What would be the consequences, legally speaking, of designing a machine that could make copies of Nintendo64 cartridges? Would one be allowed to market such a device? My personal feeling is that at the very least, one would have to be able to afford to defend oneself from the inevitable, and not exactly frivolous, lawsuit from Nintendo. Any of you legal scholars know of what examples there might be of relevant precedents?
I would imagine that such a device could not actually serve any truly legal purpose other than perhaps creating a backup of a game that the user already owns.
If I understood the question right, you’re asking about designing and marketing the machine, not using it.
I think you might use cable-box descramblers or radar detectors as precedent. In many jurisdictions own can sell, buy, and own these things, as long as they are not used for the illegal purpose for which they were designed. Another precedent could be the ordinary photocopy machine, many of which have labels warning the user: “Do not use this machine for copying any copyrighted material, or paper currency, or any other illegal purpose.”
the copier machine example is not a good one. There are a multitude (pardon the pun) of legal uses for a copier. Copying copyrighted materials is an example of an illegal use of one. Copying my letters to the editor for posterity is perfectly legal.
Re: the OP, well, if you want to have an example of a real oddity, rubber stamps (the art kind, not the office kind) are often copyrighted. And the makers of these devices, which are MADE to produce copies of an image, can and DO hold a stangelhold on the uses of those copies, many stating that you may only use them to produce hand made objects not for resale, others are more generous.
Bottom line, tho’ before you invest time and money into the scheme, ask a lawyer, pay for the opinion…
It would seem to fall under the same sort of category as a CD writer or a VCR, in that having one is fine, you’re just not allowed to sell copyrighted material you copy with them. The only difference is that the machine, as stated, would be specifically for copying N64 games, so it might get a little trickier. There might even be another angle. Does Nintendo put any sort of encryption or other electronic copy protection on their cartridges? If they do, then you’ve got to decipher that as well, and as we’ve seen with the DeCSS case, the courts frown on that sort of thing.
You would get killed by lawyers. Wouldn’t even matter if you were in the right, they would put you under by making you hire lawyers.
The real tricky part is as another poster stated, the way the data is stored on the cartridge. You have to reverse engineer that so you can store it the same way.
If you made such a device, Nintendo would have many tools to nail you to the wall. Certain aspects of the N64 design are there specifically to make it difficult to copy the data, both algorithmically and legally. Part of the reason they stuck to cartridges instead of moving to CDs is because of the design.
Inside every N64 cartridge, and inside the N64 console itself, there is a chip nicknamed the “singing chip”. It generates a bitstream that is xored with both incoming and outgoing data. The algorithm for generating the bitstream is patented, and the bitstream itself is copyrighted. I think they also got trade secret status for it, too.
To get the data out of the cartridge, short of taking it apart and figuring out how to get the data without it passing through the singing chip, you would need to decrypt the bitstream. However, in decrypting the datastream, you would put yourself on shaky legal ground. I vaguely recall Nintendo winning a suit against the Game Doctor, a device created to allow backups of SNES cartriges.
[The algorithm for generating the bitstream is patented, and the bitstream itself is copyrighted. I think they also got trade secret status for it, too]
I believe that patented and trade secret are mutually exclusive. If coke patented the formula the patent would be up and anyone can make it. they chose to make it a trade secret. but video games have such a shout life that the patent route would be better IMHO
You’re right. If they do have something in there that’s a trade secret, it couldn’t be the algorithm.
I do believe, though, that it’s legally possible to have something copyrighted and also a trade secret. It’s possible the bitstream is copyrighted for a given initialization vector, and Nintendo made the IV and the stream a trade secret.
Interesting that you bring it up and generate so much debate since you CAN copy playstation games, and even though Sony is not happy with it, they really have no legal recourse at this point. I think the problem that most people have with the legality of this idea is that you would have to make cartridges and not just use plain old cds.