1Emulation announces partnership with ModMyDS.com!

[Smilee]

Congratulations on the partnership, 1Emulation is getting bigger everyday.

[sgstair]

G19: I'll answer this - I'm not a lawyer but some things are pretty well defined.

 

Legality in this country in many cases is defined mostly by proving intent, and there are a large number of legal uses / intentions for using flashcards. Consider for example, knives... They can easily be used to kill people, but have countless other legal uses as well. Obviously the flashcard doesn't have such an overwhelming number of legal uses compared to the illegal ones, but they still exist, and stores that sell them use that to their advantage. The bottom line is: the act of selling a flashcard isn't illegal, as it's difficult / impossible to prove that the flashcard is intended for illegal purposes; the act of downloading a pirated Rom file is illegal, as it's blatantly copyright infringement, and very simple to prove. So, there really aren't any problems with the logic of selling flashcards and also banning links to commercial roms.

Of course, the situation is a good deal more complex than this, but this is a reasonable representation of how things are.

 

-Stephen

[Ayur]

Well, that's great news. With more people posting, there will be more to reply to, meaning more posts overall. And, exclusive DS Emu swag is always nice.

 

It's all fun and games until someone pokes an eye out with a lawsuit.

[Alpha]

Well, that's great news. With more people posting, there will be more to reply to, meaning more posts overall. And, exclusive DS Emu swag is always nice.

 

It's all fun and games until someone pokes an eye out with a lawsuit.

If you read sgstair's response, nobody is going to get a lawsuit. At least not now... maybe in the future... and if anything they'd attack the big boys first (ex: Divineo). Most of all, if they had a reasonable intent to sue, they wouldn't be sueing us, but only the retailers.

 

If Nintendo can prove that a company has an device that is sold with an intent to perform illegal activities, and can prove it, they will certainly sue.* Right now, they simply can't prove anything, and the same goes with Sony and Microsoft when it comes to modchips. Remember, flash cards have legal use as well which are homebrew applications and/or public domain roms.

 

Using this device is similar to using a DVD player to me. It all depends on how you are using it.

 

What are legal to use:

1. Play MP3/Video (legally owned by you).

2. Play homebrewed games (free download from the net).

3. Develop DS games. With this, you can use the tool to write your own game and test it in this device.

4. Play commercial games (legally owned by you).

 

What is illegal to use:

Play MP3, Video, games that you do not own.

 

This device does not even rip the game off the game cartridge. It is like a DVD player that you can play the DVD movies that you legally owned or not. The only difference is that DVD format is public, but the NDS game format is not.*

 

Lastly, the only cases that Sony and Nintendo were able to sue retailers were for the products like Flash Linkers and Modchips coupled with an HD-Loader because they allowed the consumers to backup/copy/rip the games on their computers which is against the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA).

 

* Quote from SgStair via Windows Messenger

* Taken from FatWallet Forums

[Mooney]

4. Play commercial games (legally owned by you).

Even this is still in the gray area of legality. IIRC, there have been many lawsuits in which a person got sued for big bucks for downloading a piece of software/media that they already owned physically (ex: A DVD).