Android Marketplace starts cleaning house Google has been cleaning up the Android Marketplace, kicking out developers responsible for some of the most popular Android apps – without notice – and leaving customers scrabbling for an alternative. The applications concerned are games-console emulators: N64oid, Ataroid, Gamboid and Snesoid have disappeared from the …
It depends... Either it is legal (but largely purpose-free) on the grounds that the original hardware being emulated had no e.g. region-locking, or it breaches the DMCA because it is in essence a circumvention device (e.g. it defeats the intent of the region-lock).
Before you start, yes, I know that the non-installed firmware is responsible for enforcing the region lock, but it uses information from the hardware to do it...
While the sentiment is sound, unless you're running homebrew games (and plenty exist), the value of the emu us clearly in copied ROMs.
I'm not saying I agree with Sega, but I can see how they could put together an argument so that Google decide it's better to cut off a few devs on dodgy ground rather than risk getting in the crossfire.
Now, if Sega were doing it because they had an Android emu of their own to release, along with tested and tweaked ROMs of everyone's favourite classics at reasonable prices, I'd say "fair play" - but they won't. They'll crush all attempts for people to play classic games that Sega themselves have no interest in without offering a legal alternative, and then do nothing about it.
Perhaps these companies should learn to chat to such devs and come up with a legal compromise that pleases everyone, rather than acting like a spoiled brat?
Seriously, they could be making £1 a ROM without putting any effort in themselves.
"Is an emulator really a breach of copyright?"
Not in itself no. In this particular case it sounds like the guy copied the emulator code from open source projects, some of which had non-commercial clauses and packaged them up to sell.
The secondary issue of emulators that require firmware & games could also have come into play but I reckon this guy made it easier for Google to justify. It would be more difficult to yank some random emulator if it didn't ship with any copyrighted material.
N64oid and the rest of those *oid emulators were in breach of GPL, as they were sold, didn't send source code on request, and best of all the "developer" removed all references to the actual developers.
N64oid is mupen with an underdevelopment ARM dynarec (Ari64 and others) and graphics plugin tweaks for ARM. As for the others, I'm not sure which emulators they have been repackeged from. But the developer info has been completely wiped other than Yongzh's name.... GPL breaches everywhere.
I was under the impression that PSX4Droid was pulled due to copyright though.... and is a different developer (Zod4ttd) that also doesn't release code as required by GPL.
So you got the story half right.
Erm, selling software *isn't* against the GPL at all (see http://goo.gl/5gkwS). It never has been against the GPL either. The FSF recognises the need to earn a living! The other two points you make (distribution of source on request and referencing developers) are absolutely correct, so it looks like you got your opening two thirds right; remember, its free as in speech, not as in beer.
GPL allows you to package and sell content but you must provide source code upon demand. Maybe the guy couldn't or wouldn't. I also read that one of his emulators was ripped off an open source project which had a licence that prohibited commercial sale. So if they complained he was screwed and Google probably yanked all the rest to be sure.
Having seen Streets of Rage being sold on the Steam store the other day (Old megadrive/genesis title) I can see why they would want to shut down the free ROMs on the android store.
If they want to sell the games still (even if they are about £$ or something) they are within their rights to enforce their copyright.
DOSBox is an emulator of DOS without needing any proprietary firmware. Ghostscript is an emulator / interpretter of Postscript which doesn't need any proprietary firmware. Frotz is a z-machine (infocom adventure) emulator which doesn't need any proprietary firmware.
So it's not absolutely the case emulators need firmware although obviously many do need them. I would imagine that emulators targetting 8-bit devices could probably be clean roomed if the devs set their minds to it but I can imagine the legal minefield if the platform owners decided to sue anyway.
But I know back a few years ago there were a number of emulators which did not ship with any original firmware code precisely because of legal concerns. They were useless as downloaded. The disclaimer was that you had to legally obtain a copy from your own hardware and of course use your own legally owned software. In practice neither were hard to find online, but the important point was that the emulator author could not be reasonably held responsible for the actions of the user.
Now if he was shipping ROM images that are still under copyright and aren't licensed for emulator use, or if he took the emulator code from elsewhere and breached whichever license it originally shipped under, then he's the responsible party.
The ZX Spectrum is the sane, responsible model to follow here. Amstrad retains copyright on the system ROMs but specifically permits use and distribution of them in emulators. Software titles are pulled from the big online archive if the copyright holder comes forward and complains (which is why you won't find Codemasters software on World of Spectrum, for example, but in practice there are very few denied titles out of a catalog of nearly 10,000 games). If the copyright holder can't be found and doesn't come forward it's assumed abandoned until notified otherwise, and more than a few copyright holders and original authors have given their blessing (I understand that some are even quite thrilled that anyone still gives a rat's crap about the game they wrote 20-odd years ago in their bedroom).
Funny you should mention Orwell, as I was thinking of one his other works...
"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."
Animal Farm
Closing open sources, removing apps - they're turning into Apple
There are loads of emulators still on Android's market.
The reason these were removed has been widely reported to be complaints about licence violations filed by the teams who wrote the original emulators which these ones are based on. The Android ports were being sold for (substantial) profit and without making their source available, either/both of which were against the terms of use for the code.
If there's any kind of scandal here, it's that Google took so long to respond to the complaints, not that they took the apps down. (I've no idea what kind of proof was given to Google, nor how long it took other than a comment I read from one of the original devs saying it was about time, so I don't personally know if Google acted quickly or not. In the past they've been very slow to take down blatant pirate copies of apps, so I imagine it takes them even longer to decide something is using another project's source-code.)
If this were a complaint by a console manufacturer than you'd expect either all emulators or all emulators for that particular manufacturer to be taken down, not all the emulators made by one particular developer. So the explanation that it's a GPL (or whatever) violation makes sense, and fits with what people have publicly said they have sent complaints to Google about.
The Android Market is not open source - the rest of the OS may be, but the Google Apps are not. They're not preventing these applications from running on their OS, they're just removing them from their proprietary market place.
To be honest, it's a difficult position for Google to be in. If they leave the apps alone, they are at risk of lawsuits from copyright holders - they could claim that Google, by taking no action to remove emulators, are facilitating copyright infringement on their platform. However if they do remove the apps - as they have done - then they will be open to claims that they're not being fair or be accused as being as bad as Apple.
Given that one of the recent top-selling apps in the Market was an app designed to source ROM files for emulators, I'm not surprised that Google pulled the apps.
This isn't entirely unexpected. I don't like the way that Google behaved (no warning, revoking dev account and no proper response to subsequent emails), but it's not exactly out of character.
If you're an Android dev working in any area which could be seen as contraversial (and emulators are undoubtably one of these) you should take steps to limit your exposure to this sort of thing.
1) An alternative update system to the Android market. Even if your app just checks for the existence of a file on a server, this will allow you to continue to support users who are left in the lurch if Google do anything.
2) Good records of who bought your apps and an alternative licensing system. If Google do pull the plug, allow users to exchange their Android market licence for a licence key. This is hard work but can be automated somewhat, although granted not trivially.
Putting all your eggs in one basket is a bad thing, especially when Google own the basket. Fine, the Market is a good way of getting users, but if your app has a following (like these emulators do) and you have a decent autoupdate system you can get by without it.
For people mentioning Orwell in any context where they feel "oppressed."
Because an all-consuming totalitarian regime perpetuating a false war in order to maintain an iron grip on a deliberately undereducated populace is *exactly* like killing off emulators that illegally distribute Sega firmware (or rip-offs).
Perhaps we could call it Godwin's 2nd Law. Or the "Law of Get a Fucking Grip".
as do many. Godwin is only invoked when someone likens an opponent in the argument to something-nazi. The mere mention of Hitler may be perfectly valid.
BTW, my first choice of word there would've been 'Kafkaesque'. But since Amazon's Big Moment involved one of Orwell's own works, the latter is just too appropriate *not* to use.
The slightly-interesting corollary to Godwin's law arises when someone shows their ignorance by claiming it on clearly-bogus grounds. Which, to be fair, you didn't (though your suggestion that someone posting here might be feeling "oppressed" smells of strawman).
Its about time Google started cleaning up a little, sure there are lots of apps but Im always worried about getting them, with the stories of apps being malware which will do various things its about time they became a little more apple-esqe.
Apps shouldnt be put on there without checks and should be pulled if they turn out to be wrong-uns.
I love my droid phone and switched from the Iphone to it but I was happier buying from apple than google tbh just cos of the restrictions put in place by apple
"... or it breaches the DMCA because..."
Why would the free world give a tuppenny toss about that?
If merkins want to lock themselves up in dubious legal shackles then that is their right and privilege. If the rest of the world chooses to ignore merkin legislation, then that is theirs.
Go copyright rocks or something...
There is no argument that this developer wasn't breaking copyright laws, the firmware wasn't included in the download, but the app itself has all the links built into it for you to download every single version of the firmware available in 5 or 6 different languages (regions) as well as the links to all the games.
If Google ever started implementing stuff like this the ROM devs will be all over it like a rash, pulling it apart and killing it off. Even if it's part of proprietary apps like the Market and not the open source part, ways will be found to block it. Just like they've done with ad-blocking (which I do not support).
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