More infringing than emulators. De/recompilation projects are pretty clearly 'derivative works' of the original copyrighted program code, even if they require the original ROM in order to extract other assets necessary to compile a fully playable artifact.
The closer analogy would be fan-translation patches, which are also pretty clearly copyright-infringing derivative works though generally tolerated by rights holders.
Companies often encourage (or at least turn a blind eye to) creative derivative works from fan communities, especially if they're non-commercial and aren't cutting into the market share of their own official products enough for them to take notice.
This is a recomp project, not a decomp project; the original binary is supplied by the user, mechanically translated into source code at an architecture level (rather than a human-readable level), and patched. It’s AOT dynamic recompilation and the original IP isn’t distributed.
I do agree that decompilation projects are obviously not transformative (the only fair use feet they really have to stand on are purpose and market effect), but recomp projects are a little more interesting and might live on much less shaky footing.
Thank you for explaining this. I had the exact same misunderstanding as the parent poster, and was only corrected (and educated) by reading your comment.
A hypothetical relating to the legal aspects: Since this was mostly done by an LLM, the legal considerations would become incredibly interesting in cases where the original code (source or binary) was illegally leaked. What happens if the LLM saw the leaked code in its training material?
(My non-lawyer brain thinks it's completely obvious that in that case you have a derived work, but apparently the world has decided that it's completely fine to train LLMs on e.g. GPL code without the output being considered derived, so what the hell do I know…)
happa · · focus · HN ↗
wgjordan · · focus · HN ↗
The closer analogy would be fan-translation patches, which are also pretty clearly copyright-infringing derivative works though generally tolerated by rights holders.
Companies often encourage (or at least turn a blind eye to) creative derivative works from fan communities, especially if they're non-commercial and aren't cutting into the market share of their own official products enough for them to take notice.
bri3d · · focus · HN ↗
I do agree that decompilation projects are obviously not transformative (the only fair use feet they really have to stand on are purpose and market effect), but recomp projects are a little more interesting and might live on much less shaky footing.
gspr · · focus · HN ↗
A hypothetical relating to the legal aspects: Since this was mostly done by an LLM, the legal considerations would become incredibly interesting in cases where the original code (source or binary) was illegally leaked. What happens if the LLM saw the leaked code in its training material?
(My non-lawyer brain thinks it's completely obvious that in that case you have a derived work, but apparently the world has decided that it's completely fine to train LLMs on e.g. GPL code without the output being considered derived, so what the hell do I know…)
nextaccountic · · focus · HN ↗
Exactly the same that would happen if the LLM saw GPLed code in its training material and was asked to replicate it