EmuParadise has removed its entire library of retro game ROMs and ISOs

[JBerel]

And now we know why people make their own laws. Avast ye lily-livered yellow-bellied curs!

 

[John Stamos Mullet]

Can we get a full-time copyright lawyer in here please?

 

not to comment, just to send a cease-and desist letter

NARC!

[English Invader]

TDNC has just released his take on the subject:

[pacman000]

An old joke I made on another forum:

 

"Fair-Use Films Present: Harry Potter: The Unofficial Documentary

 

Fair-Use Films Present: Pokemon: The Unofficial Documentary

 

Fair-Use Films Present: Star Wars: The Unofficial Documentary

 

Fair-Use Films Present: Star Trek: The Unofficial Documentary

 

Fair-Use Films Present: Disney: The Unofficial Documentary

 

Edutainment Productions (Formerly Fair-Use Films) Present: Copyright Laws: What NOT to do!

 

Edutainment Productions (Formerly Fair-Use Films) Present: Your Friend Chapter 11"

[icemanxp300]

TDNC has just released his take on the subject:

 

 

I listened to the FIRST 10 seconds of this video and realized this guy has no clue about anything. There really is no point in watching any further.

 

Once again I shall repeat the same thing, Nintendo did NOT open a lawsuit for "free downloads". The lawsuit was opened for CHARGING a fee to play certain roms on emulators VIA said websites.

 

While I'm at it unless you have some information I don't EP had zero contact from Nintendo, they chose to do what they did on their own.

 

I guess it doesn't matter how many times people are spoon fed the details of the lawsuit they will still make it whatever they want!

[mr_me]

The video is okay.

 

He says the lawsuit was with the owner of the sites loveroms and loveretro, and that emuparadise was not directly targeted. I wasn't familiar with loveroms, so I don't know if they had free downloads or not. He says charging money is irrelevent. The claim nintendo filed did mention "trafficking" a couple of times but focuses on distribution. I think his talk on bios is not exactly accurate or significant. He didn't mention that a significant part of nintendo's claim was about use of nintendo trademarks, something other sites don't do. He mentions how abandonware is not public domain but not how it's use could still be fair under copyright law. The nintendo claim does point out that the works being pirated are still actively distributed by nintendo.

 

I disagree about the internet creating the crazy piracy entitlement idea with some people. It was there long before the internet. Back in the mid 1980s if you wanted to pirate video games you'd get a commodore 64 and a modem. Dual cassette decks were popular and cheap because pirating music was common. People talk like we were in the dark ages before the internet. It wasn't that different. He does correctly point out that no matter what nintendo does their stuff will still be pirated. He mentions the idea that obscure roms could be at risk. He also criticizes how Nintendo has made their old roms available, e.g. poor availability, high prices; and suggests these actions have encouraged piracy.

[Tanooki]

I wrote as much on that guys video post a moment ago, he's fishing and that's a lot of BS being flung there. But as you two pointed out, Nintendo went after trademark abuse and games being actively sold now (vc's, mini console hdmi boxes, etc) that those clown were emulating on site and charging ot use.

[JBerel]

All the piracy hysteria has always mostly been the rich pricks bitchin' about not making more money. Folks used to copy music from the radio when singles cost too much. Music sales ballooned with I-Tunes and reasonably priced music. VHS copies ran rampant while the movie houses kept trying to push $150 movies on tape. When they went to $30 and under people bought them. People have always spoken with their wallet in a supply and demand economy. Sure people still copy stuff, but how much is actually lost revenue vs convenience and avoiding paying for the same thing multiple times.

 

It's important to point out that the housewife recording shows or movies on her VCR or now DVR are breaking the same copyright laws, it's just that, by the time stuff is on TV, the rights holders figure they squeezed their money out by then. 30 year old games had their chance for making revenue. They're being distributed these days because people can't access them like they once did, and they stopped selling them and their dependent platforms once they made their bucks. If any of these guys want to monetize their old stuff in a valuable or convenient way, they will find an audience.

 

It's usually the ones with the money that keep trying to gouge people with artificially inflated pricing not based on costs to bring to market. Then these goobers claim (and write off) huge losses from "piracy" based on customers they never had, and weren't going to get. When the corporations quit charging hugely inflated prices for stuff, they found their market. Ironically enough, real world pricing always aligned with people not bothering to bootleg in favor of original product. Then they started changing up formats constantly to keep getting our money. Next it will be pay to play. I little healthy piracy has always had a stabilizing effect on runaway profiteers. Give the people what they want......or they will take it.

Edited August 25, 2018 by JBerel

[MrMaddog]

Very good point... Music piracy went down due to iTunes and Spotify and movie piracy also went down due to video streaming services like Netflix. Granted the studios no longer get royalties per album but they get enough per subscriber. Video game publishers can learn a thing or two from this.

 

If Nintendo wants to stop ROM downloads w/o PO'ing their fans than all they have to do is make Mini Classics available (without purposively holding back supplies to buiild up "loyality" like they did in '88) and even offer their Virtual Console service on them so people don't have to rely on old outdated systems like the Wii and 3DS.

[00010000]

I wrote as much on that guys video post a moment ago, he's fishing and that's a lot of BS being flung there. But as you two pointed out, Nintendo went after trademark abuse and games being actively sold now (vc's, mini console hdmi boxes, etc) that those clown were emulating on site and charging ot use.

 

I don't ever recall EP charging users to download games or emulators. Not even once. And I know Nintendo did not issue any specifically against them, but that kind of isn't the point; they've done similar to so many other places in short frequency it's basically intimidation by proxy.

 

Some of this is on these websites obviously (stop hosting Nintendo games!), but I still don't agree w/ the fact Nintendo doing this makes it harder to easily access legitimately hard-to-find (or impossible-to-find) games or machines legally at normal-wage prices that DON'T belong to Nintendo. They can screw off for that, 100%.

[+Gemintronic]

I think these ROMz sites have already found a way. Either through more obscure web sites or other means. Nintendo just made their witch hunt harder.

[Austin]

I don't ever recall EP charging users to download games or emulators. Not even once.

EmuParadise offered a paid subscription option that would remove the ads from the website as well as allow more than a single download at a time. It was never mandatory, but obviously it was a means to profit further than just relying on ad revenue (which based on how many ads there were on the site, I'm guessing they made a fairly good amount from).

Edited August 31, 2018 by Austin

[Andromeda Stardust]

EmuParadise offered a paid subscription option that would remove the ads from the website as well as allow more than a single download at a time. It was never mandatory, but obviously it was a means to profit further than just relying on ad revenue (which based on how many ads there were on the site, I'm guessing they made a fairly good amount from).

Not to mention if you host illegal content and supplement your hosting fees with ad revenue, you are still "profiting" off the works in the eyes of law enforcement. The ad-free experience for subbed users is just for those gullible enough to pay for downloads. I used to pay to download music from russian sites at pennies on the dollar what napster and itunes charged, and drm free. I still to this day feel guilty about financially supporting those asshats. File share networks were getting cracked down upon with riaa/mpaa sopeanas, and quality was questionable. Is that 320kbs mp3 really native 320kbs, or did someone upconvert a 96kbs file?

 

Anyway when Amazon started selling drm free mp3 downloads, encrypted m4a and wma files quickly became a thing of the past. Sadly the same never happened with movies. By the time bandwidth was sufficient to download full length movie files, streaming was a thing, and the stream packet is a form of drm in itself that you cannot capture it directly, and content owners constsntly have their back catalogs on rotation. You can only watch stuff you want to watch when/if they decide to make it available for streaming. That's why I cancelled netflix. What good is a viewing queue when I come back later to watch it and it's gone?

 

Nowadays I just buy old used or nos cds online for cheap. Screw lossy compression. When you have a hifi speaker setup capable of rendering quality audio, you can't go back to lossy compression. Even on lofi there's a perceivable difference. Cds sound much brighter in my car than satallite radio for instance. Cymbals and high hats in the 64kbs music streams get nearly muted to increase fidelity of the vocal ranges. Yes, 64kbs stereo for music stations; 32kbs mono for talk stations. The satellite bandwidth is highly constrained, with Sirius and XM receivers getting about 4mbits each for the entire service. Still I put up with lofi music on the commute. The streaming app for Android/Roku is much higher fidelity for in home use.

[enoofu]

 

 

it was a means to profit further than just relying on ad revenue

I doubt they ever made any profits as it very costly to run a website with huge enterprise levels of traffic.

 

Plus people forgot that most of loveroms users went to EmuParadise which went to iso zone stressing out those sites resources

[John Stamos Mullet]

I doubt they ever made any profits as it very costly to run a website with huge enterprise levels of traffic.

 

Plus people forgot that most of loveroms users went to EmuParadise which went to iso zone stressing out those sites resources

it doesn't matter, legally, if they were profitable. It only matters that they collected money from people in order to provide them with stolen content.

[mr_me]

In the united states criminal code, exchange of money does qualify it but is not a requirement. Widespread distribution alone is enough to be criminal. I don't think emuparadise is in the united states, however. If someone were claiming fair use under US copyright law then non-profit comes into play.

[icemanxp300]

It only matters that they collected money from people in order to provide them with stolen content.

 

Is it really stolen content when it is freely given away all over the internet

[Greg2600]

I would argue that movie and TV piracy is on the uptick. As the libraries continue to fracture into network-specific streaming, people will pirate. I did it for ST Discovery. I'm not paying CBS for one show of theirs.

[82-T/A]

Not going to sugar-coat it. I love getting stuff for free... even if that includes ROMs. But the reality is... it is stealing... there's just no other reality to it. It's taking something that's not yours (intellectual property) and sharing it.

 

The socialism argument doesn't work either... no one has a right to "equal access" to Super Mario Brothers.

 

 

That said, yes... I bought the "2 Billion-In-One" JAMMA unit for my POLYBIUS cabinet. I know of no other way to get those games legally... but I understand what I'm doing is wrong.

 

 

I have purchased every NES cartridge that I want (Bards Tale, Dragon Warrior games, etc.). And... I get suckered, constantly... for buying games on GoG... at least twice-weekly. Again, because there's a way for me to do it legally.

 

Not going to criticize anyone who downloads ROMs, but let's not pretend it's legal, or there's a moral acceptance there. It's pretty black and white. If I was the spokesperson for the Software Piracy Association, I'd say, always purchase intellectual property if there is an avenue to do so.

 

 

Personally, I'd love to see someone set up a site that allows you to download ROMs in the same way GoG allows you to download old school games. This would be a great solution, and if you make it cheap enough, could lead to some pretty significant revenue streams. They could offer packs, special deals, and group sales. Maybe sell the ROMs for $0.25 each, and then really good sought-after games, like Legend of Zelda, Link, stuff like that... perhaps for $0.75 or $0.99. So much opportunity there. Nintendo, if they were smart, would work towards this in a GoG-style model.

[Tanooki]

You sound much like where I am with things. Back when I was in college I was large with both the #oldwarez group and #emu passing and using many things, never went as far as hosting, but did the channelop bit and I knew it was not right. But at the time some you couldn't even then still get anymore, still new enough it was off retail and thrifts really didn't have stuff like that either so you turned to that. I got over it back then too, not to say I haven't gone through the multicart phase like you have on your cabinet because there are only so many options and the legal ones fairly well dried up yet I know it's still not good. Yet despite that, I do seek out original stuff like you GoG with a vengeance, but I'll also tap ebay and other to find even very old 3.5" floppy era stuff if I can and have with a few gems this year from both DOS and Windows.

 

Why because I can still legally get that stuff and found ways to make it work. I don't dump on people who get roms either for whatever their motives, I really don't care but acting like it's not a problem, that somehow abandonware is a legit thing and cool, or lying about boots as repros I don't go there. Morally and legally as you said it's wrong, and sadly as it is now you either do the deed or get nothing at this point for a lot of stuff. I think that's a great idea there if there were a ROM version of GoG, all above board, old publishers or whoever bought up the stuff then instead OK's it and that gets peddled with links on the site to acceptable emulators to run the stuff, or they get the agreements to just do it. Blizzard has an old games repository and they've done it because if you get Blackthorne you get the Win release, Lost Vikings is DOSBoxed, and oddly Rock N Roll Racing is a hacked up zsnes+SNES ROM right there. It's not like it's entirely a foreign concept. If the gaming industry had the brains and balls it would be excellent if they took on the GoG model, though I think 25 cents is a bit unreasonable for their personal choice though I could see like $5/ea and up based on system complexity (like virtual console) with rotating sales models that GoG/Steam use could work.

[Austin]

In the united states criminal code, exchange of money does qualify it but is not a requirement. Widespread distribution alone is enough to be criminal. I don't think emuparadise is in the united states, however. If someone were claiming fair use under US copyright law then non-profit comes into play.

They are hosted by a provider that is located in VA. United States.

[mr_me]

Not going to sugar-coat it. I love getting stuff for free... even if that includes ROMs. But the reality is... it is stealing... there's just no other reality to it. It's taking something that's not yours (intellectual property) and sharing it.

 

The socialism argument doesn't work either... no one has a right to "equal access" to Super Mario Brothers.

 

...[/b]

Software piracy is not stealing. If it were it would be covered under theft in the criminal code. It's not so they had to make copyright laws to address it.

[82-T/A]

You sound much like where I am with things. Back when I was in college I was large with both the #oldwarez group and #emu passing and using many things, never went as far as hosting, but did the channelop bit and I knew it was not right. But at the time some you couldn't even then still get anymore, still new enough it was off retail and thrifts really didn't have stuff like that either so you turned to that. I got over it back then too, not to say I haven't gone through the multicart phase like you have on your cabinet because there are only so many options and the legal ones fairly well dried up yet I know it's still not good. Yet despite that, I do seek out original stuff like you GoG with a vengeance, but I'll also tap ebay and other to find even very old 3.5" floppy era stuff if I can and have with a few gems this year from both DOS and Windows.

 

Why because I can still legally get that stuff and found ways to make it work. I don't dump on people who get roms either for whatever their motives, I really don't care but acting like it's not a problem, that somehow abandonware is a legit thing and cool, or lying about boots as repros I don't go there. Morally and legally as you said it's wrong, and sadly as it is now you either do the deed or get nothing at this point for a lot of stuff. I think that's a great idea there if there were a ROM version of GoG, all above board, old publishers or whoever bought up the stuff then instead OK's it and that gets peddled with links on the site to acceptable emulators to run the stuff, or they get the agreements to just do it. Blizzard has an old games repository and they've done it because if you get Blackthorne you get the Win release, Lost Vikings is DOSBoxed, and oddly Rock N Roll Racing is a hacked up zsnes+SNES ROM right there. It's not like it's entirely a foreign concept. If the gaming industry had the brains and balls it would be excellent if they took on the GoG model, though I think 25 cents is a bit unreasonable for their personal choice though I could see like $5/ea and up based on system complexity (like virtual console) with rotating sales models that GoG/Steam use could work.

 

Yeah... I.. "pretty much" stopped stealing games once I got my first job back when I was 16. I worked for McDonalds for 8 months, and then took a job with CompUSA as a Software floor manager (or whatever it was I was called). I bought games like crazy. I have a case-logic multi-sleeve folder that has something like 200+ CDs and DVDs in it... all computer games that I bought over the years. Every Ultima game, every Sierra game... I bought them all. Bought the collectors editions, the multi-packs, whatever. Any game I ever had, that I liked... I own. Every software I own has a legitimate license... Rosetta Stone, every copy of Windows, etc.

 

Same goes for video games. I guess you could say I still have stolen games, as I did recently buy a Dragon Warrior multi-cart for the NES on eBay. It has all four Dragon Warrior games on it. I only actually legitimately own 1 and 2. I just don't want to pay $120 for Dragon Warrior 3 and 4... and really, I've never even played it.

 

Aside from that, I also have the Jamma 500+ in one (or whatever it is). I do have a real Galaga and a real Missile Command upright, but that doesn't make up for it. But yeah... I don't feel bad about it. I've legitimately bough thousands of dollars of games. But I'm not oblivious to the fact that it's still theft.

 

I don't have any stolen music though. I've got an equally sized case logic folder with just as many music CDs from back in the day when people used CDs. I don't really have any MP3s... deleted them all. I'm an old fart now ever since I turned 40... and now I basically listen to conservative talk radio all the time, hahah...

 

 

Software piracy is not stealing. If it were it would be covered under theft in the criminal code. It's not so they had to make copyright laws to address it.

 

 

Well... look, not trying to be a jerk here, but not sure how you think you've come to that conclusion. "Piracy" by the simple virtue of the word, means theft of goods by pirates. I mean... the word LITERALLY means "Robber of the Sea."

 

It's a copyright law because it's an "intangible" … like stealing an idea (whole purpose of having a patent). But it most certainly is "stealing."

[phoenixdownita]

...

Well... look, not trying to be a jerk here, but not sure how you think you've come to that conclusion. "Piracy" by the simple virtue of the word, means theft of goods by pirates. I mean... the word LITERALLY means "Robber of the Sea."

 

It's a copyright law because it's an "intangible" … like stealing an idea (whole purpose of having a patent). But it most certainly is "stealing."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#"Theft"

 

"Theft" is used as a pejorative and was already thrown out once by the US supreme court.

 

So told for large commercial operations it can become a criminal case in the US (repros are counterfeit if you really want to dig).

 

The point though still stands, it's illegal (the fact that is it only a civil offense for small cases makes little difference, still illegal according to those laws)

[mr_me]

...

 

Well... look, not trying to be a jerk here, but not sure how you think you've come to that conclusion. "Piracy" by the simple virtue of the word, means theft of goods by pirates. I mean... the word LITERALLY means "Robber of the Sea."

 

It's a copyright law because it's an "intangible" like stealing an idea (whole purpose of having a patent). But it most certainly is "stealing."

Yes, piracy is not an accurate or fair way to describe copyright infringement.

 

Look, in many cases it's illegal and criminal. Nobody is disputing that. But in some cases it's not even illegal. And private use is not criminal, so it's not correct to call people thieves.

Edited September 1, 2018 by mr_me