Why It's Morally Okay To Pirate All Of Nintendo's Games

DredFX

Stumbled upon this episode of Jim Sterling's The Jimquisition earlier, where he explains his rather audacious stance on pirating Nintendo games.

TLDW is, Jim believes that it's okay to have no compunctions about pirating Nintendo games, new and old, because of their disrespect for Fair Use law and their efforts at siphoning ad revenue from Youtube content creators. Essentially, giving Nintendo a taste of their own medicine.

It's a mouthful of truth bombs, since Nintendo does stand among the most finicky of entertainment companies when it comes to copyright protection, but is endorsing stealing of their products in retaliation ethically sound?

Thoughts?

dreamers75

Jim was a dick, Jim is a now somehow a bigger dick.

Evade

Do two wrongs make a right now?

Nody

DredFX wrote: »

It's a mouthful of truth bombs, since Nintendo does stand among the most finicky of entertainment companies when it comes to copyright protection, but is endorsing stealing of their products in retaliation ethically sound?

Thoughts?

What he argues for is if Nintendo don't want to follow copyright law then why not follow Nintendo's stand accordingly? They can't have it both ways and their consistent failure to follow the law and then insist on profit from it (they monetize videos they claim illegally) opens them up exactly for this. Can't really fault someone who decides to go get a copy of original Mario bros on an emulator now what, 30 years old? Nintendo don't sell the game any more so there's no profit lost for them either.

Digital Solitude

Never knew about most of the issues mentioned in the video.

It's not on consumers to try teach Nintendo a lesson by stealing their products though, as someone said above, two wrongs don't make a right.

If Nintendo are breaking copyright law, bring them to court and have it sorted out legally through the correct avenue.

I think he's blowing it out of proportion too, obviously he feels screwed, and rightly so, by Nintendo, they are screwing him but him crossing the law again doesn't sort any issues. It's also encouraging regular users, totally unaffected by Nintendos abuse of copyright law, to pirate. It doesn't affect me in any way, how does that remove any moral obligation on me to not steal games.

It's like Ribena screwing someone over and then encouraging no one to buy their products, just go steal them because they're a bag of dicks.

I feel he's over exaggerating, or else had nothing else to moan about this week. Surely if they consistently break copyright law you'd have grounds to sue?

Sieghardt

Nody wrote: »

Nintendo don't sell the game any more so there's no profit lost for them either.

Yeah they do, in multiple forms, they make a ton of profit off it via nes mini, eshop etc

Osmosis Jones

It's not okay though, it's still theft. The devs that put years into making the games and whose livelihoods potentially depend on their sales aren't the ones Content ID matching YouTube videos.

DredFX

Digital Solitude wrote: »

If Nintendo are breaking copyright law, bring them to court and have it sorted out legally through the correct avenue.

Not disagreeing with your point, but unless you've hella cash to waste or have the backing of a major benefactor, you would be looking at a years-long legal battle that wouldn't set a strong enough precedent to justify the sweat, tears, and finances you'd shed fighting a company as big as Nintendo. The likes of them will fire money and lawyers at you until you decide that it isn't worth it.

K.O.Kiki

Osmosis Jones wrote: »

It's not okay though, it's still theft. The devs that put years into making the games and whose livelihoods potentially depend on their sales aren't the ones Content ID matching YouTube videos.

Digital piracy isn't theft; it's copyright infringement.

Also, none of the devs who made those old games are getting a cent from Nintendo Store sales, guaranteed.

dreamers75

Just to be clear some youtube lad said its ok to download warez and almost everyone here agrees?

ERG89

dreamers75 wrote:

Just to be clear some youtube lad said its ok to download warez and almost everyone here agrees?

A lot of people already do it even with the NES Classic or played stuff like Pokemon Uranium & AM2R so can't take the moral highground on this.

CiDeRmAn

dreamers75 wrote: »

Just to be clear some youtube lad said its ok to download warez and almost everyone here agrees?

Yeah, it's crazy.
Downloading games when the IP is still in copyright is theft.
When you buy a game you buy it in that form, you have no rights to the code, so you don't get to own it to field legitimately.
That argument died years ago, used ten as an excuse on rom sites.

Doesn't matter if you take issue with Nintendo and their practices, you can't take from then what they own and not call it theft.

Jim is just grandstanding for more views, doing a Milo at the worst possible moment tbh.

super_furry

As long as I've bought a game - be it in original cart or Virtual Console - I feel I have a right to that game. I've no problem morally then downloading a ROM that I've already paid Nintendo for an another format - especially when they refuse to recognise my purchase and keep trying to sell me the same ROM from system to system.

It gets murkier with stuff I haven't bought but again, Nintendo do themselves no favours. In many cases they make it impossible to play their older games legally and even when they do deign to make them available again, via something like the NES Mini, they can't be found.

With all the NES Mini shortages, I eventually bought a Raspberry Pi kit and installed Retropie with a crap load of Nintendo ROMS. Is it 'morally wrong'? Maybe. Do I care? Not even slightly.

I'm not depriving anyone of anything and when Nintendo make it possible for me to own a Nintendo mini, I will.

Penn

He's just making a point about Nintendo's hypocrisy and saying if they think stuff he and other Youtubers make is fair game, then their games should be considered fair game too.

Obviously though, he doesn't think the stuff he/others makes should be considered fair game, and therefore Nintendo's games shouldn't really be considered fair game either. But if Nintendo are going to keep trying to make money off Youtubers for no good reason, he's going to advocate pirating their old games.

FAILSAFE 00

Venom

FAILSAFE 00 wrote: »

That's gonna put a dent in Forza DLC sales :cool:

gizmo

About a third of the way through the video, Jim posts a flow diagram of what happens when a ContentID claim is made. It shows that if the Rightsholder upholds the claim after the initial User dispute, the remaining options once a User appeals again are for the Rightsholder to release the claim or file a DMCA notice.

Here's what I don't get. Why doesn't Jim just force Nintendo's hand here? His content clearly falls under the banner of Fair Use so, as far as I'm aware, the DMCA notice can be responded to with a counter notice, at which point his dispute should be upheld. He talks about disrespecting the law from the creator end as a response to it being disrespected at the corporate end but wouldn't he and others be better served by doing the opposite in order to force them to rethink their approach? At the very least, it would serve his cause better than making a video where he justifies pirating all of their IP because he doesn't like their approach.

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

Also, none of the devs who made those old games are getting a cent from Nintendo Store sales, guaranteed.

An interesting argument to be fair. The problem here is that one could argue that the original devs of those titles never got directly paid for their work in the first place, they were paid by the people who commissioned it, Nintendo. Similarly, when VC content is now sold it's going to pay other Nintendo employees, the engineers responsible for the Virtual Console functionality, the designers and artists responsible for the game pages online and even (cringe) the marketing folk who publicise their releases. Ultimately, there are both overheads and staff who carry out the work required to get these releases out there at Nintendo. These need to be paid for so they, for both this and a variety of other reasons, are perfectly justified in charging for them.

Now, how much they charge for these older games is another matter entirely. :pac:

Nody

gizmo wrote: »

About a third of the way through the video, Jim posts a flow diagram of what happens when a ContentID claim is made. It shows that if the Rightsholder upholds the claim after the initial User dispute, the remaining options once a User appeals again are for the Rightsholder to release the claim or file a DMCA notice.

Because of time lines.

• First DMCA claim
• You file counter notice it's allowed under fair useage
• Nintendo has 30 days to respond
• Nintendo responds on the 30th day they claim is real
• You respond counter notice
• Nintendo has another 30 days to respond to your claim
• Nintendo drops it on the 30th day.

In total Nintendo has been charging adds on the video/having it blocked completely for 60 days (and by far the most profitable time period directly after release) which used to go to them (now it's in escrow until clarified). Here's the problem though from Jim Sterling's point of view; he intentionally set his videos up to NOT have adds as part of his commitment to patreon and Nintendo monetize them anyway. This means that even big channels such as Angry Joe has had videos disabled simply because they happened to have a 10s video cut from a promo video in there talking about the upcoming game / console and the whole video is taken down. As those are time sensitive you can't afford to wait 60 days for it to come back up again and since Nintendo will never follow through on a DMCA in the end you'd fighting the system set up only.

Hence his implementation of the DMCA cock block (if you get two or more claims on a video they automatically block each other out making sure no adds goes on them and no one gets paid anything). This is why you'll hear songs/see video clips in all his videos simply to ensure he'll get them flagged by enough companies but to ensure his videos remain add free he has to commit more infringements in the first place. However this only works if you don't want to monetize your videos; for someone like Angry Joe that simply does not work.

gizmo

Nody wrote: »

Because of time lines.

• First DMCA claim
• You file counter notice it's allowed under fair useage
• Nintendo has 30 days to respond
• Nintendo responds on the 30th day they claim is real
• You respond counter notice
• Nintendo has another 30 days to respond to your claim
• Nintendo drops it on the 30th day.

In total Nintendo has been charging adds on the video/having it blocked completely for 60 days (and by far the most profitable time period directly after release) which used to go to them (now it's in escrow until clarified). Here's the problem though from Jim Sterling's point of view; he intentionally set his videos up to NOT have adds as part of his commitment to patreon and Nintendo monetize them anyway. This means that even big channels such as Angry Joe has had videos disabled simply because they happened to have a 10s video cut from a promo video in there talking about the upcoming game / console and the whole video is taken down. As those are time sensitive you can't afford to wait 60 days for it to come back up again and since Nintendo will never follow through on a DMCA in the end you'd fighting the system set up only.

Hence his implementation of the DMCA cock block (if you get two or more claims on a video they automatically block each other out making sure no adds goes on them and no one gets paid anything). This is why you'll hear songs/see video clips in all his videos simply to ensure he'll get them flagged by enough companies but to ensure his videos remain add free he has to commit more infringements in the first place. However this only works if you don't want to monetize your videos; for someone like Angry Joe that simply does not work.

At the end of those 60 days would the money held in escrow not then go to the content creator? Obviously in Jim's case he doesn't want ads there in the first place but purely as a punitive measure, I would have thought the DMCA counter-notice approach would be more prohibitive to Nintendo in the longer term?

Penn

gizmo wrote: »

At the end of those 60 days would the money held in escrow not then go to the content creator? Obviously in Jim's case he doesn't want ads there in the first place but purely as a punitive measure, I would have thought the DMCA counter-notice approach would be more prohibitive to Nintendo in the longer term?

Nintendo don't seem to be paying any attention to it at all really. That's half the problem. They flag videos by default and even if after the whole thing the money goes to the creator, there'll be enough times when the creator doesn't fight it and they make money.

Claiming copyright costs them nothing because Youtube is still weighted in their favour. It's no real skin off their nose if they win or not.

gizmo

Penn wrote: »

Nintendo don't seem to be paying any attention to it at all really. That's half the problem. They flag videos by default and even if after the whole thing the money goes to the creator, there'll be enough times when the creator doesn't fight it and they make money.

Claiming copyright costs them nothing because Youtube is still weighted in their favour. It's no real skin off their nose if they win or not.

Ugh, I was hoping that Youtube would eventually push back against that kind of DMCA abuse but between this and what I've since read about their policy when it comes to certain "partners" I guess that's not a viable option, even for relatively larger personalities such as Sterling.

Retr0gamer

gizmo wrote: »

Here's what I don't get. Why doesn't Jim just force Nintendo's hand here? His content clearly falls under the banner of Fair Use so, as far as I'm aware, the DMCA notice can be responded to with a counter notice, at which point his dispute should be upheld. He talks about disrespecting the law from the creator end as a response to it being disrespected at the corporate end but wouldn't he and others be better served by doing the opposite in order to force them to rethink their approach? At the very least, it would serve his cause better than making a video where he justifies pirating all of their IP because he doesn't like their approach.

There's time and effort that has to go into a counter claim, a claim that shouldn't have to be put forward in the first place. Also a lot of the time google will rule in favour of the claimant despite being totally wrong, it's doubtful google really does look into these. Then you have to take the claimant to court which cost a huge amount of time and money.

The fact is google's system is heavily weighed in the corporations favour. The corporations can slap a DMCA on any content they want without providing any proof. The burden of proof is on the content provider. Some corporations have slapped DMCA notices on totally original content because a bot has flagged it in error and even won it's case against the uploader.

Venom

Retr0gamer wrote: »

There's time and effort that has to go into a counter claim, a claim that shouldn't have to be put forward in the first place. Also a lot of the time google will rule in favour of the claimant despite being totally wrong, it's doubtful google really does look into these. Then you have to take the claimant to court which cost a huge amount of time and money.

The fact is google's system is heavily weighed in the corporations favour. The corporations can slap a DMCA on any content they want without providing any proof. The burden of proof is on the content provider. Some corporations have slapped DMCA notices on totally original content because a bot has flagged it in error and even won it's case against the uploader.

A very big issue is it doesn't even have to be corporations like Nintendo who pull this type of crap, as there have been plenty of cases highlighted where shady accounts would slap DMCA notices on mass amounts of videos hoping for a payout or assholes like Lacey Green abusing the system when people called her out on BS. The ad-revenue being held till the copyright issue is sorted by Youtube has at least helped content creators out somewhat.

gizmo

Venom wrote: »

A very big issue is it doesn't even have to be corporations like Nintendo who pull this type of crap, as there have been plenty of cases highlighted where shady accounts would slap DMCA notices on mass amounts of videos hoping for a payout or assholes like Lacey Green abusing the system when people called her out on BS. The ad-revenue being held till the copyright issue is sorted by Youtube has at least helped content creators out somewhat.

Looked into the Green example a little more and from what I could see, it turns out the DMCA request accepted by Youtube didn't even come from her, it came from a bloody Gmail address which was supposedly associated with an MTV Youtube show she's on. Like, I knew the system wasn't robust but that's crazy.

Venom

gizmo wrote: »

Looked into the Green example a little more and from what I could see, it turns out the DMCA request accepted by Youtube didn't even come from her, it came from a bloody Gmail address which was supposedly associated with an MTV Youtube show she's on. Like, I knew the system wasn't robust but that's crazy.

That's not true at all. She's done it multiple times and got called out on it by tons of different Youtubbers. She even confessed about the last one but claimed to be to stupid to understand how the system worked or that it was wrong for her to do it, when some small Youtuber used a picture of her in their video tumbnail and Green DMCA'd the video.

gizmo

Venom wrote: »

That's not true at all. She's done it multiple times and got called out on it by tons of different Youtubbers. She even confessed about the last one but claimed to be to stupid to understand how the system worked or that it was wrong for her to do it, when some small Youtuber used a picture of her in their video tumbnail and Green DMCA'd the video.

I'm referring to the incident from back in October 2015 when Sargon of Akkad got hit with a claim which he commented publicly on. My point was that YouTube were willing to entertain such a claim when the originator was just a Gmail address rather than a legitimate corporate one. As you said, that opens the door to all sorts of shady **** happening with folk filing fraudulent claims.

Kirby

The law surrounding these issues is usually outdated, obtuse, abused or makes no logical sense.

Ultimately you have to judge this sort of thing from a moral perspective and not a legal one. Different people are going to have different ideas on this.

Personally, I see no issue in "pirating" antiquated or legacy software. Go nuts. If it can't be bought 20 years later, why not just get it yourself?

I feel similarly about region/timed restrictions as well. "I want to buy your product, take my money please!" "No, we have decided not to sell that to your part of the world." If you decide not to sell to me, you aren't losing any money when I accquire it by other means. How can you be upset over it?

However I disagree with him regarding new content thats universally available. You have to draw the line somewhere. I understand his argument that is Nintendo aren't going to abide by common decency, why should we.......but I dont agree with it.

A company like Nintendo is a massive machine....and the guys pulling copyright strikes against him are not the same as the developers who slaved away creating a new game. To treat them the same and punish them the same is churlish.

The new Zelda is out next week worldwide on the same day. I cant support a stance that says its morally okay to just go download that without paying for it. To me, it seems wrong.

CiDeRmAn

Of course it's wrong to download current Nintendo software, whatever about the moral issues with legacy titles from the era of the NES.
Jim is a YouTube polemicist who makes a living being disgusted with things, he might say something you or I agree with to begin with but then knits it into something more over the line, like condoning copyright theft.
In the real world it is a matter of conscience, because of the absence of consequences for downloading a zip file of Famicom games.
Nintendo's attitude to the use of their IP in YouTube channels, by removing content, thereby limiting a YouTube creators ability to make money is unpopular with people like Him so it's hardly an objective bit of journalism that he is lashing out at Nintendo over it.
I wonder how Jim would feel if another YouTube creator was monetising their videos with his material....

Robert ninja

I have original copies of nintendo games. What if I download them from my own server to then emulate? Would Nintendo care? What if I downloaded them online somewhere out of convenience even with my own copies? Would it still matter? My guess is Nintendo would get pissy about it no matter what and still pursue legal action.

764dak

It seems the average gamer has better morals than academics.  Many academics post books of other academics on their websites.  Some computer scientists even posted romhacks of Nintendo games online.

http://erikdemaine.org/papers/Mario_FUN2016/paper.pdf

" Super Mario Bros. is a trademark of Nintendo. Sprites are used and stripped and modified ROMs are presented here under Fair Use for the educational purpose of illustrating mathematical theorems."

Retr0gamer

Robert ninja wrote: »

I have original copies of nintendo games. What if I download them from my own server to then emulate? Would Nintendo care? What if I downloaded them online somewhere out of convenience even with my own copies? Would it still matter? My guess is Nintendo would get pissy about it no matter what and still pursue legal action.

You're getting into a very grey area there in terms of legality. The law really doesn't fully cover this at all. Nintendo's website though will tell you you are totally breaking the law but then they would wouldn't they.