alt Hacker NewsAs somebody who is involved in the rom hacking scene and cares a lot about game preservation, I think the "bleeding edge" emulators do us a lot of harm. Want to emulate the Game Cube? Awesome. Want to allow people to run the Ocarina of Time remake on PC less than a month after its release? I mean come on. I want to support these projects for purposes of preservation, but because we often do so little to distinguish between retro and current, the outright piracy makes the whole community look bad.
I sympathize with your sentiment.
But the fact is Nintendo is one of the most litigious of the copyright monopolists, a class of rent seekers who have systematically robbed us of our fair use and public domain rights.
There is no reason to believe they'd leave you alone if you refrained from hacking their latest games and consoles. In fact, they have repeatedly proved that they won't do that.
They have already made their fortunes many times over. They have already been more than adequately rewarded for their works. Even the Game Cube and its games are already old enough that they should be in the public domain, but Nintendo couldn't care less, they will absolutely hoard even NES games from the 80s, and they will absolutely reserve the right to sell you that exact same Mario ROM over and over again until the end of time. You and I will be dead and buried before this stuff enters the public domain. If they ever do. Who's to say the trillion dollar industry won't buy laws, I mean lobby the government for yet another copyright extension?
I just can't deal with it anymore. I think people should radicalize, not play nice with these monopolist corporations. I seriously hope AI hammers in the final nail into the coffin of intellectual property.