Police in Japan have arrested a 36-year-old man on suspicion of selling illegally modified Pokémon save data to customers online — a practice which is banned under the country’s 2019 Unfair Competition Prevention Act.
Suppose I’m playing an 80’s RPG on real legal hardware and I’m tired of grinding for XP. I use a cart reader to dump the save file, apply a patch I downloaded from the web and finish the game. I don’t even have to access any copyrighted data to do this!
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Unironically, yes. Copyright law should be completely removed. It was not created to protect artists. It was created to protect shareholder interests.
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Even if we agree with copyright law as is, that’s hardly a valid analogy. Save files alone are not a complete game.
Suppose I’m playing an 80’s RPG on real legal hardware and I’m tired of grinding for XP. I use a cart reader to dump the save file, apply a patch I downloaded from the web and finish the game. I don’t even have to access any copyrighted data to do this!
Unless you think data that amounts to
{ "rtc": 1713006754, "savestates": [ { "name": " Red", "xp": 1760, "pokemon": [ { "species": 115, "name": "Fluff", "hp": 24 }, { "species": 92, "name": "Bonk", "hp": 11 } ] } ] }(abriged example in JSON-y format) is copyright-protected, that is. And making a personal backup copy of software is legal (in the US) anyway.