Can someone explain the legality of Raspberry Pi retro consoles to me?

kitsuneyo · Jul 7, 2018

A couple of weeks ago someone contacted me about working on a project to market a company selling Rapsberry Pi retro consoles, that came loaded with thousands of arcade and console games. I declined since I assumed it's not a legal product, so working on it would be a slap in the face to other, decent game companies.

Then tonight I saw a promoted post in my Facebook newsfeed from a similar company, so I decided to comment and had this conversation.

Pretty evasive, but now I'm wondering.

Are these 'consoles' that come with games legal? Illegal? Or is there some weird loophole that permits their sale?

I'm in the UK by the way, so mainly asking about the UK, but interested in other countries' rules on this too.

Deleted member 11934 · Jul 7, 2018

Of course it's not legal. It's not even legal to sell most emulation software, as of their licenses. The guys behind RetroArch clashed with some people about this recently.

DocSeuss · Jul 7, 2018

He's lying. You're free to make you're own. You're not free to sell copyrighted content. If he's selling the consoles with roms on them, he's lying.

Platy · Jul 7, 2018

Most of those also come with stolen code. Hell, even the more non raspberry pi (like Retron 5) often have stolen emulator code =P

But yeah, coming with the games is pretty much a "unless nintendo allowed it is piracy" and ... nintendo did NOT allowed

SinCityAssassin · Jul 7, 2018

Short Answer: They are not.
Long Answer: If they did not get the permission from emulation license holders, they are not by default.

chanunnaki · Jul 7, 2018

My best guess is that they are incorporated in a country with very loose copyright laws such as China or Russia. Sure, they could still have their sale restricted in US/Europe, but I'm not sure he videogame industry has an agency such as MPAA or RIAA to work on behalf of the copyright holders

ImperatorPat · Jul 7, 2018

The only legal ones are those officially licensed by SEGA or Atari similar such companies.

If there are 1000s of games loaded on it (especially if there are any Nintendo 1st party ROMs) no way are they not pirated. Good idea to stay away from it. You never know when some company may actually decide to enforce its rights against people profiting from piracy and people actually land in jail, like what happened with Xbox 360 mod chips.

Eolz · Jul 7, 2018

It's easy, the emulator part is legal (if there's no bios inside), the games bit isn't.

TheMoon · Jul 7, 2018

if u no licence u no legal

kitsuneyo · Jul 7, 2018

This is all what I figured. I guess you have to be a bare-faced liar to go into a business like that, so this person just straight lied to me to protect their income.

Another crappy thing is Facebook and eBay's willingness to profit off this illegal trade. Both accept ads and listings for these things.

VoltySquirrel · Jul 7, 2018

It's not legal at all. People just do it because they assume no one cares. This extends beyond just distributing copyrighted video games without the rights. A lot of emulators you see loaded on these things have a non-commercial license. However shady people will still chuck that onto the Pi because they probably won't get caught.

Exploiting non-commercial emulators isn't even limited to people with shady Raspberry Pi consoles. The makers of the Retron 5 got a lot of shit for using emulators that had those licences.

angel · Jul 7, 2018

The resellers claiming protection are morons who dont understand what roms are, just like those thick kodi box sellers you meet in the pub. They're simple cretins.

Deleted member 11934 · Jul 7, 2018

chanunnaki said:
My best guess is that they are incorporated in a country with very loose copyright laws such as China or Russia. Sure, they could still have their sale restricted in US/Europe, but I'm not sure he videogame industry has an agency such as MPAA or RIAA to work on behalf of the copyright holders

SIAE in Italy does cover videogames (they're, according to judges, "multimedia artefacts" with sounds and images), so I guess they do in some places.

kitsuneyo · Jul 7, 2018

chanunnaki said:
My best guess is that they are incorporated in a country with very loose copyright laws such as China or Russia. Sure, they could still have their sale restricted in US/Europe, but I'm not sure he videogame industry has an agency such as MPAA or RIAA to work on behalf of the copyright holders

In the UK I think we have the Federation Against Copyright Theft that I guess would deal with this. Maybe not very effectively.

angel said:
The resellers claiming protection are morons who dont understand what roms are, just like those thick kodi box sellers you meet in the pub. They're simple cretins.

Heh.

euricaeris · Jul 7, 2018

You used to see this a lot with people selling R4s and equivalents pre-loaded with games. Not a lot you can do to get them to stop, unfortunately.

Deleted member 15538 · Jul 7, 2018

It's not important enough really to spend your legal batlles money on.

kitsuneyo · Jul 7, 2018

JetSetRadio said:
It's not important enough really to spend your legal batlles money on.

I understand why game makers wouldn't go after them. I just find it weird that people can trade openly in this like legitimate businesses.

julian · Jul 7, 2018

kitsuneyo said:
I understand why game makers wouldn't go after them. I just find it weird that people can trade openly in this like legitimate businesses.

I think it should be clear at this point that Facebook doesn't give a fuck about anything as long as people still use their platform.

Hate · Jul 7, 2018

Roms are not legal but everything else is.

Kthulhu · Jul 7, 2018

Damn. Is this gonna be Fire Sticks with Kodi all over again?

I know you can find a bunch of Chinese plug and plays with NES games, but the emulation is usually pretty awful.

Do you know if these things run RetroArch, OP? I'm willing to bet the Retroarch devs wouldn't be happy if their code is being sold for profit, you may want to reach out to them.

Deleted member 16365 · Jul 7, 2018

Unless I'm mistaken any game that's not currently available for sale can be downloaded and played with an emulator and not be a violation of the DMCA.

But that's if you do it yourself. You can't sell those roms.

Ryo Hazuki · Jul 7, 2018

"I really don't want to at this time on a Saturday" lol what a response.

Kthulhu · Jul 7, 2018

julian said:
I think it should be clear at this point that Facebook doesn't give a fuck about anything as long as people still use their platform.

I mean why would they? They won't get in trouble for advertising these things. Just go to your nearest retro game store and you'll see them selling Retron 5s in the open.

Andri · Jul 7, 2018

kitsuneyo said:
This is all what I figured. I guess you have to be a bare-faced liar to go into a business like that, so this person just straight lied to me to protect their income.

Another crappy thing is Facebook and eBay's willingness to profit off this illegal trade. Both accept ads and listings for these things.

Most Internet Adds take more or less everything.

I regularily get Pokemon Knockoff game adds(that use official pokemon artwork/sprites) on Youtube.

oni-link · Jul 7, 2018

Hate said:
Roms are not legal but everything else is.

This

Velocity:Design:Comfort · Jul 7, 2018

Come on op, you dont wanna play their thousands of original homebrew developed games? Why won't you think of the little guy out there!!!

dabri · Jul 7, 2018

Hate said:
Roms are not legal but everything else is.

Not true in all cases. There are emulators that aren't legal because they took code illegally from the console bios to make it. This isn't the case for all emulators but some.

oni-link · Jul 7, 2018

If you build your own Pi and only use legal ROMs then the Pi is a better VC than Nintendo has been bothered to produce

kitsuneyo · Jul 7, 2018

This is the organisation that's supposed to be on this in the UK: https://www.fact-uk.org.uk/consumer-advice/report-it/

Velocity:Design:Comfort · Jul 7, 2018

dabri said:
Not true in all cases. There are emulators that aren't legal because they took code illegally from the console bios to make it. This isn't the case for all emulators but some.

Is this true though? The case that decided the law, sony vs bleem or whatever, no way bleem was a full original white room reverse engineer. Correct me if im wrong though.

Glio · Jul 7, 2018

Many people (even here) believe that just because a game is old, it should be free.

Of course everyone has their legal copies of SNES/Mega Drive games, hehe.

Velocity:Design:Comfort · Jul 7, 2018

oni-link said:
If you build your own Pi and only use legal ROMs then the Pi is a better VC than Nintendo has been bothered to produce

No such thing if youre talking about nintendo games. Even if you own them on a cart. So I dont know if a pi with no games on it is better than nintendos classics...

kitsuneyo · Jul 7, 2018

Kthulhu said:
Damn. Is this gonna be Fire Sticks with Kodi all over again?

I know you can find a bunch of Chinese plug and plays with NES games, but the emulation is usually pretty awful.

Do you know if these things run RetroArch, OP? I'm willing to bet the Retroarch devs wouldn't be happy if their code is being sold for profit, you may want to reach out to them.

Looks like it runs RetroArch, yes. People have mentioned that on their forum.

UserDoesNotExist · Jul 7, 2018

Yes, the technology that has made modern speed running, retro gaming, video game preservation, and various charity events (many of which receive their own threads on this forum) is illegal.

smurfx · Jul 7, 2018

they are full of shit although generally nobody goes after these people.

kitsuneyo · Jul 7, 2018

UserDoesNotExist said:
Yes, the technology that has made modern speed running, retro gaming, video game preservation, and various charity events (many of which receive their own threads on this forum) is illegal.

That was a big edit. This thread isn't talking about the technology, it's about selling ROMs bundled with emulators.

tmarg · Jul 7, 2018

I believe technically using emulators is legal if and only if you use ROMs that you dumped yourself from games you legally own. Almost nobody does this.

Ethically, I'm not that worried about it if you own a legal version of the game period, though companies like Nintendo who make huge amounts of money resellng the same decades old games over and over again in different formats obviously would disagree.

Either way, selling a computer pre-loaded with ROMs is blatant piracy, and neither legal nor ethical.

SweetVermouth · Jul 7, 2018

You can only sell what you own or have the license to.

They have neither for both the games and the emulators. They are basically reselling Pi's they build and loaded with emulators and a shit ton of roms.

Dreamwriter · Jul 7, 2018

Velocity:Design:Comfort said:
oni-link said:

If you build your own Pi and only use legal ROMs then the Pi is a better VC than Nintendo has been bothered to produce

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

No such thing if youre talking about nintendo games. Even if you own them on a cart. So I dont know if a pi with no games on it is better than nintendos classics...

That's incorrect. In the US at least, if you rip your own rom from your own cartridge it is perfectly legal - Nintendo isn't mentioned in the DMCA :) You can't legally distribute copyrighted content without the copyright owner's permission, and that includes downloading a ROM, but you can perfectly legally make your own software backup.

Velocity:Design:Comfort said:
Is this true though? The case that decided the law, sony vs bleem or whatever, no way bleem was a full original white room reverse engineer. Correct me if im wrong though.

The case that decided the BIOS law was the Connectix VGS, where Connectix reverse-engineered the BIOS in a clean-room setup since Sony wouldn't let them use the actual BIOS. The courts ruled in favor of Connectix, ruling that the way they used the BIOS was perfectly legal. Including actual BIOS code would have been illegal. The way Bleem worked on the other hand didn't require a BIOS, reverse-engineered or not - Bleem uses high-level emulation of the BIOS the same way they emulate the CPU/GPU, rather than trying to recreate the BIOS with their own code.

There are also illegal emulators when a piece of hardware includes an emulator that isn't licensed for their commercial use. Emulator software is covered by copyright law just like the ROMs are, and companies like Hyperkin use stolen emulation code for their consoles (just because it is "open source" doesn't mean "use it for anything you want for free", you have to read the license).

Stopdoor · Jul 7, 2018

Caspah said:
Unless I'm mistaken any game that's not currently available for sale can be downloaded and played with an emulator and not be a violation of the DMCA.

But that's if you do it yourself. You can't sell those roms.

I'm not 100% well-versed in it but this seems like a common misconception - it feels morally right, but defining "not currently available for sale" is full of one billion loopholes. Like, obviously most of these games are still "available for sale" if you go down to any old store. And just because Nintendo stopped printing some game that came out last year doesn't make it legal to download.

TheMadTitan · Jul 7, 2018

Hate said:
Roms are not legal but everything else is.

Depending on the emulator, this isn't the case either. Some emulators have licenses that are violated by packaging them up for sale or reporoduced and modified without credit. The Retroarch people are battling several of those Amazon/eBay boxes because they are violating the license of Retroarch and several of the individual emulators.

The company that makes Sega's mini consoles specifically are violating that license, IIRC.

bionic77 · Jul 7, 2018

A bird lawyer told me it is legal on open water.

Deleted member 11413 · Jul 7, 2018

kitsuneyo said:
I understand why game makers wouldn't go after them. I just find it weird that people can trade openly in this like legitimate businesses.

Well, if no one has an interest in enforcing it then its eventually going to work it's way out into the open.

Baji Boxer · Jul 7, 2018

Caspah said:
Unless I'm mistaken any game that's not currently available for sale can be downloaded and played with an emulator and not be a violation of the DMCA.

But that's if you do it yourself. You can't sell those roms.

Not true, just most have no ethical problem with it. Personally, I'm not really concerned about such things unless you're profiting off it.

Ubiblu · Jul 7, 2018

I'd like to think that most games you can play on a RetroPi are victimless, except of course the ones clearly exploiting nostalgia and being unfairly and exhorbinantly priced for Switch (Wild Guns and SF Collection come to mind).

I modded my NES/SNES Classics and have full rom sets on various RetroPi devices that I have made for friends and family. The vitriol against the seller in OPs post seems really excessive to me. Piracy is a reality of life, and ideally should act as a precursor to legal alternatives being introduced (like the Classic Consoles).

I dunno. Maybe my moral compass is skewed in my cynical old age, but this feels like a thread that doesn't need to exist in 2018. Building RetroPi Images is practically an art form these days: my ethical position is quite comfortable with the practice, much to the apparent disgust of OP and the other virtuous IP Warriors.

kitsuneyo · Jul 7, 2018

Lord of Ostia said:
Well, if no one has an interest in enforcing it then its eventually going to work it's way out into the open.

I guess that's it. The UK government would rather collect the sales tax than spend money prosecuting people.

Ubiblu said:
I'd like to think that most games you can play on a RetroPi are victimless, except of course the ones clearly exploiting nostalgia and being unfairly and exhorbinantly priced for Switch (Wild Guns and SF Collection come to mind).

I modded my NES/SNES Classics and have full rom sets on various RetroPi devices that I have made for friends and family. The vitriol against the seller in OPs post seems really excessive to me. Piracy is a reality of life, and ideally should act as a precursor to legal alternatives being introduced (like the Classic Consoles).

I dunno. Maybe my moral compass is skewed in my cynical old age, but this feels like a thread that doesn't need to exist in 2018. Building RetroPi Images is practically an art form these days: my ethical position is quite comfortable with the practice, much to the apparent disgust of OP and the other virtuous IP Warriors.

Vitriol, really?

I do think it's a pathetic way to make a living, from the theft of other people's work. I don't have an issue with people emulating their favourite old games, I've done it myself.

ThePunisher · Jul 7, 2018

So how does this apply to snes/nes mini hacking? Is it fine to add the extra games as long as you are not selling the console and are keeping it for personal use or is it completely illegal to install extra games? I've been wondering about this for a while as I'd like more games but I'm not willing to break a law to do so.

Velocity:Design:Comfort · Jul 7, 2018

Dreamwriter said:
That's incorrect. In the US at least, if you rip your own rom from your own cartridge it is perfectly legal - Nintendo isn't mentioned in the DMCA :) You can't legally distribute copyrighted content without the copyright owner's permission, and that includes downloading a ROM, but you can perfectly legally make your own software backup.

The case that decided the BIOS law was the Connectix VGS, where Connectix reverse-engineered the BIOS in a clean-room setup since Sony wouldn't let them use the actual BIOS. The courts ruled in favor of Connectix, ruling that the way they used the BIOS was perfectly legal. Including actual BIOS code would have been illegal. The way Bleem worked on the other hand didn't require a BIOS, reverse-engineered or not - Bleem uses high-level emulation of the BIOS the same way they emulate the CPU/GPU, rather than trying to recreate the BIOS with their own code.

There are also illegal emulators when a piece of hardware includes an emulator that isn't licensed for their commercial use. Emulator software is covered by copyright law just like the ROMs are, and companies like Hyperkin use stolen emulation code for their consoles (just because it is "open source" doesn't mean "use it for anything you want for free", you have to read the license).

I missed the "built for yourself" part, thought it was referring to the ops case. But thank you for the added detail about the sony case.

Velocity:Design:Comfort · Jul 7, 2018

Ubiblu said:
I'd like to think that most games you can play on a RetroPi are victimless, except of course the ones clearly exploiting nostalgia and being unfairly and exhorbinantly priced for Switch (Wild Guns and SF Collection come to mind).

I modded my NES/SNES Classics and have full rom sets on various RetroPi devices that I have made for friends and family. The vitriol against the seller in OPs post seems really excessive to me. Piracy is a reality of life, and ideally should act as a precursor to legal alternatives being introduced (like the Classic Consoles).

I dunno. Maybe my moral compass is skewed in my cynical old age, but this feels like a thread that doesn't need to exist in 2018. Building RetroPi Images is practically an art form these days: my ethical position is quite comfortable with the practice, much to the apparent disgust of OP and the other virtuous IP Warriors.

This is a lot of words to justify piracy. And I'm no saint, ive emulated hundreds of games. But I don't see a need to dance around the fact its illegal.

Azerare · Jul 7, 2018

Velocity:Design:Comfort said:
This is a lot of words to justify piracy. And I'm no saint, ive emulated hundreds of games. But I don't see a need to dance around the fact its illegal.

Gotta find some way to sleep at night

Can someone explain the legality of Raspberry Pi retro consoles to me?

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