102
YouTuber faces jail time for showing off Android-based gaming handhelds - Ars Technica
(arstechnica.com)
this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2025
102 points (97.2% liked)
Games
20520 readers
423 users here now
Video game news oriented community. No NanoUFO is not a bot :)
Posts.
- News oriented content (general reviews, previews or retrospectives allowed).
- Broad discussion posts (preferably not only about a specific game).
- No humor/memes etc..
- No affiliate links
- No advertising.
- No clickbait, editorialized, sensational titles. State the game in question in the title. No all caps.
- No self promotion.
- No duplicate posts, newer post will be deleted unless there is more discussion in one of the posts.
- No politics.
Comments.
- No personal attacks.
- Obey instance rules.
- No low effort comments(one or two words, emoji etc..)
- Please use spoiler tags for spoilers.
My goal is just to have a community where people can go and see what new game news is out for the day and comment on it.
Other communities:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
In what part are they legal?
I think a lot of abandonware is legal? Devices like this usually support few dozens old consoles, which you can't even buy, and you can't buy games for them. Stuff like commodore64, old nintendo, etc. And you upload stuff there via USB usually. So the problem I guess is to see where the line draws, because some of those ancient games are legal to pirate now while others are still illegal because their right holder is still in business even though they effectively are abandoned and impossible to buy.
The legality of abandonware is disputed. Traditionally, even if the IP is unavailable, it doesn't make it legal to distribute. Copyright law is also defined jurisdictionaly. I'm not defending copyright, but it is important to understand risks when accessing this.
Now, in the States, I didn't believe receiving or even playing this game system would be illegal, but people have been jailed for making and distributing such devices. Our corporate overlords also have no qualms about squelching content based on perceived copyright violations.
This influencer is in Italy, and the laws seem to be heavily against owning such system.
My understanding is that some people think abandonware is legal because you can't be sued in the US by someone who doesn't have legal standing in regards to the issue. If the owners don't exist or don't care, there's nobody to do enforcement.
It's still in violation of copyright law so long as the copyright hasn't expired, but if nobody can come after you, then the law will not be enforced.
Well, I agree that if nobody owns the IP then there is literally no harm no foul.
Again, not that I'm here advocating for the rights of the poor IP holders, but it would be important to determine if there is an owner to property to call it abandonware.
Unfortunately, Nintendo diligently patrols their interest in this matter. I believe they hold titles until they determine they can generate revenue. Part of it is trying not to saturate the market so they can continue making money off new games. Some of it is possibly due to the willingness and availability of partners.
Yeah, there's no question that when it comes to Nintendo there is none of their IP that is now abandonware
We're talking about devices like the R36S, which come with an SD-Card with the full NES, SNES and MegaDrive library and several hundreds of MAME games, N64, PS1, PSP and so on. Those things are really incredible - they cost almost nothing (like 35€) and give you a really crazy value for your money. Buy them before authorities catch up, but yeah, there is nothing legal about them and many games that come with them are not abandoned.
Those are good reasons when considering ethics of piracy in general but not legality. For me ethics angle is thrown out of the window the moment profit is involved however and I’m pretty sure that guy was doing videos for ad money.