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Comment by backspace_ | Hacker News Reader

What a superfluous story to not say he went and downloaded the game and bootroom.

Was kind of strange making up the crow dropped a USB stick lie. I assume he can't say he pirated it because the article would get taken down with a DMCA notice, but I would have preferred he just not mention how he got it. There was interesting content there about reverse engineering the game data format.

You're correct in that it was an obvious joke like because of course they can't tell they illegally downloaded the game, or they would soon be getting an DMCA takedown. But they were just taking the piss out of the ones issuing these takedowns as with the "Crow dropped the stick" explanation there's nothing they could base their action on.

Are you saying he would get a DMCA notice if sayed that he downloaded the game and bottom, but not for his script that he offers that alters the original game?

His script has no copyrighted contents, nor routines which deal with protection circumvention (encryption/decryption of the ROM) so I don't see why DMCA would be concerned with the post as written.

Now, if the post were to say "the cartridge was protected, so I used hardware X to dump it, and software Y to decrypt it, here are instructions" that'd be circumvention description and thus subject to DMCA.

(disclaimer: I am not a lawyer)

It seems like a euphemism akin to "it fell off the back of a truck".

Well, it's a good way to call attention to the folly of DRM and draconian copyright without taking a political tone.

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