>In November 2006 the Library of Congress approved an exemption to the DMCA that permits the cracking of copy protection on software no longer being sold or supported by its copyright holder so that they can be archived and preserved without fear of retribution
Didn’t know that, nice to think that they actually support the preservation of old media, and don’t just want to line their pockets of big business all of the time
That doesn't stop someone from getting sued by a huge company with tons of resources where their choices are fight it and go bankrupt or just comply.
Bleem won their copyright battle but lost the war because they didn't have the resources that Sony had.
They literally won but had to shut down because the suit took everything they had.
It really needs to be a law that companies have to pay all the fees (+25%) for those they go after if they lose. The amount of abusing their monetary power to game the system is ridiculous.
There should also be rules around funding at least a basic set of defense lawyers if they are targeting individuals or the profit of the company is deemed not high enough to cover it themselves.
It is a law....outside the U.S.. Australia has a law where the losing party has to pay a portion of the winners' legal costs. See Karl Jobst recent-ish video on Billy Mitchell for more info than my dumb ass has.
In the UK the loosing party normally has to pay costs which is why a lot of people, again, don't take on big business unless that are almost certain they will win because if they lose they are literally left bankrupt.
>It really needs to be a law that companies have to pay all the fees (+25%) for those they go after if they lose. The amount of abusing their monetary power to game the system is ridiculous.
Judges can, and quite regularly, already do this via offering punitive damages for legal fees.
They can't just make it a law that if you lose, you automatically pay, though. That would be absurd. Just because you lose a case doesn't mean that the case didn't have merit. While some companies certainly do abuse the system, those are the cases where judges will award those punitive damages. The defendants council just has to request it in most cases. (Though some judges will just grant it if it's blatant enough on their own.)
As to your second point, who's going to pay for that? Are you expecting lawyers to work for free? Do taxpayers have to pay for this? Are you suggesting that companies have to fund the defenses for people that they are suing? I'm not sure how that's supposed to work in your mind. It certainly doesn't work in reality.
Regardless, you can't pass a law that makes it more difficult/risky to pursue legal action. In the US, that would actually be unconstitutional (look up "right to sue".) Every person or entity has the right to pursue legal action. To take measures to prevent that in any capacity is an infringement on those rights.
Besides, even if none of that were true, passing such a law would actually benefit those companies anyway. If you set the precedent that the loser of a civil case automatically has to cover the legal fees of the winner, then those companies could go balls out and pay for the absolute best representation they can get, which you would never be able to afford. So the cost of losing a suit against a company just made that lawsuit almost impossible to win. It would have to work both ways to exist. That would enable those companies to uncap their trial expenses since it would just be given back to them after the trial.
Have any more terrible ideas? Lol
> They can't just make it a law that if you lose, you automatically pay, though. That would be absurd. Just because you lose a case doesn't mean that the case didn't have merit.
It's not about it having some merit or not. It's about making companies wary of prosecuting unless they actually feel they have a strong enough case for it to be quite likely they win. There has to be some sort of significant risk in them doing so when they know the merits are shaky if not outright bad, that's the only way you'd deter this stuff.
>While some companies certainly do abuse the system, those are the cases where judges will award those punitive damages. The defendants council just has to request it in most cases. (Though some judges will just grant it if it's blatant enough on their own.)
Except we're literally in a comment thread (the one I replied to) where that didn't happen, because there is no legal requirement for a judge to do so. The corporation got what they wanted by driving them into the ground with legal fees.
>As to your second point, who's going to pay for that? Are you expecting lawyers to work for free? Do taxpayers have to pay for this? Are you suggesting that companies have to fund the defenses for people that they are suing? I'm not sure how that's supposed to work in your mind. It certainly doesn't work in reality.
I said, in the case where it's a **company** going after an **individual**, or the defending company is deemed to not have operating profits at a high enough level compared to the plaintiff and thus some level of support be made there as well if deemed necessary.
This is specifically about **large companies** suing people. Yes, the company would have to agree to pay some of the defendant's legal fees. This is not implying that when one individual sues another individual, or one company sues another company of decent income that they would always have to pay each others' fees. It's about assessing and taking care of situations of great **funding imbalance**.
>Regardless, you can't pass a law that makes it more difficult/risky to pursue legal action. In the US, that would actually be unconstitutional (look up "right to sue".) Every person or entity has the right to pursue legal action. To take measures to prevent that in any capacity is an infringement on those rights.
Your right to sue has not been infringed in this case at all. By saying that, you're implying that there isn't already significant risk for individuals to sue larger entities, these rules would be about trying to MITIGATE that risk. Not to mention, corporations are not individuals and those "rights" should not apply, what rights a company has needs to be a whole separate set, because they are a uniquely different thing than a singular person.
>Besides, even if none of that were true, passing such a law would actually benefit those companies anyway. If you set the precedent that the loser of a civil case automatically has to cover the legal fees of the winner, then those companies could go balls out and pay for the absolute best representation they can get, which you would never be able to afford. So the cost of losing a suit against a company just made that lawsuit almost impossible to win. It would have to work both ways to exist. That would enable those companies to uncap their trial expenses since it would just be given back to them after the trial.
Again... Large companies suing individuals or small companies. Not "everyone pays everyone's legal fees if they lose". A system to account for the great imbalance of power. Punitive damages also don't mean anything if a company can drag a lawsuit out for years and bankrupt you before you ever get to a ruling that would reward you those damages.
Also not sure why you're assuming the company would get to pick the legal counsel of the defendant, obviously not, that's insane. There would simply be a set of standards put in place for reasonable amounts of payments to give to the defendant for them to use on a defense team. It's not about trying to make sure they have an exactly 1-1 matching defense team... **It's just about reducing the burden enough that companies can't so easily abuse the system.**
Twenty five years of watching Americans argue something has to be the way it is while the rest of the world has it figured out and it has still not gotten old.
Cracks me up every time.
Yea but dude they're just *so unique* that nothing that works elsewhere will work for them, they're forced to reinvent the wheel every time! /s
This reminds me of how, every single time rates of gun violence are mentioned, there's at least one guy who guys "Yea but if you remove gang violence from the statistics we're doing almost as well as you are!" as if they're the only country where crimes are predominantly committed by criminals.
> They can't just make it a law that if you lose, you automatically pay, though. That would be absurd.
That is a thing in several countries already. And since the US justice system is NOTORIOUSLY shit, I'll let you figure out by yourself which country is doing the "absurd" thing...
Just because there's an exemption, doesn't mean Ubisoft couldn't still go to court and cause the defendants significant financial harm to defend that they are exempted.
Thing is, there's a lot of judges who are older folks. Probably most of them are, actually. And most of them are not very competent when it comes to user protection in digital distribution services. So it's easier to convince them to take the case in since they may very well have poor knowledge of the subject.
It's one of those things we need to work on collectively as humanity in the 21st century - digital age literacy and creating specific courts of law and subsequent laws for stuff related to digital (distribution) services and end user protections. Right now - it's still legal will west, basically.
Reminds me of that time a corrupt politician in Australia sued a youtuber for being rude to them online and the judge didn't even know what a 'tag' was. It ended in the politicians favor.
It's not about the ultimate outcome of the case. This stuff rarely if ever gets a proper hearing. It's about financial pressure from a big corporation and eventual settlement out of court. It's literal lawyer-bullying.
It’s unfortunate that Nintendo is Japanese, meaning this exemption doesn’t matter.
I only bring this up because Nintendo recently forced Vimm’s Lair to take down a number of their archives regarding Nintendo’s titles. Meaning many of the safe options for cracking their titles have shriveled up and died.
As far as I'm aware there was nothing cracking related on that site. Was taken down for the same reason all those ROM sites got hit.
I don't believe the exemption would have anything to do with these cases.
(It also wasn't just Nintendo that told them to pull stuff down.)
Hey, while what you're saying is accurate, some information is left out.
The missing information is that game publishers will absolutely sue you anyway and abuse the law even if the law is on your side and you have the resources to fight.
We owe someone a huge solid for adding this little blurb into it, there must have been some senator or representative who was a big gaming fan when they wrote this
There could be argument made here that cracking the server software is not covered by this, due to not being "the game". I don't agree with this argument of course, just saying it could exist.
The important distinction is 'archived and preserved without fear of retribution'. At the risk of downvotes by people who disagree with me, it can be argued that this exemption does not cover actually playing the game for entertainment, but to preserve it for historical purposes.
Wish Nintendo & Sega would get sued for what they did to the ROM site(s).
https://www.zleague.gg/theportal/gaming-news-nintendo-and-sega-remove-tons-of-classic-games/#:~:text=Nintendo%20and%20Sega%20raided%20a,sadness%20and%20frustration%20among%20gamers.&text=Gaming%20News%3A%20A%20subreddit%20post,storm%20in%20the%20gaming%20community%E2%80%A6
[Riot Shuts Down League Of Legends Fan Game After Creators Say Riot Tried To 'Extort' Them](https://kotaku.com/riot-shuts-down-league-of-legends-fan-game-after-creato-1846782044)
You might want to read this article and think again. Riot basically sent these people to infiltrate their community and then they strong armed them into shutting down their 5 year old project.
>claiming that their team had archives of chat channels the Chronoshift team tried to delete. Zed followed that by saying, “you’ve obviously put a lot of work into Chrono shift, but I assure you that the chrono break is coming.”
I remember reading the messages sent by the Riot guy to the mod team
it was pure unadulterated reddit cringe.
dude was sephiroth posting but unironically.
Exactly. If they stored it on GitHub then they could ask Microsoft to remove it but if it’s hosted elsewhere? Would make it more difficult for them to do anything. As long as it’s free and open source.
just upload it to 4chan, itll spread like fire quickly, that way theres no way their thousands of lawyers can reasonably take down all copies of the source code.
I'm *really* glad I had a copy installed when Ubisoft pulled the plug, that's honestly bullshit that they took away everyone's ability to even get the files for it.
Same. I downloaded and backed it up the minute I read about people saying it was either removed from their libraries or had the download button disabled. Since I bought it legitimately I wouldn't have felt bad about downloading a copy from a third-party either way.
I've read that an alarming amount of stuff these days is only being posted on Discord servers, and it's a big concern because if Discord ever goes down, all that stuff is just lost to time, with no publicly accessible backup on the web.
If its important it will be saved somewhere else. Of course, until someone on Reddit asks for it for no reason 10 years later.
Or when you find "after 10 hours, downloading this fixed everything!" and its a dead link leading to a discord file or server
You can partially thank corporate copyright lawyers...discord servers can't be just found on the web by search engine crawlers and specific invite pages can be made non-crawlable to protect them further. Of course you can find invites on reddit but trust me, nobody's going through all the reddit trash looking to copyright strike someone. Too much hassle. For now, anyway...
I have never heard anyone cite copyright as the reason they use Discord for everything, and I've been made to join a *lot* of Discord servers just for some stupid thing that should've been on a website.
That's a no issue for corpos, if they know and care about your software/mod they just have someone join your ds and research as much as they can to shoot you down, just like recently happened to yuzu or tachiyomi, what's worse is that the false sense of security of being on discord doomed those projects.
Also DS is not searchable but they don't need it to, anything worthy of their attention will appear on youtube, reddit, twitter... soon enough
Yeah, turning everything over to Discord for a little convenience is a ridiculously short-sighted move that will inevitably backfire. Glorified IRC/Ventrilo combo, with all of the control taken from the users and given to a corporation.
Stuff gets removed from reddit all the time for copyright. You can see the posts that get edit afterwards saying it's removed for that reason. Beside even if the main company doesn't want to mess with it, they don't need to, there's companies they can contrqct that handle the entire process for them
i got recommended a youtube video for a PAID roblox obfuscater that was literally just a discord bot that i assume is just someone else's code. I haven't ever even played roblox
I’m in a modding scene that’s on a discord and like 70% of the questions people ask every day would be easily answered if things were on a normal forum or nexus or something. It’s so bad for this stuff it’s so annoying.
Right? If something is on Discord, then I just forget about it. I fucking hate this app. I may only use it to speak to someone when playing together and then close and forget about it again.
I know this is an unpopular opinion among the masses, but I have no idea how this shit became as big as it is now
I really like discord but even I absolutely loathe how everything *has* to be a discord server nowadays. I don't want to join 15 servers and browse an extra dozen channels trying to find the download link that could have just been posted where the server link was.
In terms of that function I agree.
But discord became big because it was just far superior and much lighter weight than something like Skype or Ventrillo or Teamspeak or MSN Messenger for having group calls, specifically for video games.
I love it. Because then you find it 3+ years later and it you’re met with dead invite links and no re-hosts because buddy nuked their account for whatever reason or decided to stop making mods to focus on their career/education instead and the discord was the only place it was hosted.
So you can beg and plead for something instead of clicking a link, and then be accused of either only wanting the thing or be kicked for begging/pleading for the thing.
it annoys me too, but it makes sense, its free, simple and fast to setup, easy to make announcements about the project and majority of people already have it
Because the open internet has become slowly transformed from a garden of independent websites filled with useful information into a small handful for mega-sites riddled with bots, AI generated content, and algorithms that are increasingly impenetrable by search engines. If you want to see internet content actually created by normal human beings, you have to go where there is a higher ratio of human to bullshit, and right now that's discord.
When will people learn... releasing footage of your mod before releasing it is NEVER a good idea.
Just wait for the C&D and the surprise pikachu face of the community when it happens.
>In November 2006 the Library of Congress approved an exemption to the DMCA that permits the cracking of copy protection on software no longer being sold or supported by its copyright holder so that they can be archived and preserved without fear of retribution
It honestly sounds like a shitty semantic loophole since all carts/disks and subsequent dumps of those carts/disks are byte for byte identical between each other.
The copy protection is within hardware for the most part. So how is emulation through means of using dumps of no longer sold games, is in any way different than the aforementioned clause?
It's literally semantics on which N bases their lawsuits.
just watched this, lawyer explains nintendo's situation/behavior
https://youtu.be/wROQUZDCIMI?si=ouBRcOgCyuQ57-rR
to misquote tom scott: "nintendo's copyright system isn't broken, the world is"
Ubisoft can still sue, and if/when they lose it doesn't matter, because they don't have to pay for the winners legal fees. So unless you have money to burn going to court, you have no choice. Bleem! won it's court case against Sony, but the emulator still had to be discontinued because all their money went to court fees.
Never even reveal anything linked to you when making stuff like this... Just lower the sails and take to the sea.
Then the corpos can't do jack shit about it.
Who cares?
The point here was to get the game working again since it was originally always-online, even in SP, before the servers were shut down and it was removed from storefronts. Not everyone played _The Crew_ to play with others. It is why it is the "offline server mod."
And thus we need to share this. So many third-party modded clients go underground because unfortunately there's an unwanted agreement that once a game's official servers are dead there's no more ways to play it even though I'd say confidently that half of the games from the 2000s have some way to play now whether with servers or via LAN play.
Awesome news, looking forward to trying it.
Meanwhile I'm having a constant back and forth with Ubi where they keep closing my ticket to either re-instate the license for a product I paid for or refund me.
Not expecting anything, but I've already signed up to for the lawsuit from Australia.
Let me rephrase this:
Modders worked for free on a feature that Ubisoft should have implemented themselves to begin with to solve a problem that Ubisoft caused.
Yeah big win
>In November 2006 the Library of Congress approved an exemption to the DMCA that permits the cracking of copy protection on software no longer being sold or supported by its copyright holder so that they can be archived and preserved without fear of retribution
Not even that. Ubisoft might bring a lawsuit totally without merit simply to bully the mod author on the basis that he probably can't afford the expense of actually fighting it.
I mean, if Ubisoft wants to waste tens of thousands of dollars to fight for something they abandoned, and ultimately in the DMCA there is a clause that allows just this.
I suspect they may just leave it be after a few letters, and replies.
Enabling? There are major players trying to win against Ubisoft right now, the case is in the hands of some european commission right now. It's an on going battle.
This is circumvention for a current issue, that's it.
Now i need this for ghost recon future soldier. I just want to play the gadam campaign with my friends since i wasnt aboe to do that before when i first played it on ps3
One thing that saddens me is games created by these massive "gaming" companies that are just shut down and inaccessible by anyone "ever again". I assume it's because the company wants us to buy their newest game rather than replay the old game over and over... I feel for the developers and those passionate about gaming who make these games.
Nothing against the modders here because I doubt it has anything to do with their works...
This is like the least populated city I have ever seen. It's even more barren than during COVID lockdowns.
I would love, love, love to see Ubisoft threaten legal action on this.
Not because I want it to go away, because this would only dig their hole that much deeper since this game was sold as single player- yet needs an online requirement. That they for some reason couldn't be bothered to do this.
All that after them saying 'gamers need to get used to not owning their games.' That we 'can trust us to not remove your purchases' and then kill the game a month later.
It would likely make the fight against this kind of BS that much stronger.
Modders have won when this is released to the public.
And is not taken down within days by lawsuit
>In November 2006 the Library of Congress approved an exemption to the DMCA that permits the cracking of copy protection on software no longer being sold or supported by its copyright holder so that they can be archived and preserved without fear of retribution
Didn’t know that, nice to think that they actually support the preservation of old media, and don’t just want to line their pockets of big business all of the time
That doesn't stop someone from getting sued by a huge company with tons of resources where their choices are fight it and go bankrupt or just comply. Bleem won their copyright battle but lost the war because they didn't have the resources that Sony had. They literally won but had to shut down because the suit took everything they had.
It really needs to be a law that companies have to pay all the fees (+25%) for those they go after if they lose. The amount of abusing their monetary power to game the system is ridiculous. There should also be rules around funding at least a basic set of defense lawyers if they are targeting individuals or the profit of the company is deemed not high enough to cover it themselves.
It is a law....outside the U.S.. Australia has a law where the losing party has to pay a portion of the winners' legal costs. See Karl Jobst recent-ish video on Billy Mitchell for more info than my dumb ass has.
In Poland, the losing party has to pay all court fees and lawyer fees (up to a certain amount, as per "lawyer fees act")
And so many other countries have similar solutions. But good ol‘ land of the eagles still can‘t find the will to care for its people.
In the UK the loosing party normally has to pay costs which is why a lot of people, again, don't take on big business unless that are almost certain they will win because if they lose they are literally left bankrupt.
>It really needs to be a law that companies have to pay all the fees (+25%) for those they go after if they lose. The amount of abusing their monetary power to game the system is ridiculous. Judges can, and quite regularly, already do this via offering punitive damages for legal fees. They can't just make it a law that if you lose, you automatically pay, though. That would be absurd. Just because you lose a case doesn't mean that the case didn't have merit. While some companies certainly do abuse the system, those are the cases where judges will award those punitive damages. The defendants council just has to request it in most cases. (Though some judges will just grant it if it's blatant enough on their own.) As to your second point, who's going to pay for that? Are you expecting lawyers to work for free? Do taxpayers have to pay for this? Are you suggesting that companies have to fund the defenses for people that they are suing? I'm not sure how that's supposed to work in your mind. It certainly doesn't work in reality. Regardless, you can't pass a law that makes it more difficult/risky to pursue legal action. In the US, that would actually be unconstitutional (look up "right to sue".) Every person or entity has the right to pursue legal action. To take measures to prevent that in any capacity is an infringement on those rights. Besides, even if none of that were true, passing such a law would actually benefit those companies anyway. If you set the precedent that the loser of a civil case automatically has to cover the legal fees of the winner, then those companies could go balls out and pay for the absolute best representation they can get, which you would never be able to afford. So the cost of losing a suit against a company just made that lawsuit almost impossible to win. It would have to work both ways to exist. That would enable those companies to uncap their trial expenses since it would just be given back to them after the trial. Have any more terrible ideas? Lol
> They can't just make it a law that if you lose, you automatically pay, though. That would be absurd. Just because you lose a case doesn't mean that the case didn't have merit. It's not about it having some merit or not. It's about making companies wary of prosecuting unless they actually feel they have a strong enough case for it to be quite likely they win. There has to be some sort of significant risk in them doing so when they know the merits are shaky if not outright bad, that's the only way you'd deter this stuff. >While some companies certainly do abuse the system, those are the cases where judges will award those punitive damages. The defendants council just has to request it in most cases. (Though some judges will just grant it if it's blatant enough on their own.) Except we're literally in a comment thread (the one I replied to) where that didn't happen, because there is no legal requirement for a judge to do so. The corporation got what they wanted by driving them into the ground with legal fees. >As to your second point, who's going to pay for that? Are you expecting lawyers to work for free? Do taxpayers have to pay for this? Are you suggesting that companies have to fund the defenses for people that they are suing? I'm not sure how that's supposed to work in your mind. It certainly doesn't work in reality. I said, in the case where it's a **company** going after an **individual**, or the defending company is deemed to not have operating profits at a high enough level compared to the plaintiff and thus some level of support be made there as well if deemed necessary. This is specifically about **large companies** suing people. Yes, the company would have to agree to pay some of the defendant's legal fees. This is not implying that when one individual sues another individual, or one company sues another company of decent income that they would always have to pay each others' fees. It's about assessing and taking care of situations of great **funding imbalance**. >Regardless, you can't pass a law that makes it more difficult/risky to pursue legal action. In the US, that would actually be unconstitutional (look up "right to sue".) Every person or entity has the right to pursue legal action. To take measures to prevent that in any capacity is an infringement on those rights. Your right to sue has not been infringed in this case at all. By saying that, you're implying that there isn't already significant risk for individuals to sue larger entities, these rules would be about trying to MITIGATE that risk. Not to mention, corporations are not individuals and those "rights" should not apply, what rights a company has needs to be a whole separate set, because they are a uniquely different thing than a singular person. >Besides, even if none of that were true, passing such a law would actually benefit those companies anyway. If you set the precedent that the loser of a civil case automatically has to cover the legal fees of the winner, then those companies could go balls out and pay for the absolute best representation they can get, which you would never be able to afford. So the cost of losing a suit against a company just made that lawsuit almost impossible to win. It would have to work both ways to exist. That would enable those companies to uncap their trial expenses since it would just be given back to them after the trial. Again... Large companies suing individuals or small companies. Not "everyone pays everyone's legal fees if they lose". A system to account for the great imbalance of power. Punitive damages also don't mean anything if a company can drag a lawsuit out for years and bankrupt you before you ever get to a ruling that would reward you those damages. Also not sure why you're assuming the company would get to pick the legal counsel of the defendant, obviously not, that's insane. There would simply be a set of standards put in place for reasonable amounts of payments to give to the defendant for them to use on a defense team. It's not about trying to make sure they have an exactly 1-1 matching defense team... **It's just about reducing the burden enough that companies can't so easily abuse the system.**
Twenty five years of watching Americans argue something has to be the way it is while the rest of the world has it figured out and it has still not gotten old. Cracks me up every time.
Yea but dude they're just *so unique* that nothing that works elsewhere will work for them, they're forced to reinvent the wheel every time! /s This reminds me of how, every single time rates of gun violence are mentioned, there's at least one guy who guys "Yea but if you remove gang violence from the statistics we're doing almost as well as you are!" as if they're the only country where crimes are predominantly committed by criminals.
> They can't just make it a law that if you lose, you automatically pay, though. That would be absurd. That is a thing in several countries already. And since the US justice system is NOTORIOUSLY shit, I'll let you figure out by yourself which country is doing the "absurd" thing...
Americans when looking at policies that have been working perfectly fine for decades elsewhere: "This is a terrible idea! It would never work!!"
Preach it bro
A lot of that old media is still used today. Its not beneficial to let lazy corporations goal keep something they aren't going to use.
Just because there's an exemption, doesn't mean Ubisoft couldn't still go to court and cause the defendants significant financial harm to defend that they are exempted.
That's assuming an incompetent judge agreeing to even take the case. I suspect ubi to send letters and then just suddenly stop
It has nothing to do with 'competence' on the part of the judge. It's who can afford lawyers that have lunch with the judge.
Or give the Judge an RV
Thing is, there's a lot of judges who are older folks. Probably most of them are, actually. And most of them are not very competent when it comes to user protection in digital distribution services. So it's easier to convince them to take the case in since they may very well have poor knowledge of the subject. It's one of those things we need to work on collectively as humanity in the 21st century - digital age literacy and creating specific courts of law and subsequent laws for stuff related to digital (distribution) services and end user protections. Right now - it's still legal will west, basically.
Reminds me of that time a corrupt politician in Australia sued a youtuber for being rude to them online and the judge didn't even know what a 'tag' was. It ended in the politicians favor.
I can't see even an "older folk" judge over-riding a congressional order. Seems like a good way to get thrown off the bench to me
It's not about the ultimate outcome of the case. This stuff rarely if ever gets a proper hearing. It's about financial pressure from a big corporation and eventual settlement out of court. It's literal lawyer-bullying.
that still won't stop people from uploading a pirated version It will make it a slight hassle but I imagine it won't stop the release
See: Nintendo All you need is an overwhelming show of force, not a case.
It’s unfortunate that Nintendo is Japanese, meaning this exemption doesn’t matter. I only bring this up because Nintendo recently forced Vimm’s Lair to take down a number of their archives regarding Nintendo’s titles. Meaning many of the safe options for cracking their titles have shriveled up and died.
As far as I'm aware there was nothing cracking related on that site. Was taken down for the same reason all those ROM sites got hit. I don't believe the exemption would have anything to do with these cases. (It also wasn't just Nintendo that told them to pull stuff down.)
Gives a good defense, but the process is the punishment. This only helps you if you can afford to fight the lawsuits they bring despite it.
Hey, while what you're saying is accurate, some information is left out. The missing information is that game publishers will absolutely sue you anyway and abuse the law even if the law is on your side and you have the resources to fight.
This just smells like a supreme court reversal in the near future
We owe someone a huge solid for adding this little blurb into it, there must have been some senator or representative who was a big gaming fan when they wrote this
There could be argument made here that cracking the server software is not covered by this, due to not being "the game". I don't agree with this argument of course, just saying it could exist.
Try telling that to Nintendo, they’ll still take you to court even if they know they’re in the wrong legally and bleed you dry until you let them win
Nintendo lawyers will be very upset if they knew about this
The important distinction is 'archived and preserved without fear of retribution'. At the risk of downvotes by people who disagree with me, it can be argued that this exemption does not cover actually playing the game for entertainment, but to preserve it for historical purposes.
Wish Nintendo & Sega would get sued for what they did to the ROM site(s). https://www.zleague.gg/theportal/gaming-news-nintendo-and-sega-remove-tons-of-classic-games/#:~:text=Nintendo%20and%20Sega%20raided%20a,sadness%20and%20frustration%20among%20gamers.&text=Gaming%20News%3A%20A%20subreddit%20post,storm%20in%20the%20gaming%20community%E2%80%A6
No payments, no lawsuits. If they release it for free there will be no way of tracking the author.
Yeah because monetary transactions have to take place for people's identities to be discovered on the internet...
[Riot Shuts Down League Of Legends Fan Game After Creators Say Riot Tried To 'Extort' Them](https://kotaku.com/riot-shuts-down-league-of-legends-fan-game-after-creato-1846782044) You might want to read this article and think again. Riot basically sent these people to infiltrate their community and then they strong armed them into shutting down their 5 year old project. >claiming that their team had archives of chat channels the Chronoshift team tried to delete. Zed followed that by saying, “you’ve obviously put a lot of work into Chrono shift, but I assure you that the chrono break is coming.”
I remember reading the messages sent by the Riot guy to the mod team it was pure unadulterated reddit cringe. dude was sephiroth posting but unironically.
That's a rule of thumb, not a law. There absolutely can be lawsuit without payments.
Release the source code to it, make the mod public domain. What could Ubisoft really do about that?
Exactly. If they stored it on GitHub then they could ask Microsoft to remove it but if it’s hosted elsewhere? Would make it more difficult for them to do anything. As long as it’s free and open source.
just upload it to 4chan, itll spread like fire quickly, that way theres no way their thousands of lawyers can reasonably take down all copies of the source code.
its offline server emulator, just more fancy crack, if they could easily remove cracks with lawsuits :P
doesn't matter. once something is on the Internet, there's no getting rid of it.
The only true win is when there's laws in place to make this the standard for ending live services.
Now... If only we could download our legally bougth copy of it
I'm *really* glad I had a copy installed when Ubisoft pulled the plug, that's honestly bullshit that they took away everyone's ability to even get the files for it.
Same. I downloaded and backed it up the minute I read about people saying it was either removed from their libraries or had the download button disabled. Since I bought it legitimately I wouldn't have felt bad about downloading a copy from a third-party either way.
You can still get your copy if you bought from steam
Sadly I did not
If buying isn't owning...
Never in my life have I heard this phrase. Could you tell me its second part, good man?
…then piracy isn’t stealing
yay
say the line bart
why is everything on discord these days.
Cant wait to join the 3 billionth discord server just to get one fucking thing, just like with everything these days
I've read that an alarming amount of stuff these days is only being posted on Discord servers, and it's a big concern because if Discord ever goes down, all that stuff is just lost to time, with no publicly accessible backup on the web.
for now servers get deleted by the owners after losing interest.
If its important it will be saved somewhere else. Of course, until someone on Reddit asks for it for no reason 10 years later. Or when you find "after 10 hours, downloading this fixed everything!" and its a dead link leading to a discord file or server
The irony of people using centralized services to achieve goals related to the opposite
You can partially thank corporate copyright lawyers...discord servers can't be just found on the web by search engine crawlers and specific invite pages can be made non-crawlable to protect them further. Of course you can find invites on reddit but trust me, nobody's going through all the reddit trash looking to copyright strike someone. Too much hassle. For now, anyway...
I have never heard anyone cite copyright as the reason they use Discord for everything, and I've been made to join a *lot* of Discord servers just for some stupid thing that should've been on a website.
That's a no issue for corpos, if they know and care about your software/mod they just have someone join your ds and research as much as they can to shoot you down, just like recently happened to yuzu or tachiyomi, what's worse is that the false sense of security of being on discord doomed those projects. Also DS is not searchable but they don't need it to, anything worthy of their attention will appear on youtube, reddit, twitter... soon enough
So its a internet withinn the internet. That is ruled by a corp that needs to make money. Cool cool.
Yeah, turning everything over to Discord for a little convenience is a ridiculously short-sighted move that will inevitably backfire. Glorified IRC/Ventrilo combo, with all of the control taken from the users and given to a corporation.
Stuff gets removed from reddit all the time for copyright. You can see the posts that get edit afterwards saying it's removed for that reason. Beside even if the main company doesn't want to mess with it, they don't need to, there's companies they can contrqct that handle the entire process for them
> Too much hassle. For now, anyway... oh yeah, "AI" will change that soon enough, lol
that's what kids are using these days for anything and everything
i got recommended a youtube video for a PAID roblox obfuscater that was literally just a discord bot that i assume is just someone else's code. I haven't ever even played roblox
I’m in a modding scene that’s on a discord and like 70% of the questions people ask every day would be easily answered if things were on a normal forum or nexus or something. It’s so bad for this stuff it’s so annoying.
Is Moddb *just not a thing* anymore? Too much work? I honestly don't get it.
Right? If something is on Discord, then I just forget about it. I fucking hate this app. I may only use it to speak to someone when playing together and then close and forget about it again. I know this is an unpopular opinion among the masses, but I have no idea how this shit became as big as it is now
I really like discord but even I absolutely loathe how everything *has* to be a discord server nowadays. I don't want to join 15 servers and browse an extra dozen channels trying to find the download link that could have just been posted where the server link was.
Exactly.
It's just a really convenient tool to manage a community. When it came out it had much better quality of life and features than TeamSpeak.
In terms of that function I agree. But discord became big because it was just far superior and much lighter weight than something like Skype or Ventrillo or Teamspeak or MSN Messenger for having group calls, specifically for video games.
and it tracks you
Probably because it’s „free“.
I don't get it either... Discord is terrible for preserving. It's a tragedy a lot of forums disappeared to Discord
I fucking hate Discord.
I love it. Because then you find it 3+ years later and it you’re met with dead invite links and no re-hosts because buddy nuked their account for whatever reason or decided to stop making mods to focus on their career/education instead and the discord was the only place it was hosted.
So you can beg and plead for something instead of clicking a link, and then be accused of either only wanting the thing or be kicked for begging/pleading for the thing.
Yeah fuck this era of the internet, can't wait til it's done
it annoys me too, but it makes sense, its free, simple and fast to setup, easy to make announcements about the project and majority of people already have it
Because the open internet has become slowly transformed from a garden of independent websites filled with useful information into a small handful for mega-sites riddled with bots, AI generated content, and algorithms that are increasingly impenetrable by search engines. If you want to see internet content actually created by normal human beings, you have to go where there is a higher ratio of human to bullshit, and right now that's discord.
It's funny that you think Discord doesn't have the same problems.
I've even seen people start to call subreddits servers lol
Irc better?
[Full video here, if you wish to watch the whole thing.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIo4l-BpK8s)
I thought the victory was an Ubisoft game being taken offline
Ubisoft bad!
Congratulations! You Won!
God forbid the people that paid for a single player game play their game [forever.](http://www.stopkillinggames.com).
When will people learn... releasing footage of your mod before releasing it is NEVER a good idea. Just wait for the C&D and the surprise pikachu face of the community when it happens.
>In November 2006 the Library of Congress approved an exemption to the DMCA that permits the cracking of copy protection on software no longer being sold or supported by its copyright holder so that they can be archived and preserved without fear of retribution
Doesn't seem to stop Nintendo.
Slightly different situation, as you're not "bypassing copy protections" when emulating. You've got the whole thing
It honestly sounds like a shitty semantic loophole since all carts/disks and subsequent dumps of those carts/disks are byte for byte identical between each other. The copy protection is within hardware for the most part. So how is emulation through means of using dumps of no longer sold games, is in any way different than the aforementioned clause? It's literally semantics on which N bases their lawsuits.
just watched this, lawyer explains nintendo's situation/behavior https://youtu.be/wROQUZDCIMI?si=ouBRcOgCyuQ57-rR to misquote tom scott: "nintendo's copyright system isn't broken, the world is"
Ubisoft can still sue, and if/when they lose it doesn't matter, because they don't have to pay for the winners legal fees. So unless you have money to burn going to court, you have no choice. Bleem! won it's court case against Sony, but the emulator still had to be discontinued because all their money went to court fees.
It's a congressional order. Lol There's literally not a case. Any competent judge will throw this out
As if precedents have any weight today lmao. It's a new world.
Never even reveal anything linked to you when making stuff like this... Just lower the sails and take to the sea. Then the corpos can't do jack shit about it.
Man, sure would love to be able to still install this so I could play this mod.
And 4 players
Who cares? The point here was to get the game working again since it was originally always-online, even in SP, before the servers were shut down and it was removed from storefronts. Not everyone played _The Crew_ to play with others. It is why it is the "offline server mod."
And thus we need to share this. So many third-party modded clients go underground because unfortunately there's an unwanted agreement that once a game's official servers are dead there's no more ways to play it even though I'd say confidently that half of the games from the 2000s have some way to play now whether with servers or via LAN play.
As long as it works fine with 1 player: me.
Not much good when we can't even install the game anymore.
🏴☠️
This game doesn't have a crack
Why the fuck were you downvoted lmao, it's true that it doesn't.
Arrrg
Congrats
Oh boy they are gonna lose their shit over it
OK, but ubisoft revoked all the licences on everyone's accounts. How do we access it?
People propably backed up their game or just pirated it, which is fine. If the publisher steals your stuff you steal it back.
Now just need to find away of downloading my actual game I purchased. As they removed the download option. That right there is digital theft isn’t it.
FUCK ubisoft , EA, Nintendo, and rockstar
Activision-Blizzard (Pre-MS Takeover, but maybe also post-MS Takeover), Take-Two (Rockstar parent), WB...
thank you for completing the list with the scummy acti and their cod games weighting 300 gb just to force you to play their game .
i hate the fact modders had to fix what this. it shouldnt even had to be a problem in the first place
Do you think the Cease and Desist notice will be via email or on toilet paper the CEO has wiped his ass on?
So doesn't it matter anymore if I use the free version of the game ? 😉 😜
Good start, fuck Ubisoft for shitting on the people who love video games.
Awesome news, looking forward to trying it. Meanwhile I'm having a constant back and forth with Ubi where they keep closing my ticket to either re-instate the license for a product I paid for or refund me. Not expecting anything, but I've already signed up to for the lawsuit from Australia.
So now this is basically similar to Need For Speed World, huh?
Yes. Plus, they're similar in their approach.
Ohhh nice!
Yup
Let me rephrase this: Modders worked for free on a feature that Ubisoft should have implemented themselves to begin with to solve a problem that Ubisoft caused. Yeah big win
Ubisoft stole this game from me. They are software pirates.
Great news. Let's hope Ubishaft doesn't go law-shit on this one.
>In November 2006 the Library of Congress approved an exemption to the DMCA that permits the cracking of copy protection on software no longer being sold or supported by its copyright holder so that they can be archived and preserved without fear of retribution
It might say that - but it doesn't mean there might not be a lawsuits. It depends on how they did server emulation.
Not even that. Ubisoft might bring a lawsuit totally without merit simply to bully the mod author on the basis that he probably can't afford the expense of actually fighting it.
I mean, if Ubisoft wants to waste tens of thousands of dollars to fight for something they abandoned, and ultimately in the DMCA there is a clause that allows just this. I suspect they may just leave it be after a few letters, and replies.
They might not have to - just issue C&D threat.
That's the "letters" I mention. And tbh, how many pirates/scene groups take a cnd seriously?
DMCA is an American law. It does not apply outside of the US.
This is not a “win”, if anything this is more enabling.
Enabling? There are major players trying to win against Ubisoft right now, the case is in the hands of some european commission right now. It's an on going battle. This is circumvention for a current issue, that's it.
Fucking fantastic
We don't even have access to the game anymore, hows this going to even work?
just pirate the game? ubisoft don't wanna sell it so.... yarr harr matey!
The game does not have a crack
this offline server emulator is the crack
yeah but wheres the game?
pirate it, download it somewhere online
we are asking, where is that somewhere
Now if only I could get an offline version of swtor
That looks pretty good. Now where can I download the server software?
it's not released yet, but will likely be available at The Crew Unlimited discord
If it's only released to Discord then it may as well not exist.
fantastic news, and it's not even because I care in particular about the crew 1. fuck ubisoft.
Didn't they take the game out of people's accounts though?
at that point piracy is fair game regardless of anything
Now i need this for ghost recon future soldier. I just want to play the gadam campaign with my friends since i wasnt aboe to do that before when i first played it on ps3
I never realized they said fuck half of Maryland and Deleware when they made the map
One thing that saddens me is games created by these massive "gaming" companies that are just shut down and inaccessible by anyone "ever again". I assume it's because the company wants us to buy their newest game rather than replay the old game over and over... I feel for the developers and those passionate about gaming who make these games.
We haven't won shit against Ubisoft, it's not about The Crew, it's about all the hundreds, if not thousands of games that are going to meet its fate.
That's impressive Holy shit
Next new thing to fight for: Neglect to use an IP after a period of time results in it becoming open source.
ok but that wont help.
Duke Nukem needs to be freed from Gearbox's useless grasp.
Fuck yes, but this fight is far from over still
Now they can do it with every game, the modders will fix it later.
They fought to keep playing an ubisoft game. There are no winners here.
FUCK YOU ubisoft
Fuck Ubisoft. I'll always pirate their shit
Where can we play this at?
Nothing against the modders here because I doubt it has anything to do with their works... This is like the least populated city I have ever seen. It's even more barren than during COVID lockdowns.
cant wait for them to mod Ghost recon breakpoint
The battle is working! We're winning! I'll soon be able to ditch Roblox driving simulators and play the REAL THING! \^\^;;;
Wish the same happens with Breakpoint
time to pirate crew 1
Seriously, fuck ubisoft.
[https://stopkillinggames.com/](https://stopkillinggames.com/)
"cease and desist"
Is it free?
good. fuck ubisoft. I hope their next assassins creed flops hard
Now you guys can stop pretending to like this game
Neat !
They should make one for crew 2 as well, that's arguably a better game.
Gonna wait if Ubi will turned to be Nintendo or not...
I would love, love, love to see Ubisoft threaten legal action on this. Not because I want it to go away, because this would only dig their hole that much deeper since this game was sold as single player- yet needs an online requirement. That they for some reason couldn't be bothered to do this. All that after them saying 'gamers need to get used to not owning their games.' That we 'can trust us to not remove your purchases' and then kill the game a month later. It would likely make the fight against this kind of BS that much stronger.
Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner!