Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

So...any updates on the situation?

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

We are looking at the legal status of game emulators in several countries. Actually not a simple task. Once we get conclusions we will share them with the Maemo community council and the affected developers. Then they will decide what to do with this advice.

Hopefully there will be a way to proceed making all parties happy.

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

Here's my solution, invite the Nintendo corporate heads to a meeting in Amsterdam, smoke a few nice, fat joints, get em laid in the red-light district...then blackmail them. :) LOL

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

I find this whole thing pretty stupid...for a device to have open software, it's not ok to censor legit applications.

Even the Android Market has emulators in its shop AND they are charging people to purchase them.

http://www.android.com/market/paid.html (third page, "Kidd GBC" and "Nesoid")

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

If you'll read quim's post just before yours, you'll see that they are investigating whether your claim that emulators are legitimate is actually true in all the countries they cover. Android's potential for being sued means nothing to Nokia--nor maemo. As has been expressed on this issue before, it's better to be too cautious than not cautious enough, better to have the rare experiment that is maemo continue than risk it being killed off because some people wanted to play a few bootlegged games. Maemo is infinitely bigger than an emulator platform, and the priorities ought to reflect that.

What a lot of people (including you) are missing is this perspective: the very nature of Maemo means that emulators don't have to be hosted here because it is open. Nothing has really changed for people who want an emulator and are willing to put in a little mental exertion to DIY--the packages are all available still, just not in the official repositories. That's inherently enabled by the nature of Maemo, and is why it's not as big a deal as many people are making it out to be. An open platform means that you can go to wherever you want for your apps. However, with this freedom comes responsibility to do and think for yourself, and i think this aspect is confusing to people coming from more closed and controlled platforms (ie any other phone OS). Open software gives you as much rope as you want. Don't hang yourself.

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

Has anyone figured out how to fix the missing dependancies to install drnoksnes and ines from the deb?

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

I have every faith that there's going to be a good solution to this situation, we just don't know what it is yet. Clearly geting them back into the maemo.org repos would be most people here's favoured option, but if that doesn't happen there will be a decent plan B.

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

Just add extras-devel, install drnoknes and ines, then disable it ;)

Somebody has news about the whole Nokia-Nintendo problem and how it will affect Maemo.org ?

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

From qgil's post above, it seems like they are still checking on the legality of emulators.

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

Crap. Looks like its not in devel reposit anymore :( oh well... good thing i still have my n95 ^^

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

Some useful information for the people who are discussing this matter. In the Netherlands it is absolutely legal to have emulators of a platform. But owning copied games or ROM's for that matter are illegal if you don't own the original game.

Maybe a repository in the Netherlands will solve this ordeal? ;)

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

could be a similar problem with the emulation of the wii control?

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

The wii control is never emulated...it's merely installing a driver that allow the wiimote to connect to the N900

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

http://isohunt.com/release/343177/n900+emulator ;)

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

So if the maemo community is currently reviewing the legal status of emulators, why is there a master gear emulator in the extras repo?

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

Because Sega didn't contact Nokia and nobody from Nokia posted a video on Youtube showing them playing a Sega game on the N900.

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

It'd be more interesting to know if/when updates are coming, where to help / contribute / beta test comments are, etc...

Anyway, emu are legal, copyrighted roms less so (unless you own them depending of your country i guess).

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

Yes Nokia where stupid to sell there product like this, but whats to stop Sega following suit. If its OK to host Sega emulators then bring back the Nintendo ones.

If there is an issue with emulators then they should also be removed from what is essentially a Nokia endorsed community otherwise there opening themselves up to the same issue.

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

they had nokia emulators for past maemo devices...but nokia never advertised the devices running copyrighted roms

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

Emulators are not illegal. Playing ROMs with them emulators however are. That's the issue at hand. Nintendo saw a Nokia employee in an official Nokia sponsored Youtube video playing a Nintendo game on the emulator.

Had the Nokia employee been playing some homebrew on the emulator then Nintendo would have no grounds (though they like to say that they do but in law they do not).

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

Isn't there some room for fair use here? I rip CDs and listen to them on my iPod N900. I don't really see a difference between space shifting a CD and space shifting a game. Now, if the media were in some way encrypted, that would be a different story under the DMCA, but as far as I'm aware, SNES cartridges had no such protection.

If I'm missing some case law on this (whether in the US, Finland, or Japan) I sincerely hope you'll let me know, but from what I've read, there's actually very little to support either side - the fair use status of space shifting is still a rather novel area of law. In turn, that's what kind of frustrates me about Nokia's decision here: rather than use their resources to help establish some good case law, they're backing away from the fight.

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

I have no idea. But fair use in the USA is usually trumped by the DMCA. I just hope that ACTA treaty never gets signed.

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

I have no idea. But fair use in the USA is usually trumped by the DMCA. I just hope that ACTA treaty never gets signed.

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

Right, but again, DMCA only kicks in if you encrypt your media. Specifically,

and...

So if Nokia were showing off the PS3 emulator with a MGS4 rom, Sony might have cause to sue under what is fairly settled law, since the Blu-Ray discs have quite a lot of encryption. But an SNES cartridge doesn't gain any novel protection under the DMCA anymore than a CD does (since CD's aren't encrypted).

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

The problem is that the DMCA has been stretched so far beyond its original purposes by companies and lawyers that it may not even need to include breaking the encryption part anymore.

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

There's a very MAJOR difference here. Fair use doesn't apply to full copies of a product except in *very* *very* slender ways. For something to be fair use, the portion of the game you use must be relatively small in comparison to the full game, does not harm the owner, blah blah blah. Having a copy of a ROM fails fair use in almost every way possible if you read up about it. Where fair use applies is when you decide you want to use a graphic or sound effect from the game somewhere else.

There's no concept of "space shifting" here. You're straight up making a copy of a full product. There's nothing that allows that and it is fully illegal.

Encryption isn't the only way you can protect your games from being copied. Nintendo has successfully argued that the fact that they use their own custom made cartridges instead of a widely used format *is* protection. They also made similar arguments against importers (one of the main reason why carts weren't directly compatible between US and Japanese consoles).

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

I could be mistaken, but I think this website installed a sysguard virus on my pc.

My apologies in advance if I'm mistaken.

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

"Emulators are not illegal. Playing ROMs with them emulators however are. That's the issue at hand. Nintendo saw a Nokia employee in an official Nokia sponsored Youtube video playing a Nintendo game on the emulator."

no playing unpurchased roms are illegal , playing copies of your roms are not illegal.


emulatotors are fine, and in terms of the law nothing wrong with what nokia did by realising the vid(surely at the mo).. they may have been in a stronger position if they put a warning underneath saying "playing pirated roms is illeagal"

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

"There's no concept of "space shifting" here. You're straight up making a copy of a full product. There's nothing that allows that and it is fully illegal.
"

????????

you own the product , you can do what yo like with it, you can noit distribute a copy mind

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

As far as I understand the situation, emulation itself isn't illegal. If it was then the MasterGear emulator wouldn't still be on the list.

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

N900 device itself should be illegal for even allowing a software such as emulators to even run. =P

Emulators are not illegal whatsoever. Not so sure about roms.
But you can't even buy a "new" SNES console or cartridge anymore.
So shouldn't Nintendo be happy that such old games are still being loved? =P

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

They are happy about it...especially since they're reselling the games via virtual console on wii.

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

Emmulators have, to the best of my knowledge, never been shown as either legal or illegal. From my understand of the Nintendo communication, they are challenging that position. I beleieve that they are asserting infringement of Intellectual Copyright. Any such judgement would effectively be aimed at the emmulator itself.

Nokia would be a target of lititgation if it were helping distribute such software if shown to be illegal. By removing the pacakges from it's repository Nokia is showing couts that it is being responsible until the matter is decided & hopefully removing the case for litigation against itself.

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

Oranges have also, to the best of my knowledge, never been shown as either legal or illegal.

Nokia has no problem breaking the GPL, but is suddenly playing chicken when they get a letter from Nintendo. This shows exactly how much maemo.org is a "website of the community".

BTW, it seems that both sourceforge and google have no problem with actively supporting Nintendo emulators.

http://www.freebsdsoftware.org/emulators/vgb-bin.html

http://nestopia.sourceforge.net/

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

Oranges have never launched an IP litigation either so that would tend to answer that question. The point I was answering is the assertion that emmulators as legal: simply not the case across all legislative frameworks as far as I can see. If you have proof otherwise then I will quite happily accept that point, I'm sure Nokia would appreciate the information too.

The repositories and the website are not the same entities, if you wish to discuss the matter here you are able to do so. Regardless of your wish to use the emmulator, which you can if you hook the correct repository, Nokia showing active support would be viewed dimly by a court if shown to fall foul of IP issues. The whole website would then stop being hosted as a likely consequence.

As for the links provided, I see nothing mentioning requests from Nintendo for these organisations to cease & desist: would you care to post? If not then the situation is not comparible.

Re: Bring back nintendo emulators !!!
 

No, you don't actually own the product. You own a license to use the product the way it was given to you, as a program on a cartridge. You are *not* allowed to have a copy of a console game even if you own the game in question.