FDS on PowerPak

blargg · Post by **blargg** » Fri Sep 12, 2008 2:02 am

The FDS bios is a copyrighted work by Nintendo. Copyrights apply to software.

acem77 · Post by **acem77** » Fri Sep 12, 2008 9:47 am

How long does a software copyright last? wiki said 70 years....
the system is over 20 years old. 50 more to go

Post by **tepples** » Fri Sep 12, 2008 9:48 am

Let me put it this way: You will expire before copyrights do.

Bregalad · Post by **Bregalad** » Sat Sep 13, 2008 9:28 am

Wikipedia wrote:Copyright does not cover ideas and information themselves, only the form or manner in which they are expressed. For example, the copyright to a Mickey Mouse cartoon restricts others from making copies of the cartoon or creating derivative works based on Disney's particular anthropomorphic mouse, but doesn't prohibit the creation of other works about anthropomorphic mice in general, so long as they're different enough to not be judged copies of Disney's.

Does this prevent people to use anything inside the FDS bios ? It's not very clear. I admit that I am using some routines I got from the FDS bios that does clever $2007 writes I found really clever and usefull. Should I modify my code so that I use my own version of them, making "my own work with about an anthropomorphic mice" ?
And how many lines of code have to change so that it's not considered the same ? This is really ambigious, especially about programming.

Also I don't see how can anyone own intellectual propriety on the FDS bios as there is no characters, story or gameplay element. Only really basic graphics and music, and the Mario character, that I'm not going to steal.

loopy · Post by **loopy** » Sat Sep 13, 2008 10:47 am

An interesting question. I wonder what the legality of NSF and SPC rips is. Are they banninated too?

blargg · Post by **blargg** » Sat Sep 13, 2008 11:19 am

Derivitive works, since they incorporate machine code from the game ROM. Plus of course the music itself is copyrighted.

CartCollector · Post by **CartCollector** » Sat Sep 13, 2008 11:39 am

I wonder when this graph will reach its limit and copyright length will go off into infinity... Someone should do a logarithmic regression.

Bregalad · Post by **Bregalad** » Sat Sep 13, 2008 12:36 pm

How does it comes the name of a private company comes on a copiright act ? Since when private companies make the law ?

blargg · Post by **blargg** » Sat Sep 13, 2008 2:27 pm

Bregalad wrote:Since when private companies make the law ?

Since they started buying politicians off (bribing).

loopy · Post by **loopy** » Mon Sep 15, 2008 10:43 am

I put the file back, you'll have to find it yourself. I tweaked the bios to let you watch mario+luigi being silly before you "insert" a disk

(No, I haven't yet debugged the other problems with it)

Guido Anchovy · Post by **Guido Anchovy** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 4:34 pm

loopy wrote:I tweaked the bios to let you watch mario+luigi being silly before you "insert" a disk

Thanks!

I can spend upwards of 20-30 min when I'm bored watching those two go at it. Too bad it's not a screensaver.

atarimike · Post by **atarimike** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 9:08 pm

Bregalad wrote:How does it comes the name of a private company comes on a copiright act ? Since when private companies make the law ?

That's Sonny Bono the person. He was a House representative who died in a skiing accident just before the law was passed.

wikipedia

theNESadvantage · Post by **theNESadvantage** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 8:32 pm

I'm reeeeeally upset this was discontinued. I wanna play Doki Doki Panic and SMB2 Japan on my Powerpak for God's sake!

loopy · Post by **loopy** » Fri Oct 24, 2008 8:10 pm

Updated.
There's still a lot left to do, but I fixed a major loading bug so I think most single sided games will work now.
Enjoy.

P.S.
It's not discontinued

MottZilla · Post by **MottZilla** » Fri Oct 24, 2008 11:37 pm

Glad to hear work on it continues. =)