I very highly doubt a ROM site significantly impacts their sales. But the elephant in the room of "sharing vs stealing" will never go away without some kind of major cultural shift
I very highly doubt a ROM site significantly impacts their sales. But the elephant in the room of "sharing vs stealing" will never go away without some kind of major cultural shift
This is one of the sides of the video game industry I'm not a fan of. I understand protecting IPs but many of those that used ROMs used them to play games that are long out of production and would...
This is one of the sides of the video game industry I'm not a fan of. I understand protecting IPs but many of those that used ROMs used them to play games that are long out of production and would be either hard to find, expensive, or both and more often than not, through a retailer like Movie Trading Company or GameStop or second hand from collectors.
I understand there's a principle at work here but the amount of money Nintendo lost to ROMs is probably so minute that it doesn't affect the bottom line.
They probably spend more on the lawsuit than they actually lost
I'm sure they're aware. Obviously then they don't care about money. This is Nintendo - that should have been obvious. So is this about some weird notion of honor or control?
They probably spend more on the lawsuit than they actually lost
I'm sure they're aware. Obviously then they don't care about money. This is Nintendo - that should have been obvious. So is this about some weird notion of honor or control?
I believe the common reasoning is that if they don’t go after these people/websites, it would be seen as Nintendo not caring about protecting their IP, which could affect how much power they have...
I believe the common reasoning is that if they don’t go after these people/websites, it would be seen as Nintendo not caring about protecting their IP, which could affect how much power they have to enforce their rights over their IP in future cases.
I'm not sure how much of that is actually true though, and anecdotally (see: my opinion) they go way too far compared to other companies, especially when they kill off cool fan projects (like Project M and Pokemon Prism) that would probably only increase interest in their franchises, not decrease sales.
Honest question: if you know you're maintaining a project such as this, that might be subject to legal action from IP holders, how hard would it be to hide your identity in a way that makes it...
Honest question: if you know you're maintaining a project such as this, that might be subject to legal action from IP holders, how hard would it be to hide your identity in a way that makes it impossible for you to be prosecuted? Were those people careless, naive or technically inept?
I think it would be possible to be totally hidden, but very difficult. It would also depend heavily on how much effort and resources they're putting into trying to track you down. There are just...
I think it would be possible to be totally hidden, but very difficult. It would also depend heavily on how much effort and resources they're putting into trying to track you down. There are just so many possible opportunities to slip up and reveal yourself.
Domain names have to be purchased without ever giving any identifiable information (you won't be able to fully remove it later), and paid in a way that can't be tracked (with cash or carefully with cryptocurrency). Hosting is the same way, and since these anonymized payment methods usually don't really support recurring payments, you have to stay on top of it and be careful. If you attach an email address to either of those accounts (and you probably need to), it has to be one that you didn't ever inadvertently link back to your identity anywhere else.
Whenever you connect to any of the related accounts (including admin-like areas on the site itself), you'd always need to be through a VPN or TOR, or potentially somebody including your hosting company could have a record of your real IP address. Even a single slip-up like accidentally reloading a page while your VPN isn't on could be enough to reveal you forever.
It should be possible, but there are just so many ways for it to go wrong. In the end it's most likely the safest to just be living in a country where you're more or less immune to this type of prosecution (and never visit the US/Japan/etc.).
Thankfully many VPNs support network locking now, which prevents outside connections being made when your VPN isn't on or somehow gets disconnected, as well as split tunneling/inverse split...
Even a single slip-up like accidentally reloading a page while your VPN isn't on could be enough to reveal you forever.
Thankfully many VPNs support network locking now, which prevents outside connections being made when your VPN isn't on or somehow gets disconnected, as well as split tunneling/inverse split tunneling, which allows you to manage routing on a per application basis to force specific apps to always/never connect using your VPN or standard connection, which makes it much easier to prevent slip ups like in your example.
However as you correctly pointed out there are just so many ways your identity can be revealed, even if you're insanely careful, that it's virtually impossible to avoid, given enough determination by a skilled investigator. Even people who are incredibly technically competent and paranoid about such things can slip up in ways they don't realize can eventually lead back to them.
Mr. Alford’s preferred tool was Google. He used the advanced search option to look for material posted within specific date ranges. That brought him, during the last weekend of May 2013, to a chat room posting made just before Silk Road had gone online, in early 2011, by someone with the screen name “altoid.”
“Has anyone seen Silk Road yet?” altoid asked. “It’s kind of like an anonymous Amazon.com.”
The early date of the posting suggested that altoid might have inside knowledge about Silk Road.
During the first weekend of June 2013, Mr. Alford went through everything altoid had written, the online equivalent of sifting through trash cans near the scene of a crime. Mr. Alford eventually turned up a message that altoid had apparently deleted — but that had been preserved in the response of another user.
In that post, altoid asked for some programming help and gave his email address: rossulbricht@gmail.com. Doing a Google search for Ross Ulbricht, Mr. Alford found a young man from Texas who, just like Dread Pirate Roberts, admired the free-market economist Ludwig von Mises and the libertarian politician Ron Paul — the first of many striking parallels Mr. Alford discovered that weekend.
So it’s possible but not very practical. But I suppose a few precautions could go a long way, as serving ROMs probably generates a lot less attention than selling drugs like Silk Road.
So it’s possible but not very practical. But I suppose a few precautions could go a long way, as serving ROMs probably generates a lot less attention than selling drugs like Silk Road.
Did you read the whole article? It goes on to state that it’s very unlikely that they’ll pay anywhere near that amount. They’ve likely agereed to a much smaller amount, but Nintendo wants the...
Did you read the whole article? It goes on to state that it’s very unlikely that they’ll pay anywhere near that amount. They’ve likely agereed to a much smaller amount, but Nintendo wants the judgement entered for that amount to deter future or currently-existing rom sites.
I couldn't easily quote it earlier on mobile, but here's what the article says: I agree that it seems like a ridiculous amount on paper, but Nintendo likely wanted it that way, and the couple...
I couldn't easily quote it earlier on mobile, but here's what the article says:
It seems unlikely that the couple has this kind of money in the bank, or that a jury would have reached a similar figure. So why the high amount?
We can only speculate but it’s possible that Nintendo negotiated such a high number, on paper, to act as a deterrent for other site operators. In practice, the defendants could end up paying much less.
It wouldn’t be the first time that a judgment in court is more than what the parties agreed to privately. This happened before in the MPAA’s lawsuit against Hotfile, where a $80 million judgment in court translated to $4 million behind the scenes settlement.
I agree that it seems like a ridiculous amount on paper, but Nintendo likely wanted it that way, and the couple probably was happy to get away with a much smaller (agreed upon) settlement instead of a lengthy court case that would have driven up their legal fees.
I very highly doubt a ROM site significantly impacts their sales. But the elephant in the room of "sharing vs stealing" will never go away without some kind of major cultural shift
This is one of the sides of the video game industry I'm not a fan of. I understand protecting IPs but many of those that used ROMs used them to play games that are long out of production and would be either hard to find, expensive, or both and more often than not, through a retailer like Movie Trading Company or GameStop or second hand from collectors.
I understand there's a principle at work here but the amount of money Nintendo lost to ROMs is probably so minute that it doesn't affect the bottom line.
They probably spend more on the lawsuit than they actually lost
I'm sure they're aware. Obviously then they don't care about money. This is Nintendo - that should have been obvious. So is this about some weird notion of honor or control?
I believe the common reasoning is that if they don’t go after these people/websites, it would be seen as Nintendo not caring about protecting their IP, which could affect how much power they have to enforce their rights over their IP in future cases.
I'm not sure how much of that is actually true though, and anecdotally (see: my opinion) they go way too far compared to other companies, especially when they kill off cool fan projects (like Project M and Pokemon Prism) that would probably only increase interest in their franchises, not decrease sales.
Honest question: if you know you're maintaining a project such as this, that might be subject to legal action from IP holders, how hard would it be to hide your identity in a way that makes it impossible for you to be prosecuted? Were those people careless, naive or technically inept?
I think it would be possible to be totally hidden, but very difficult. It would also depend heavily on how much effort and resources they're putting into trying to track you down. There are just so many possible opportunities to slip up and reveal yourself.
Domain names have to be purchased without ever giving any identifiable information (you won't be able to fully remove it later), and paid in a way that can't be tracked (with cash or carefully with cryptocurrency). Hosting is the same way, and since these anonymized payment methods usually don't really support recurring payments, you have to stay on top of it and be careful. If you attach an email address to either of those accounts (and you probably need to), it has to be one that you didn't ever inadvertently link back to your identity anywhere else.
Whenever you connect to any of the related accounts (including admin-like areas on the site itself), you'd always need to be through a VPN or TOR, or potentially somebody including your hosting company could have a record of your real IP address. Even a single slip-up like accidentally reloading a page while your VPN isn't on could be enough to reveal you forever.
It should be possible, but there are just so many ways for it to go wrong. In the end it's most likely the safest to just be living in a country where you're more or less immune to this type of prosecution (and never visit the US/Japan/etc.).
Thankfully many VPNs support network locking now, which prevents outside connections being made when your VPN isn't on or somehow gets disconnected, as well as split tunneling/inverse split tunneling, which allows you to manage routing on a per application basis to force specific apps to always/never connect using your VPN or standard connection, which makes it much easier to prevent slip ups like in your example.
However as you correctly pointed out there are just so many ways your identity can be revealed, even if you're insanely careful, that it's virtually impossible to avoid, given enough determination by a skilled investigator. Even people who are incredibly technically competent and paranoid about such things can slip up in ways they don't realize can eventually lead back to them.
E.g. like how the Silk Road founder was identified through a shill account he had used to promote it:
So it’s possible but not very practical. But I suppose a few precautions could go a long way, as serving ROMs probably generates a lot less attention than selling drugs like Silk Road.
Did you read the whole article? It goes on to state that it’s very unlikely that they’ll pay anywhere near that amount. They’ve likely agereed to a much smaller amount, but Nintendo wants the judgement entered for that amount to deter future or currently-existing rom sites.
I couldn't easily quote it earlier on mobile, but here's what the article says:
I agree that it seems like a ridiculous amount on paper, but Nintendo likely wanted it that way, and the couple probably was happy to get away with a much smaller (agreed upon) settlement instead of a lengthy court case that would have driven up their legal fees.
Legal fees alone could bankrupt a person, I think.