[ryandrake]

I think OP is specifically talking about the array of bits that make up “the Super Mario Brothers ROM image” and music, and not the trademarked characters, level designs, and so on in the game.

There is no way in hell Nintendo still makes significant revenue from selling, say, the Super Mario Brothers NES cartridge, or its software image. It is effectively “locked away” in a vault until freed from the bonds of copyright. This happens to so many old works, because copyright is so ridiculously long.

I would love to see a histogram of how much profit all copyright holders make from all artistic products, year by year. I would guess that, for the vast, vast number of works, 99.99 or more percent, they make all their money in less than 10 years and for the remaining 100 or whatever years the work makes $0 and just sits there, wastefully and needlessly kept from the public.

[owlbite]

I'd definitely favor a system where you get 10 years of copyright for free automatically. The next year of protection requires registration and a fee of $1. It double every year after that (tune the exponential function to be broadly equivalent to what we currently have if you need to appease Disney).

This encourages IP owners to use it or lose it.

[ok_dad]

No law of the land should differentiate itself based on a fee or payment of any kind. In other words, no one should be able to just spend money to get a better treatment under the law, period. I like the idea of a 10 year limit through!

[autoexec]

I agree, in a world with instant global distribution at near zero cost 10 years is plenty of time to make money on your work, and that term should apply to anyone no matter how much money have.

I also like the idea of a requirement that whenever possible a DRM free copy of a work must be submitted to the copyright office in order to apply for copyright protection so that anyone can go online and see who owns the copyright on a work and how much time is left on it. The copyright office would then automatically make that work available at their website after the expiration of the 10 year period.

[toast0]

> There is no way in hell Nintendo still makes significant revenue from selling, say, the Super Mario Brothers NES cartridge, or its software image.

I mean, I bought it for the Wii Virtual Console, I got the mini NES, I got the mini SNES (that has all-stars right? although that's a port not the ROM, I suppose), I've paid for switch online from time to time which provides it. Mario 35 was pretty neat and I'd pay for it to return if it was offered; again, that's not really the ROM, but still.

It's not yet 40 years old, which is pretty young to be considered an old work, IMHO.

All that said, in terms of just copying, there's not much meaningful enforcement: the roms are out there. You can get them all over the net; you can buy unlicensed hardware devices that include them at all your favorite bazaars, etc. Not much in the way of unlicensed derivative works (other than some unlicensed ports or reimplimentations to similar hardware back in the day), but trademark most likely prevents broad commercial reach of derivative works anyway.

[croon]

> > There is no way in hell Nintendo still makes significant revenue from selling, say, the Super Mario Brothers NES cartridge, or its software image.

> I mean, I bought it for the Wii Virtual Console, I got the mini NES, I got the mini SNES (that has all-stars right? although that's a port not the ROM, I suppose), I've paid for switch online from time to time which provides it. Mario 35 was pretty neat and I'd pay for it to return if it was offered; again, that's not really the ROM, but still.

Sure, but to reiterate how I read GP:s post, did you buy it "to get the game" or did you buy it to play it on your Wii? I think that's the crux of it. Even if the old games were in public domain, Nintendo could still sell it to you in a product/service that makes it playable on the Wii, which it otherwise would not be, and that would still be worth it to some people.

> It's not yet 40 years old, which is pretty young to be considered an old work, IMHO.

IMHO your HO is likely based on learned behavior, not how things should (whatever that means) or could be.

[toast0]

I didn't have a licensed copy or a good way to play unlicensed copies at the time, so I'll say I paid to get the game. The mini NES has HDMI and is easier to travel with than my aging Wii, so that's nice. I've also now taken possession of the family NES from when I was young, so I can play the game as intended. I also picked up a super famicom recently to play super mario world properly (even with international shipping, it was much less expensive than a north american market SNES), but Nintendo doesn't get new revenue from that.

[tinus_hn]

> There is no way in hell Nintendo still makes significant revenue from selling, say, the Super Mario Brothers NES cartridge, or its software image

Why not? Nintendo has been quite successful in selling emulated versions of these games in their ds store and released the wildly popular Nintendo Classic Edition which included this rom and sold over 2 million.

[wizzwizz4]

Because of the convenience of playing them on the new consoles. The only people I know who have bought Super Mario Bros Virtual Console releases are the sorts of people who'll buy additional ports of Portal to Nintendo consoles. They're buying the port (the emulator), not the ROM; the availability of the ROM image is not cutting into Nintendo's sales.

[cowsup]

I'm not so sure that's true. I simultaneously see people say:

> Nintendo needs to stop hurting ROM sites for games older than 20 years. There's little profit to be made from such old titles.

As well as:

> Why did Nintendo create the NES Classic? You can do the same for far cheaper with a Raspberry Pi. And why are there NES games locked away behind an online subscription? I can play them on my phone for free.

There are definitely many, many reasons to be unhappy with current copyright law. But claiming that Nintendo stands to gain nothing from retaining rights to their ROMs is not a valid critique, and does not pave the way for honest discourse.

[wizzwizz4]

The people saying “Why did Nintendo create the NES Classic?” (e.g., me-until-recently) usually have little interest in purchasing a NES Classic. They often have little interest in playing video games.

> But claiming that Nintendo stands to gain nothing from retaining rights to their ROMs

I claim that Nintendo gains little from not selling DRM-free copies of the ROM. There's a big difference between "take down all fangames with a character in a red hat called Mario" and “relinquish all monopoly rights to the public domain”: I suggest that Nintendo wouldn't lose much by being a bit less controlling. They might even recover some reputational damage!