Marketing itself as an online video game rental store, Console Classix offers a paid subscription giving you access to thousands of games from a variety of platforms: ranging from the Atari 2600 to the Nintendo 64, our beloved GameBoy Advance, and many more.

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Console Classix differs from a standard rental store in that you don't actually receive the physical game at home: you're actually playing ROMs using emulators. So how does that work? Why are they claiming this service as fully legal, and why has it been up and running for so many years? According to the owner, Aaron Ethridge, this is all due to a legal loophole of sorts:
1) For starters, Console Classix owns at least one physical copy of every game it distributes
2) When someone wishes to play a game, the game isn't actually stored on the gamer's computer, it is only available in RAM so there is no (easy) way for the player to retain the game. So this can be considered as lending rather than distributing.
3) Console Classix doesn't lend more ROMs simultaneously than it owns physical copies. If they only own 1x Super Mario Bros 3 (NES) cartridge, then there can only be one person playing that ROM at a given time through their emulation service.

Whether or not this is technically legal, Console Classix has yet to be taken to court. Back when they started their business, they received a cease and desist letter from Nintendo, but this never went any further, and so Mr. Ethridge went on with his business.

What do you think about such services? Have you ever used Console Classix?

Make sure to read Ars Technica's excellent article on the subject

 

[FAST6191]

Loop hole my ass unless he is paying a lease on the games then he is breaking the law.

All games state unothorised copying, even charging to rent is prohibited and regardless where it's stored he is charging a fee to play.

Games/their manuals can state what they like. The question is would such a thing be enforceable and what law (case law, book law or international law) might there be to trouble it?
I am hazy on the specifics of US game rental law and what I do know says it is not so clear cut so I can't argue too much about what it might be, however looking out into the world there are plenty of rental services big and small and game companies as a whole are a bunch of litigious bastards so we would be seeing smack downs every other week (or no services) if it was not desired by the game companies.

 

[ThoD]

Games/their manuals can state what they like. The question is would such a thing be enforceable and what law (case law, book law or international law) might there be to trouble it?
I am hazy on the specifics of US game rental law and what I do know says it is not so clear cut so I can't argue too much about what it might be, however looking out into the world there are plenty of rental services big and small and game companies as a whole are a bunch of litigious bastards so we would be seeing smack downs every other week (or no services) if it was not desired by the game companies.

You are forgetting one major detail regarding said companies though, they are licensed and give most of the sales money to the publisher/copyright holder while simply keeping part of it as a fee, whereas this is paid renting of games without paying the publisher anything. Small difference on paper, but considerably different law-wise.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Semantics aside, with your logic it's legal to stream any tv show or movie, since you're essentially "streaming" the ROM. Video rental sites/stores have licenses to distribute their movies. I highly doubt this guy does.

Actually, many claim it is. It's sort of a legal gray area I guess, and probably depends on where you live. Even ISPs will tell you that they don't care if you download torrents as long as you don't seed them. Not that that makes it legal, but there's more to it, due to the rental nature of this site. I'm no lawyer, but if their lawyer that specializes in copyright says it's OK, then it probably is.
It's sort of like how archive.org has been getting away with hosting ROMs and ISOs because they are legally a library, although they allow people to make unlimited copies so the legality is dubious at best, but they have probably gotten an all clear from their lawyers.

 

[FAST6191]

You are forgetting one major detail regarding said companies though, they are licensed and give most of the sales money to the publisher/copyright holder while simply keeping part of it as a fee, whereas this is paid renting of games without paying the publisher anything. Small difference on paper, but considerably different law-wise.

I did have a quick look for what such things might be, and did also come the other way and look for business plans for setting up game rental companies. While there were some that offered cut price purchase* for a revenue share I struggled to find anything saying that (or buying a specially badged version) was the only way, and again where we see stuff like the "sealed game is still second hand" stuff from the other day going on and any number of other similar tier legal moves I have nothing about small scale shops getting slapped (looking at all the services and ideas people had around the place, to say nothing of the "small room in a corner grocery shop" approach I saw so often as a kid for VHS, I have to believe someone did it). That was just an internet search but even ignoring all the forums I would have hoped some of the straight up business advice sites would have mentioned it in their article form stuff if it was required.

*more of a thing I imagine if you are doing current games and similarly need to keep current, retro stuff like the subject of the OP is presumably a different matter.

 

[migles]

Are you even allowed to rent out cartridges? On DVDs there is a message it is for home use only. Video shops of old had to pay extra (a license?) to be allowed to rent them out. I imagine it is the same for games, so it wouldn't matter if they had a physical cartridge for each person "renting" a particular rom.

that's what i am wondering as well, in some movies and some other media there are messages all over its even forbidden to play it in public places like prisons or hospitals...
and you need "permition" for that..

 

[spotanjo3]

I am not paying him so he can have his profits. NAH!

I know the private site underground already that have so many plentiful of roms and isos for free. I am good to go.

 

[FAST6191]

I am not paying him so he can have his profits. NAH!

I know the private site underground already that have so many plentiful of roms and isos for free. I am good to go.

So you choose not to pay for your games and pirate them instead? Fair enough.

 

[spotanjo3]

So you choose not to pay for your games and pirate them instead? Fair enough.

You dont get it do you ? Hello ? I am talking about him having his roms and wanting to set up for people to pay the subscription so we can access to his roms for his own profits. Nah.

I can get it for free somewhere else and if I love it then I buy it for my collection because I am a video game collector.

 

[FAST6191]

You dont get it do you ? Hello ? I am talking about him having his roms and wanting to set up for people to pay the subscription so we can access to his roms for his own profits. Nah.

I can get it for free somewhere else and if I love it then I buy it for my collection because I am a video game collector.

I got it, however it seems you did not. The guy seems to have found a way to operate a rental service such that no more copies of the game are realistically in play at any given time than existed before one of his service users pulled from the library.

Play it how you will, however it would seem a stretch that you have some great reason for it.

 

[CaptainSodaPop]

As far as I'm concerned this is legal. Even if Nintendo may not consider it. At least it's "illegal" in the same way as renting or selling physical used games, which a lot of big sites and companies allow. Fact that Nintendo takes money for fans recording videos of their games tells a lot about their real motives. If they were really concerned about roms of their games lurking over the internet and knew their rights as they did all the time they would have taken down sites like EmuParadise and other ones long time ago. At the time they were losing their popularity and status in video game industry and since they didn't make money off from old games anymore they let that exist because every promotion, even a dirty one like that was good for them. Now when retro stuff became popular again they decided to cash in with NES/SNES Mini and take down sites. I bet if they didn't sell that good, they still wouldn't care about sites like that existing. They're probably working on legal emulators service right now for all possible platforms because that seems like a good market for them currently. Also another reason why they limited number of their games on Mini consoles... Every weird decision Nintendo makes is not a mistake but one made on purpose so they can cash-in some more money later. Which disgusts me. Nintendo will always hold the most special place in my heart for video games but I'm never buying anything digital from them at the same, or similar price as physical release. Even buying physical games from them is not justified a lot of the times, since they charge recycled remakes same as everything else. It's just hard to admit for fans because all of the nice memories and love for them, which ends up in giving them pass every time. Nintendo doesn't care about it's fans like it did in 90s, it's a fact.

 

[BlueFox gui]

k
there are still other roms sites don't worry

 

[CaptainSodaPop]

Sure, but they'll always struggle from now on.

 

[SirNapkin1334]

Would not use them. Paying for retro games!? Outrageous!

 

[AutumnWolf]

Never heard of them

 

[linkinworm]

I'm sure that Nintendo (or any company) has to give you a licence to rent games, hence the not for resale on a lot of games as they were distributed under a paid deal with who ever or with a console etc. pretty sure this still isn't legal

 

[chrisrlink]

problem is many people may used a D&R (Dump and Return) scheme for services like gamefly etc to make them less suspicious they may keep the physical copy 3-4 days before returningyoull not be on radar as easy as returning one everyday I bet thats how some warez sites do it too

 

[Subtle Demise]

It has never been illegal to rent or share games in the us. Some video stores that are still in operation continue to rent out games.

Well Nintendo did convince lawmakers to make it illegal for a while.

 

[PalindromicBreadLoaf]

Quite the take on a retro gaming store there. I have one buy me that does rentals, and when they come back within 30 minutes of the purchase, they always figure that the renter dumped the game. Then they will be back in 3 days later walking out with more rentals.

 

[Subtle Demise]

Quite the take on a retro gaming store there. I have one buy me that does rentals, and when they come back within 30 minutes of the purchase, they always figure that the renter dumped the game. Then they will be back in 3 days later walking out with more rentals.

That's not exclusive to retro games. When I had a CFW PS3, I used to rent games from redbox and rip them. I even got a free trial to gamefly and ripped those too. The publishers maybe got a few cents out of it, so I don't feel too bad for doing it.

 

[grossaffe]

If Aereo was brought down by the courts, there's no way this would stand.