LogFAQs > #947383335

Ok I'll give this a shot and argue with a lawyer over something I know little about. It's the B8 way.

The argument is usually made that if nintendo doesn't push back on emulation/modding/etc then nintendo can lose the right to push back in the future against all of these types of categories. As far as I can tell, these are basically copyright rules copy pasted 1/1 into categories that aren't actually copyright. No cooperation has yet to lose the power to (here's where I'll trip up and use the technical wrong legal term so please put the right one in when you read this) pursue action on emulation based on inaction. You could look at this as them playing it safe, which is exactly what they're doing. But there are lots of other things that could make nintendo lose copyright control over their products that nintendo doesn't guard as heavily and treat as militantly. (well nintendo actually does, as super smash bros on it's own is basically a showcase of "hey we still own literally all of this" but other major video game companies don't go this far, and I imagine without smash, nintendo wouldn't bother either.) Nintendo is basically on the front of "what should we do with media that we own but we want to resell but also we can't resell because we don't have the technology yet" so they get to basically make the rules deciding what they can and can't do legally. They're not at the whim of the law, they're making the law. They're the viacom or disney of video games, so saying "that's just the way the law works! Shrug!" is dishonest. The law works whatever way they want it to work because at the end of the day it's going to be an incredibly wealthy company going to sue some neckbeard who owns 34 copies of pokemon but copy number 25 is a rom.

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