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by bawolff
2001 days ago
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Under what basis? If we take the theory that nintendo's IP includes such things, that's an argument that people shouldnt be able to use those elements in a competing game. However making a cheat cartridge is not like that. Copyright is after all about restricting the right to make copies. Its not a catchall monopoly that allows the owner to dictate how to use the product that has been sold to them. Companies sometimes try with EULAs, which is different from intellectual property, but im unclear how enforcible they are, and they seem even less enforcible against the third party selling the cheat device who wouldn't even be a party to the eula. Maybe you could argue their moral right to the artistic integrity of the work was violated, but that seems like it would be a rather uphill battle. In a modern context if DRM was involved, maybe the anticircumvention would come into play. IANAL |
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The thing is, 30 years ago a Game Genie was just a way to get some fun out of old cartridges, or blast through an unfair game. Nowadays most games have some kind of an online component, if they're not entirely multiplayer. Hell, most players of online multiplayer games would love to see the cheaters plaguing their games go to jail. Effectively, not only have the conditions of the market changed so much as to render the Galoob precedent unusable, it also makes it kind of anti-consumer, at least in the context of online multiplayer.
Microtransactions also ruin the Galoob precedent - obviously if people are selling you what are effectively cheats, then your cheat device is usurping the market. I bet you if Nintendo had found a way to charge you a quarter every time Mario lost a life, the court would have ruled the other way.
(Blizzard is also responsible for using the DMCA to ban server emulators, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bnetd#Blizzard_takedown_demand... . They argued that a server emulator that doesn't check CD Keys is a circumvention tool, and won. Hell, I'm pretty sure this is THE reason why the DMCA exception for old game servers explicitly only covers situations in which the developer released an authorized server program, such as Valve games or Java Minecraft.)