I'm not so convinced it's that dangerous, but part of that is a naive sense that if they keep doing more dumb lawsuits, that just means it's more likely for a handful of defendants to actually fight them (as here) and win, which is the way to establish precedent or in the longer term actually get new laws that make things clearer. In this case, hopefully Costa Rica legal fees aren't so bad. Settlements are kind of bad in that regard though -- I'm reminded of the Youtube / Viacom fight that started in 2007 and eventually settled for an undisclosed amount. But in the meantime some bills were raised in committees about forcing site owners to implement things like what later became Content ID; what we got instead was Youtube doing their own proprietary version on their own accord (it probably did help fend off more lawsuits) and the law and courts being silent on the matter. Is that better or worse? What of the "danger"?
I guess another part of me not seeing much danger is because in the extreme, technology has for decades made this a non-problem when it comes to possibility and existence -- my old ROMs aren't going anywhere regardless of what Nintendo does or doesn't do, or what the law does or doesn't become. There's the matter of possibly lessened access and less widespread historical knowledge, which as a gamer I think is a shame, but the archives will survive and devs will continue making emulators for fun, anonymously if they have to. So long as things are available to those who seek them out, that's what I care most about, and that victory has already been won for non-service games.
I don't follow news that closely but I'm also not so sure these are all that new and unprecedented -- Nintendo's always been kind of a dick when it comes to lawfare and fan activities and work. Maybe you can point me to a piece that's looked at the frequency and types of legal activity over the years to compare? Is there anything concrete to suggest I should actually be worried at all about the future availability and development of Dolphin or bsnes or snes9x? I'm somewhat aware of them getting more aggressive with streamers, but the difference there is mainly that streaming and "content creation" are so much bigger now (it's come a long way since Zot the Avenger), so there's a lot more of it and consequently more legal related affairs. To me almost all of it falls under fair use, so whatever, but clearly Nintendo disagrees and Japan itself doesn't have the concept despite having a culture of doujin... (Sega, Capcom, Sony, and other Japanese companies all get my ire as much as Nintendo when it comes to this sort of thing at least.)
I guess another part of me not seeing much danger is because in the extreme, technology has for decades made this a non-problem when it comes to possibility and existence -- my old ROMs aren't going anywhere regardless of what Nintendo does or doesn't do, or what the law does or doesn't become. There's the matter of possibly lessened access and less widespread historical knowledge, which as a gamer I think is a shame, but the archives will survive and devs will continue making emulators for fun, anonymously if they have to. So long as things are available to those who seek them out, that's what I care most about, and that victory has already been won for non-service games.
I don't follow news that closely but I'm also not so sure these are all that new and unprecedented -- Nintendo's always been kind of a dick when it comes to lawfare and fan activities and work. Maybe you can point me to a piece that's looked at the frequency and types of legal activity over the years to compare? Is there anything concrete to suggest I should actually be worried at all about the future availability and development of Dolphin or bsnes or snes9x? I'm somewhat aware of them getting more aggressive with streamers, but the difference there is mainly that streaming and "content creation" are so much bigger now (it's come a long way since Zot the Avenger), so there's a lot more of it and consequently more legal related affairs. To me almost all of it falls under fair use, so whatever, but clearly Nintendo disagrees and Japan itself doesn't have the concept despite having a culture of doujin... (Sega, Capcom, Sony, and other Japanese companies all get my ire as much as Nintendo when it comes to this sort of thing at least.)