Largely it is legal, but it's complicated. https://www.eff.org/issues/coders/reverse-engineering-faq

No argument on the latter, but I feel like they also have a 'practical' concern that if they very openly ignored 8-bit and 16-bit 'piracy,' it's conceivable that devices like the Anbernic and Powkiddy ones (that already exist in our timeline) would get sold more in the open and be even easier to get started with. Maybe some parents (say, millennials who want our kids to learn the kind of gaming we grew up on) would rather buy those than a $349 Switch with the $10/month subscription they sell to the selection of 80s and 90s games in Switch Online.

In our timeline of course, those are already easy to get, but those companies cater to the kinds of nerds who flash a new OS to SD cards and download collections of ROMs.

Now, do I think Nintendo actually makes that much money on Switch Online from people who (A) are only there for the retro games and (B) would jump on some "more mainstream" and easier version of retro piracy handheld? Mehhhhhh not really. But someone probably espouses that viewpoint at Nintendo HQ.

Many of their franchises date back to that era and are incredibly valuable. It's like Disney caring about Steamboat Willey all those years.

> it would be extremely easy for the rightholders to claim that both agents have most certainly ingested the binary during their training phase

Ingested the binary?

If they try to claim that then they need proof, right? Good luck getting that.

Just no, this isn't a thing at all.

> ingested the binary during their training phase

That's extremely unlikely. The pirating seems to have been of eBooks, which were first converted to text, losing graphics and such too.

That's my understanding anyway, from reading a few reports. :)

Reality would disagree. If the models are large enough few legal consequences are to be expected because governments don’t want to lose out on AI investments. And in the US the industry owns the executive, legislative and well, thoughts and prayers.

This creates an interesting problem via the normative power of the present - only people willing to accept the erosion of copyright can partake in the AI economy and since the AI economy has become essentially all growth, money and power rapidly concentrates on these people.

There won’t be a legal reckoning because the regulatory capture is complete - these models are “national security level” too big to fail now.