Romshepherd is gone, other sites followed.

[the_randomizer]

In my opinion copyright laws are a problem. Intellectual property has to be protected. Yes. Investments have to be protected. Yes. But why so looong? Nobody will pay me for the work my grandfather has done – sadly he was craftsman, not a bestseller author.
For the USA there comes one thing to my mind: Copyright Term Extension Act. It even has a fitting nickname: Mickey Mouse Protection Act.

But on the other side... Nintendo reminds me of Don Quixote fighting against windmills. Or fighting against a Hydra. Seriously I stumbled upon complete ROM-sets some time ago – without even searching for them as I do not “pirate”. On a site where I never thought to find ROMs (and which Nintendo probably can’t do anything against).

Sometimes I think they(big N) do not want to sell every old game they have the copyrights for. Some old games are really good - and really long. They can not get full price for old games like back then. Better sell full price new games than keeping customers busy with cheap old ones.

And that makes it all the more bullshit. Not to mention, it makes me feel a lot better about pirating the games they can sell but refuse to. Screw that.

Copyright laws suck the way they are.

 

[cearp]

i wonder how long it will be until someone puts up a rom site on the darknet...
has it happened already?
because i guess nintendo won't bother with that, surely.

 

[The Minish LAN]

Can't say I disapprove of Nintendo taking down ROM sites, but I do wish they offered better way of playing retro games on newer systems - NES Mini, SNES Mini and the free NES games with Switch Online are all nice, but they offer limited catalogs; no Chrono Trigger with SNES Mini? Really want a way to play MOTHER 1 / Earthbound Beginnings on a Switch in particular.
Particularly would like better ways to play N64 games on a Switch, setting up my Wii U takes a while, and I don't have a way to dump N64 carts.

 

[veggav]

They should just give up.

Almost the entire content of romshephered was and still is on Usenet. While they target torrents and rom sites obfuscated content on usenet will be forever available.

 

[ShadowOne333]

i wonder how long it will be until someone puts up a rom site on the darknet...
has it happened already?
because i guess nintendo won't bother with that, surely.

I'd be very interested in this, for sure.
Tor and darknet would probably be the best way to give Nintendo the full-on middle finger without them being able to do jackshit.

 

[cearp]

I'd be very interested in this, for sure.
Tor and darknet would probably be the best way to give Nintendo the full-on middle finger without them being able to do jackshit.

if it does happen I hope it's something 'good' like emuparadise or the-eye, and not one of those forums where everything is fragmented in different threads and you need to click thanks to display the download link that's behind some adfly link... i hate that stuff

eh... downloading over tor isn't great i heard. but for small roms it would be ok.

 

[ShadowOne333]

if it does happen I hope it's something 'good' like emuparadise or the-eye, and not one of those forums where everything is fragmented in different threads and you need to click thanks to display the download link that's behind some adfly link... i hate that stuff

eh... downloading over tor isn't great. i forgot about that.
but for small roms it would be ok.

I agree.
If a Rom sharing site does appear on the darknet, it should be one of those properly organized sites, where everything is segmented per consoles, alphanumerical entries, etc.

Forums like the iso sites and so are a bother to navigate for sure, but until something like a proper rom site on darknet is available, it's the best we have for current gen games.

 

[AgentChet]

Lol, darknet.. Like I2P, Zeronet, or IPFS?

 

[proffk]

why are nintendo not going after soulja boy and his lazy ass clone consoles. He promises his handheld console can play nsw & vita games.

 

[the_randomizer]

Can't say I disapprove of Nintendo taking down ROM sites, but I do wish they offered better way of playing retro games on newer systems - NES Mini, SNES Mini and the free NES games with Switch Online are all nice, but they offer limited catalogs; no Chrono Trigger with SNES Mini? Really want a way to play MOTHER 1 / Earthbound Beginnings on a Switch in particular.
Particularly would like better ways to play N64 games on a Switch, setting up my Wii U takes a while, and I don't have a way to dump N64 carts.

You can thank Square Enix for no Chrono Trigger.

 

[DKB]

Pleasuredome is gone?? Fuck! I got my like 100GB+ of arcade roms from there.

Never mind, they just removed Nintendo Roms. Eh, whatever.

 

[tech3475]

I find Nintendo do this now the weirdest part, at least 10 years ago when they had the VC on the Wii it would have made more sense.

The Switch barely has anything retro games wise on it and the mini consoles only a fraction of the library.

I still think Nintendo is missing a potential market by just selling the ROMs like Sega does on Steam.

 

[the_randomizer]

I find Nintendo do this now the weirdest part, at least 10 years ago when they had the VC on the Wii it would have made more sense.

The Switch barely has anything retro games wise on it and the mini consoles only a fraction of the library.

I still think Nintendo is missing a potential market by just selling the ROMs like Sega does on Steam.

Right? But no, they want to trickle out three games per month for the next 20 years. Big whoop.

 

[contezero]

Nintendo has no right to take down games from systems whose IP they don't even own.

This is indeed true, but they seems to target only their IPs. On the official statement of the italian authority for telecommunications guarantees (Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni) you can read (page two) a list of Nintendo owned videogames (most of them were for wii u, switch and 3ds):

https://www.agcom.it/documents/1017...63680-44e9-4bc6-8b8a-a1d9ac8801e9?version=1.0

It's not Nintendo per say that takes them down. It's the lawfirm. If the lawfirm also have Sony on board, they can therefore in a same swoop take them down as well. You need to read up a bit more on this, it's not as black and white as you say.

I agree with that. Nintendo doesn't have anything to gain or loose from blocking those websites. The law firms involved have their fees to earn :-/ and they will sue regardless of the positive outcome. This also explain why they are not targeting big websites like reddit, google drive or the russian trackers: they will fight back. They focus on the weakest preys that have no means of opposing thus looking for quick (but useless) results. Nintendo is not to blame for this crackdown. The greediness of law firms is the real culprit.

 

[the_randomizer]

This is indeed true, but they seems to target only their IPs. On the official statement of the italian authority for telecommunications guarantees (Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni) you can read (page two) a list of Nintendo owned videogames (most of them were for wii u, switch and 3ds):

https://www.agcom.it/documents/1017...63680-44e9-4bc6-8b8a-a1d9ac8801e9?version=1.0



I agree with that. Nintendo doesn't have anything to gain or loose from blocking those websites. The law firms involved have their fees to earn :-/ and they will sue regardless of the positive outcome. This also explain why they are not targeting big websites like reddit, google drive or the russian trackers: they will fight back. They focus on the weakest preys that have no means of opposing thus looking for quick (but useless) results. Nintendo is not to blame for this crackdown. The greediness of law firms is the real culprit.

And yet they refuse to allow or offer more effective, legal means to purchase said IP, so until this changes, I'm not paying for squat for their NES Online.

 

[altorn]

we need a blockchain rom sharing dApp

 

[contezero]

And yet they refuse to allow or offer more effective, legal means to purchase said IP, so until this changes, I'm not paying for squat for their NES Online.

The IPs they mentioned were all for sale thru retail and/or Nintendo shop.

 

[the_randomizer]

The IPs they mentioned were all for sale thru retail and/or Nintendo shop.

Not all of them. There are still hundreds of games that belong to Nintendo that aren't available on the eShop, so.... I hope you're not defending their bullshit.

 

[contezero]

Not all of them. There are still hundreds of games that belong to Nintendo that aren't available on the eShop, so.... I hope you're not defending their bullshit.

The legal action was about the IPs actually on sale. It's not about defending but about understanding. The owner of the site was making money (with ads) using copyrighted material. This is something that I am non defending. Are you? I prefer sharing for free so no-one makes money out of it.

 

[FAST6191]

In before the "but it's their right to not provide games, they owe you nothing" bullshit response. Yes, it's true, but they have no right to complain about third party ROMs and ISO images, they have NO jurisdiction over those, so what right do they have to take those down as well? Oh I know, they don't.

They don't (though as was mentioned there can be multi company concerns), however if the police knock at my door to say "we know you have been dealing cocaine" you don't typically just stop dealing cocaine and go exclusively heroin.

I imagine any ROM site out there these days has at least a half arsed effort towards keeping its owners/operators out of legal crosshairs. If they manage to penetrate that and get a nice letter from a law firm to land on said owner/operator doormat it tends to be cause to reconsider your position.

Anyway everybody sing along
99 ROM sites on the web, 99 ROM sites. Take one down and share news around, 95 ROM sites on the web. 95 ROM sites on the web, 95 ROM sites. Take one down and share news around, 999 ROM sites on the web.