How Nintendo DRM trapped $400 of downloaded games on my failing Wii

Zero work isn't quite a fair assessment. There's NRE associated with implementing the emulator, and probably a fair amount of play testing. Games might have specific quirks that depend on the hardware implementation. As anyone who's ever done emulation on a PC knows, it's can be very good, but rarely perfect.

This always reminded me of the dualistic nature of light. The entertainment industries seem to want the product to behave both as a physical item or a license depending on what benefits them most in any given situation.

Lost it? Its a particle. Buy it again, full price.

Want to sell it used to your bud? Its a wave. License doesn't transfer.

There's my thought of the day: DRM is like a Huygen's slit: the weird interference pattern makes your "purchase" cease to exist in some places.

IANAL, but...

The goal of DRM is to give you media without the rights granted by copyright law. So it really depends on the contract you have with your content provider. Wikipedia has a list of DMCA exemptions, circumstances under which you are allowed to break the DRM:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Ac...

But other than that, you have no rights.

In the case of non-DRM'd content, your rights seem to be determined on a case-by-case basis. Courts have protected the right to time-shift live TV, but if you lose a CD it's probably illegal for your friend to make a copy of his and give it to you. Some courts have also decided that because your OS's VM layer pages a binary from disk to main memory, creating a copy, to execute software, you aren't allowed to use software without accepting its EULA (which grants you the right to copy the software into memory to execute). Other courts, however, have held the opposite.

Again, Wikipedia has a list of relevant cases that you can read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EULA#Enforceability_of_EULAs_in...

(Especially notable is the line, "Recently, publishers have begun to encrypt their software packages to make it impossible for a user to install the software without either agreeing to the license agreement or violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.")

The reality is that nobody really knows. The safest route seems to be treating the loss of copyrighted content like any other customer service issue. Call the company that sold you the content and ask for a refund.

I've often wondered what happens when a junkie breaks into my house and steals a CD. Since a license is intagible it shouldn't be possible to physically steal it - so presumably I end up with a license but no copy of the music to play, and the thief (or whoever they sell it to) ends up with a copy of the music but no license to play it?

(IANAL) If your medium is destroyed you still have a licence, but you do not have a medium in which to exercise that licence. You therefore need to buy a new medium. You are prohibited from making a copy of the medium as that would allow you to distribute it which is braking the terms of your licence.

I think, honestly, nobody really knows for sure, not even lawyers. The law is unclear (in the US anyway) -- especially when DRM is involved.

It is because of this licensing arrangement with Steam that I have not purchased a single game from them where I did not get at least a 75% discount off the normal sales price. I don't care if I have to wait, like I did when I finally purchased a game last week for 75% off after waiting a year for a sale, but since I don't own a copy (physical, transferable & with DRM) of the game, I don't see the point of paying full price to Steam or any other games provider.

Typically large companies won't bother sending a lawyer if you sue them in small claims court. It's not worth the trouble for them. So as long as you are coherent and have a reasonable argument you will win by default.

The agreement found at http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/systems/wiiu/en_na/account_... excludes two cases:

1) protection of intellectual property rights (by either party)

2) small claims court

So if you just want your money back for your games it shouldn't be a problem to get it.

The exception for intellectual property claims is perhaps more interesting. Nintendo insists on stacking the deck and forcing anyone they've screwed to individually go through their rigged kangaroo court(1), except when enforcing their own intellectual property rights. I wonder how effective they would be pursuing pirates with mandatory binding arbitration, which the pirates haven't agreed to in any case, rather than filing DMCA complaints.

Perhaps though, if you've purchased licenses to their games and now you can't play them, that could be considered to be an intellectual property related dispute: interference with your right to use your legal licenses of their intellectual property.

(1)Not hyperbole, mandatory arbitration clauses are patently unfair and should be illegal, or legally made to have the effect of optional arbitration clauses.

Not trying to be sarcastic or such, but I am willing to bet that the agreement is inside the box IE you have "agreed" to it without knowing its contents when you buy the console and open it.

If that's the case will it hold up?

There is no such limit. That only ever applied to media content (if it has DRM).

You can install apps on as many devices as you want and redownload them as often as you want. They are bound to your account, not specific devices. If you, for example, set up a new iOS device you can just pick your iCloud backup from another device on startup and your new device will automatically download all your apps from the App Store.

Mac App Store apps are similar: You can download them (as often as you want) and use them on as many Macs you own or control. They are bound to your account, not your Mac. (The sole exception might be certain iLife apps like iPhoto that come for free with your Mac. Those might be bound to the specific machine you bought, they might not, I’m not sure.)

As long as you unregister each device before it breaks you can stay under the limit indefinitely.