Ceris White

Yes, it does make reimplementing the server legal. The server is being run locally by users in all parts of the world (there is no one public instance yet), and US law dictates that the code produced from reverse engineering is copyright of the person who wrote it (the person who did reverse engineering). As long as they are not redistributing copyrighted assets like the game client or images, which the server doesn't do itself, it is legal.

@Ceryphim @OCynotis 海外で合法に入手＋クリーンルームOKでも、それだけでサーバー再実装が合法とは限らない。著作権は属地主義で運営場所の法が効くし、仕様再現や商標、規約違反など別のリスクもある。部分的な合法性＝全体の合法性ではない。

外国人の海賊版擁護を見て「ここまで遵法精神を持ち合わせていないのか」と驚愕してる

@emutyworks There's also no discussion of "handing over copyright" to users. What we want is for games to remain accessible after they've shut down. The method I describe above achieves that without requiring a company to provide any source code.

I'm all for having a proper discussion. My work is publicly available. If I, some random software developer, can create server implementations for dead titles, why can't the companies who own them? It legitimately is not hard to compile a mock server into the app and reroute web requests through it to make it offline.

ねぇ「海外勢」はこんな人ばっかりなの？ガッカリだよ！まともな話できる人は居ないの？ あのさぁ「労力がかかるかどうか」って意味での「簡単」なんて議論は*誰も*してないの 「技術的には可能だし簡単だろ」なんて低レベルな話をしてるんだとしたら「話のスタート地点にも立ててない」ので出直して、お話にならないwww

@St1ka It's twitter. The only people here are terminally online and/or bots. This and future conflicts will change nothing.

For years, JP Twitter and Western Twitter heavily romanticized each other. It only took a week or two of auto-translate for the first major clash to happen. The first of many I'd wager. I wonder if bridging the language gap will end decades of romanticizing

オフラインモードは技術的に難しいものでも高コストなものでもございません。また、追加の運用・サポートコストも基本的には発生いたしませんので、ご主張の意図がどこにあるのか、理解いたしかねます。

One of the interesting arguments the JP side has had against Stop Killing Games is that to make an offline version or would cost 50% to 100% more of the games original budget to do it. I'm not sure if this is just a blatant lie, genuine incompetence or total ignorance. We have guys with no access to the source code able to reverse engineer servers with, relatively speaking, minimal effort. If Joe Everyman can do it for 0 dollars in his basement without the nessecary information, how come companies that actually have that information apparently can't do?

@endo_hizumi This will change nothing, as Japan and it's companies have regularly excluded the western markets for decades. If they refuse to expand into the west, only they will hurt from it.

この論調だと、日本人は、めんどくさがりなので、西欧での展開をやめる可能性があります。 自分で自分を追い込んでる自覚はないのですね。

In America, and other western countries, ownership is implied. The license itself does not dictate that you can or cannot possess a copy of the program or binary data. Legally, there is no recourse for using a cracked copy of software in a non-corporate setting. This is why DRM exists and why the legal definition of piracy is "illegal redistribution of copyrighted content"; To prevent people who have the data from using it outside of the terms of service, because there is no argument of whether a person owns a copy of binary data.

@misaki @Ceryphim @ohtori_bigbird @kiga24313088 あくまで原則論であれば、そもそもアプリケーションは所有権ではなく利用許諾なので、是が非かで言えば非なのは概ね揺るがないと思います。 使ってはいけないがデフォルトで許諾を出す立て付けなので。 ただ、仰る通り大っぴらにやられなければ全て取り締まるのは難しいように思えます。

これ、今回のプライベートサーバに関してはそれらの法に関してはほぼ問題ではないということを多くの日本人が理解できていないという側面もある。

I don't believe that was the fault of the developers. The person who made the post that got popular was doing as media does and bringing public attention to something that could have stayed hidden. I didn't meant to come across as aggressive, but it really seems to me like a poor situation on all sides that started because a few Japanese users began commenting negative things on the post and it escalated.

@Ceryphim ごめんね、あなたの意見を否定するわけではないんだけど、問題の発端は「ゲームを遊べる環境を構築した」と人々に向けて発表したことじゃないかな。彼があなたたちからの感謝を放棄して、こっそりゲームを遊んでいれば、日本人もコメントしなかったと思うよ。

ニーアの騒動、日本と海外の争いを色々観察してるんだけど、不謹慎ながら勉強になることが多い🤔オートマタならともかく、外国人がここまでするほどのコンテンツだったのかニーアって

@lug120587 @ohtori_bigbird @kiga24313088 It's OK to perform the necessary modifications to be able to create the specification documentation AND for it to operate with the program created from this documentation. That is what reverse engineering is as a whole.

@Ceryphim @ohtori_bigbird @kiga24313088 貴方の引用している条文では ・バイナリを解析してインターフェースなどの仕様書を起こしても良い ・これを用いて独自にプログラムを作成しても良い と言う趣旨の内容が書かれていると思いますが。

No, this is protected under reverse engineering, as I said: law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17… (f)Reverse Engineering.— ... (2)Notwithstanding the provisions of subsections (a)(2) and (b), a person may develop and employ technological means to circumvent a technological measure, or to circumvent protection afforded by a technological measure, in order to enable the identification and analysis under paragraph (1), or for the purpose of enabling interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, if such means are necessary to achieve such interoperability, to the extent that doing so does not constitute infringement under this title. Particularly: "or for the purpose of enabling interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs", meaning altering the original binary to interface with the new server address to "achieve such interoperability". This is, in fact, considered clean-room. The only thing that would prevent it from being so is if the developers were to have access to the uncompiled source code in some fashion.

@Ceryphim @ohtori_bigbird @kiga24313088 既存のクライアントを修正する時点で改変でありクリーンルームではありません。 既存のクライアントを修正せず外部プログラムで接続先を改変するアプローチも既存のクライアントの不正利用であり、技術的保護手段の回避にあたる可能性が非常に高く違法となるリスクが甚大です。

@lug120587 @ohtori_bigbird @kiga24313088 Modifications to the existing client is the clean-room approach. There is no interfacing with the original source code, and instead applying binary patches to achieve interoperability. This is also protected under reverse engineering law.

@Ceryphim @ohtori_bigbird @kiga24313088 私の意見はサーバ単体をクリーンルーム方式で作成するのは、基本的には問題ない。 ただし、正規のクライアントアプリケーションをエミュレータサーバに接続するのは法的に問題があると言う話です。 クライアントもクリーンルーム方式で実装すれば問題ありませんが、誰もそれはしていないでしょう。

@lug120587 @ohtori_bigbird @kiga24313088 But that still doesn't revoke your right to analyze and reverse engineer the software you now legally own. In fact, having legally obtained the disc and not having agreed to any form of installer agreements is the best-case scenario for reverse engineering.

@Ceryphim @ohtori_bigbird @kiga24313088 マイクロソフトのOSをお店で買ってもライセンスキーを入れなければ使えないのと同じです。そしてそれはライセンスがあるから使えるのです。

@snapwith Speaking as a server developer who specializes in preservation and manages my own servers, I can tell you firsthand that it would not take much effort at all to achieve. If you think that's "beyond reasonable discussion", you're really just making excuses for corporations.

ま、オフライン化を簡単だとか、サーバー公開を簡単だと思っている段階で、もう議論の対象になりえない。

Doesn't this defeat your point about CDs implying ownership, then? Even if that was true, you still don't have execute it to perform reverse engineering. You can load any binary into IDA/Ghidra without executing it and perform analysis. And even then, it is a program that exists on your own personal device, which you have obtained in a lawful manner (via downloading from the app store or purchasing a CD). There is no precedent for such things to be revocable from the user once it is in their possession.

@Ceryphim @ohtori_bigbird @kiga24313088 法律の話となりますが、アプリケーションの実行時点でメモリのロードによる複製が発生します。これは日本、ヨーロッパ、米国共通の話です。 日本では適法利用の場合、この複製が例外的に許容されますが、サービスが終了しているアプリケーションの利用が適法とは判断されにくいと考えます。

@lug120587 @ohtori_bigbird @kiga24313088 If you want to enter the technical definitions, a CD and a zip archive (APK and IPA files) are analogous in that they both act as storage mediums for a user to access. If you treat the app as a medium holding code, then installing it on your device is much like holding a CD.

@Ceryphim @ohtori_bigbird @kiga24313088 CDは所有権ですが、アプリケーションは利用許諾を得ているからに過ぎないからです。 通常、ライセンスが切れたアプリケーションは利用できません。

@hinyon_at_kyoto @yorimeidori Oh, you mean people who demand functionality. I haven't had to deal with many of them, personally. I think on account of the fact that it's a revival project for a type of game (gacha) that doesn't typically receive a server emulator, people feel inclined to be nicer about it.

@Ceryphim @yorimeidori ソフトの作者も不幸になるし、ソフトの利用者も大いに困る訳だよ。全員幸せにならない。 ぼくはあなたのようなエンジニアは好きだよ。頑張ってほしい。

「ゲームのオフラインモードなんか１週間でちゃちゃっと作れるのにやらないのは企業の怠慢」 みたいな外国人からのリプを見るとゲーム制作会社の方も大変だろうなぁと感じる

If you're talking about players who use it for free, not at all. I always made my server with the intent of it being available to everyone, and I pay for the services (CDN, VPS, etc.) it uses out of my own kindness. If you mean code thieves, of course it's annoying. I didn't release Orchis (github.com/CerisWhite/Orc…) at first because I knew some people would want to steal it. I waited until things calmed down before I did. There's another Dragalia Lost server project who's source code was stolen by a Chinese developer who paywalls features behind it, which is a big problem, too.

@Ceryphim @yorimeidori こんにちわ！実際に自分の手を動かしてコードを書いてサーバーを作るあなたのような人は尊敬の対象だ。 ところで、最近は自分の成果物のバイナリやコードを公開することが当たり前になってると思うのだが、それを公開して当然、と言うフリーライダーに腹の立つことはない？

@morning_cicada The situation is complicated, and I think it's partially because the terminology the Japanese side used was being translated to "piracy" by the auto-translation, which caused two different conversations to happen at once.

もう28回くらい説明したけど、FFのリィンカネ勢の8割くらいも勘違いしているからもう一度書きますね。 まず、事の発端の内容は海賊版ではなくエミュ鯖ですよね。 それを理解してないリィンカネ勢が最初に海賊版だー！と騒ぎ立てたから、文字読めても文章読めない日本人（リィンカネ未プレイ）まで

@314_r4 Yes. They modify their copy of the game client to make it communicate with a new server address and their own personal server code replicates the original server.

NieR Reincarnationの件、PrivateServerなんだからゲームクライアントは公式のものでServer側を自作ってことだよね。