Retro reviewer could face up to three years in jail over copyright — Italian authorities investigate creator for

Italian content creator Francesco Salicini, who owns the YouTube channel Once Were Nerd, says he is currently under investigation by Italian authorities for allegedly promoting piracy by “advertising” Anbernic game consoles. Anbernic is known for its retro handheld gaming consoles that can emulate classic titles from Nintendo and Sony. However, the company often ships its products with microSD cards that contain hundreds of copyrighted ROMs. This is definitely against the law and a form of piracy, but Salicini claims that he only reviewed the hardware and that no manufacturer sponsored his videos. He even went further and refrained from adding affiliate links to his content.

Salicini is currently accused of violating Article 171 ter of the Italian Copyright Law, which metes out a maximum penalty of €15,000 (around US$17,000) and three years’ jail time. At the moment, his case is still under investigation, with the Italian Guardia di Finanza (Financial Police) seizing more than 30 consoles, including those from Anbernic, TrimUI, and Powkiddy. The police also hold the creator’s phone, as well as the transcripts of his conversations with these gaming handheld makers.

The initial investigation takes about six months, after which the authorities will have to decide whether to drop the case or to go forward with the criminal proceedings. But in the meantime, Salicini also runs the risk of having his channels taken down even without definitive proof that he’s in the wrong.

Nintendo is known to be extremely protective of its intellectual property and is known to serve copyright strikes against YouTubers who emulate its games on their channels. The company has also taken down thousands of Yuzu emulator repos on GitHub and successfully shut down Ryujinx. At the moment, we don’t know who filed the case against Salicini, but if Nintendo or Sony (or both) is behind this, then they’re taking things up a notch with this potential case.

There’s currently a tug-of-war between game studios and game preservation enthusiasts on the legality of emulators. On the one hand, developers and studios want to have total and complete control over all their titles, even those that have been published almost 50 years ago. But as the hardware designed to run these games is slowly dying out and keeping them running on current-gen consoles might not be profitable for developers, the only way we can enjoy these is through the use of emulators — or else we risk losing these games forever.

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Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.