Hacker News Reader

Access to NES, SNES and N64 games is a perk of Nintendo's paid online subscription so pirate copies do compete with that to some extent.

View on HN

Not the entire library, though. Games that aren't offered in any form anywhere, and also games that weren't localized (like Mother 3) shouldn't have copyright enforceable. It's either you give up production of the game or you produce it forever, no other sane way to go about it

I hate overzealous copyright prosecution as much as anyone, but I’m very wary of a model where you have to use something you own to maintain ownership.

There are things that work that way (RF spectrum), but in general I think it would cut against the purpose of copyright. I do think there’s value in giving creators exclusive rights to their own work, and making it contingent on distribution would hurt small companies more than big.

The only thing you own is the right to a time-limited monopoly of commercialization.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com