organization like a computing museum could ask them to place this information in escrow in the Internet Archive, so that it can be released "properly" after copyrights expire and trade secrets have long become irrelevant. But there's no way they're going to do more than that.
If this trend continues, it would be prudent of them to find bigger and better ways to contribute back.
But I also think that the contribution to society from Nintendo's products should also be valued. Just because we pay for those games, doesn't mean our lives aren't better than they would be if the company didn't exist and we spent the money on something else.
They also contribute by increasing the market competition for games. They make other games and games companies better. They encourage innovation in ways that other companies wouldn't think about or wouldn't prioritize otherwise.
I'm totally ok with companies utilizing open source to make my life better in this way. Contributing back code for others to use is also an important activity.
Of course they won't incorporate unlicensed copyrighted things from the leak in their own code, but they don't need to.
It's not really likely, but it's within the realm of possibility. Somewhat less likely than legally acquired game ROMs, sure, but only a matter of degree...
While it is very interesting, it's worth noting that anybody hoping to use this for anything "serious" risks getting the Nintendo lawyers on their ass. Emulators won't touch this, neither will console clones. This leak is both a blessing and a curse.