Slashdot Mirror
Sega Shutting Down Hundreds Of ROM Sites
hakker writes: "It seems that Sega is drawing on the opinions handed down by the judge in the Napster case regarding who is liable when copyrighted files are distributed over file-sharing networks. This C-Net article describes how Sega has already shut down more than 200 ROM sites in the last couple weeks and is now after the ROM file sharing service Swapoo, which is run by a 17-year-old student. This is probably just the first of the repercussions we will see from the Napster case. How can companies like Sega be convinced that products that don't make them money anymore should be made GPL?"
To give away their gaming consoles for free?
Jesus, people, Sega is a company, not some self-sacrificial putz like ESR or
mother Teresa.
>If you played a Sonic the Hedgehog game on your sega genesis emulator and really really loved it (I don't see how that is actually possible...) then there's a good chance that you'd go out and buy the Sonic game for DreamCast.
I don't recall exactly when, but during one of the gaming industry's conventions (E3?), Kaz (or whatever his name is) talked about how the Playstation isn't just competing against other game consoles but the entire entertainment industry. He went on to clarify by explaining how it's (PS) competing for the time spent by users. Taking that into consideration, consider the time spent playing Sonic on an emulator. I think Sega would rather you spend time playing Sonic on DC because a) they like being able to sell newer games, b) sales of their product gives them a good idea of whether there is a viable market for their products, c) they don't like being linked to warez/gamez/ROMz sites.
For some reason with the internet and open source people feel like they can steal without ramifications and it's their right. I once had a person ask me to send them my new copy of Win2K so they could play with it, just like it was a normal practice.
These people are a bunch of theives. If you cannot afford the software you need, you have no need for a computer either. I hope these companies absolutely string out a few people - they are no better than a common criminal that breaks into homes and steals TV's.
Lock the bastards up
Good For Sega.
I am not adverse to going out and killing people who violate my personal property. Why should Sega be any different. I personally hope Sega is working with the Japanese crime syndicate to go out and murder a few of these people. That's probably the only way to get these people to understand.
If I personaly come across anyone who violates IP law, I will personally kill them.
I know everyone on slashdot enjoys the GPL. Fine, I'm very happy for you.
The problem is, most software includes code owned by other companies. In some cases large chunks, other times very small chunks. Open sourcing code that does not belong to you is not very appropriate. Trying to deal with the people who own it and trying to get them to allow you to release it cost money and time. Which leads me to my second point...
Releasing source code takes time. Shouldn't you guys know that the best? How long did it take to get a newer version of the slashdot code out? Why should we expect Sega to go through all this trouble over a dead product? Just pointing and saying "GPL it" is stupid. You guys act like 3rd graders sometimes.
I wonder if bread makers went after Jesus when he pirated loaves of bread.
Well, stealing them certainly hasn't worked.
Also, it should be noted that many companies are releasing "classic" games, along with emulators, on CD-ROM, so there's still plenty of money to be made with ancient old-school games.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Trademark laws are use it or lose it. Copyright has no such restriction.
--
My name is Sue,
How do you do?
Now you gonna die!
I recall one particular instance of an artist being sued by a recording label for publicly performing his/her own works, written long ago. Somehow, I think the aforementioned person would have been far happier if their song had no longer been owned by the company, but by the public, allowing them to make money off performing it without the company's approval.
The idea is that copyright should last the minimum amount of time needed to effectively promote innovation, and no more. Since the old system did promote innovation, the current is excessive.
One problem with copyrights, in particular now that they last for 3 aeons or heat death of the universe, whichever is longer, is that popular culture disappears. Things go away when a company won't sell it to you (because it isn't profitable) but won't let you copy it either (because, well because it's mine, mine, MINE!). By the time copyright expires (if a copyright ever expires again), the work might well be lost entirely. That has already happened with some movies, books, and television shows. In some cases, the losses are regarded as historically significant as well.
One solution would be use it or loose it. In other words, a company MUST allow a copy to be made for some reasonable fee or it will revert to the public domain immediatly. If they are actively selling exactly the work in question, that is sufficient to meet the requirement, but a derived work doesn't count. (In other words, you can get the original, not the screwed up atrocity they are selling now).
So as not to go overboard, they need not sell a license to make a derivitive work, just individual copies of the original for anyone who wants it.
If all of that is just too much like work to them, the option is to release it into the public domain, or publicly declare copying to be OK.
"How can companies like Sega be convinced that products that don't make them money anymore should be made GPL?"
Short Answer, you can't.
They are smarter than that. They know that trends change back and forth. That eldritch ROM is also a property with a character or theme that might be resurrected if/when things change. Did you ever in a million years think Pong3D would ever be a real license? I sure didn't but there it is making someone money again after all these years. GPL'ing the ROM is tantamount to giving up the copyright on the concepts behind the game. They just won't give up what may one day be valuable again.
What we need to do is get WIPO declared unconstitutional and then move copyrights back to a reasonable value like 50 years from creation or 5 years after death which ever is longer. Copyrights are like patents, a period of time to control and make money off your idea, then it reverts to society as a whole.
Oh yeah and while we are at it, recind the evil Musicians work for Hire thing.
And I want a Pony too. (A nice Ford 5.0 pony =)
--
$you = new YOU;
$you = new YOU;
honk() if $you->love(perl)
The poster is simply pointing out that these games are old, and only producing negligible sales. If companies are worried that GPLing a product would reduce their profit, then what better products to GPL then ones that are no longer making money? Why waste time and money defending copyrights for products which are no longer worth anything?
Granted, I agree that GPLing is a bit silly. simply making them available to the public for free distribution without modification would be easier and more effective, and would be just as much of a publicity coup for Sony.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
No, you don't understand now. Nebby was responding to timothy's question: "How can companies like Sega be convinced that products that don't make them money anymore should be made GPL?"
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
US Constitution, article 1, Section 8:
The Congress shall have Power:
(snip bunch of stuff not relevent to this discussion)
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
I.e - not so you & your kids can make a fortune, but to encourage you to put stuff into the public domain. Note that for most of the US's history, copyright was 14 years. It worked. About your kids - have you considered saving some of the money you make off the work & passing it on to them? Or even that they might have to (gasp) work themselves, like everyone else?
Also, explain to me how, under Sonny Bono Copyright Act, extending Walt Disney's copyright for another 20 years has encouraged the gentleman to be one bit more productive? Show me one new work by him in the last year.
(hint for the sarcastic impaired - Walt's dead)
Niintendo has always had a bad rep when it comes to the distribution of >BACKUP< ROMs of their older games. I agree with copyright law that if you never paid for the game cartridge you don't deserve the ROM but if you did, then by law you're allowed a digital '.BIN' format copy for your own personal use. This is especially important for the NES as most of those crappy machines have all broken down years ago but still the Nintendo Nazis are killing any ROM distribution sites out there. Mind you, I still keep my Sega Master System in tip-top shape for Phantasy Star I but it's nice to play the thing in the PC when my Fiancée wants to watch a film or something and no need to worry about only 5 backup slots. Now to hear Sega following suit, it is tragic. I have visited the off-shore www.emux.com for years to keep my cartridges up to date with the ROMs and to look for new emulators and they have always respected Nintendo's no-ROM rule, but with Sega now pulling the same old trick, I fear Emulation Excitement may be a shell of its former self, alas.
<speculation>But I'm not surprised in a way. After all, Sega is claiming the Dreamcast is the last of their console machines and they are going exclusively to PC-games. What better way to fight the proliferation of old, obsolete, non-profitable ROMs and expanding Emulation than to come out with your own, official Emulator and re-introduce all your old games in Digital form. Simply by the ROMs from Sega in lieu of the Cartridge and bamn, Sega could make some pretty good money on the nostalgia factor. But to do that, they need to dry up the other 'free'/'pirated' [or 'backup' for those of us following the copyright laws] ROM sites out there to return to being the monopoly producer, as I feel is their right. To misquote 'Field of Dreams', if you sell it, they will buy.</speculation>
Be Seeing You,
Jeffrey.
Time Lord, Dark Horse: The Techno Mage of Gallifrey
--
How can companies like Sega be convinced that products that don't make them money anymore should be made GPL?
(from the submitters comment)
Man, that is a dangerous rationale for making something free - if you take, say, the RIAA argument that copyright violations are theft, then what you're basically saying is 'well, people are stealing it - gpl it!'. Uh-Uh. I don't want to see the GPL being some kind of copyright junkyard, I prefer to think of it as moving forward and encouraging progress and development. I love free software, and the spirit in which it is made produced and distributed and would hate to see us giving ammo to 'the other side'....
Sega probably wouldn't be going after these ROM sites if they didn't provide Dreamcast ROMS. But with the game console industry, you sell consoles usually near or at a loss, and let the games and accessories bring in the profit. When someone can just go and download these games, and play it on their console, Sega earns little profit.
Although Sega must have not thought things through with the ROM issue on the DC. How hard would it have been to insure the game is running off a GD-ROM? Put that check in the BIOS, and not the boot disk, and you elliminate quite a few ROM users who don't want to install "Chip-X" into their DC to get around an internal block.
GPL is also not the way to go on many things out there. Companies exist to make products, and earn money off them. While GPL might work great for code developed at 3am for a sound driver, it dosen't work when it's done 8-5 at a company. The company has to pay employees, and employees need a paycheck to survive. Period. GPL the entire computer industry, and watch it die in a month at most.
Dont you have to defend your (c) or lose it in the states?
No, you're thinking of a trademark. Copyright is now inherit when you create the work, and exists even if you allow millions free access to your work.
It makes sense in the case of trademark - a TM is something that distinguishes your organization or product in a particular space; if many use it then you aren't very distinguished.
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
I Blame Lev
I wasn't justifying MP3 piracy. (I am against what the RIAA is doing however, because one of their main motivations is controlling artists and their music. That's not the point of this post though.)
I was clarifying what the motivations are for Sega for shutting down ROM sites and why they are definately partially different from those fighting Napster. Sega has an obligation on the part of the copyright holders of their games to fight ROM piracy. The copyright holders want their protection. The RIAA has the same obligations to their artists, however, not all artists want them to fight Napster because the recording industry has "had them by the balls" for years now.
That was my point.
--
There is a bit of difference between the MP3 copyright issues and those faced by those of Sega/Nintento/whoever. In alot of cases, ROMs are licensed to Sega and have copyrights retained by dozens and dozens of various companies. Sega is responsible as well for upholding all those copyrights.
The thing that makes it tricky to "GPL" ROMs is the fact that permission would need to be asked of each of the companies who make ROMs (except for the ones developed in house by Sega, of course)
This is how it is with Nintendo, at least..I'm pretty sure Sega has the same issues. It's pretty understandable why they'd take action on ROM pirates.. not because it's in their own personal interest (ie, they're losing money), but because if they don't stand firm on the issue then the people whose ROMs are getting stolen may be hesitant to develop for them in the future.
--
Hi. I submitted the article and commentary. Some excelent points have been brought up. In response to one posters comment about the GPL becoming a copyright graveyard; the RIAA still makes plenty of money from music even though people are pirating it. Also, I think (in response to someone else) that the GPL is not the appropriate licence here. They can release it under their own licence, as they have the right to do this as they are the sole distributers. An emailer suggested to me that the reason companies will do something like this is that they wish to retain the name of the game for future use on a future platform. That is perfectly viable with the proper wording in a licence. But I think one thing people loose sight of here is who is Sega's audience and who are they going after. Their target audience is people in the teens to late 20's. I think that is the bulk of their market. Something can be said about comsumer sentiment. I, being of that group, would be less inclined to buy something from Sega after seeing them going after someone in my age group. Whether they are right or wrong, this is bad press for them and that in the end will probably damage them more than the trading of illegal ROMS. Who knows how much good can come from loyalty and good feelings toward a game company by this group of people. Probably a lot. So, not being an IP lawyer, I think the best route for them would be to conceed that these games will continue to be traded, no matter how much time, money, and resources they sink into the problem and instead, find a way to satisfy thier requirement of keeping the name they want to protect and the company loyalty they need to sell games.
Actually, I think that software companies relied on copyright protection up until Apple lost it's suit against Microsoft copying it's "look and feel"... Copyright was made to protect against duplication, but not abstract things... so the software companies started patenting their creations using phrases like "method for transfering..." or "system embodied in a..."
That's my belief... I may be wrong, though...
Copyright isn"t a guarentee that you'll make money... plenty of things have been copyrighted only to lose boatloads of money. The only thing that copyright does do is insure that the original creator (or whoever they authorized) of a work is the one that makes money from it...
If you create something, you or again, whoever you authorize should be the only one allowed to make money from it during your lifetime...
The original poster had a great point that if things lapsed into the public domain rapidly, then in fact it would be the oh-so-loved BIG corporations that would stand to make any money that was to be made from them, and theyed be under no obligation to pay the authors... Is that what you want?
I think Sega should be more worried about this.
I think people pirating Dreamcast games is a little bit more worrying [for Sega] than people trading 10 year-old Megadrive (aka Genesis, for you poor American souls) games.
Something doesn't have to be GPL to be free...
Why doesn't Sega release games for which there is not any feasible return on investement under their own "abandonware license"???
That way they get additional kudos from their emulator following, and publicity. They certainly wont make any more money selling 10 or even 5 year old software... most of it will be sold second hand anyway.
I really don't get the attitiude of these big companies trying to protect stuff they stand no hope of gaining a further return on investment on.
Certainly, I think the publicity investement gained from allowing a 17 or even a 50 year old kid would far outweigh any licensing revenue they would be likely to gain from squeezing rom exchange sites....
Personally these big companies can bite me. I will still be able to find roms, no matter how far "undernet" they go.
I would rather be able to do it legitamately, but.........
The secret of success is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake those, you've got it made. (Marx)
(Disclosure: I'm a former video game developer for one of the companies mentioned below)
Classic video games are still profitable. While we may look back at some of the old games and say they're worthless now, they're still being sold in many cases.
Activision is selling 30 Intellivision games on one PSX CD for $29.
Midway is selling their "Greatest Hits" Volume 1 and Volume 2(no longer on their site).
Atary (admittedly part of Midway now) is also selling a Greatest Hits cd.
Namco has a Museum 1, Museum 3, and Museum 64 collection out now.
Also, making the games GPL'ed is really silly. Lots of old games get remakes, why would manufacturers want the market filled with 500 versions of a past title when they want to make a new one?
While this is surely going to be considered flamebait by many... The same copyright law that allows the creators of video games to set their own terms of distribution is the SAME LAW that allows GPL developers to set which restrictions there are on distributing GPL'ed code.
So many people say that copyright laws need to be thrown out or changed... Want copyright laws reduced to 5 years? That means a 5 year old Linux kernel would be free for anyone to do as they wish with, without GPL'ed restrictions. All the old GNU binutils would have no protection at all. While I agree that insanely long copyrights don't do a lot of good for society, people are trading ROMS for some rather recent games.
MAME now supports Rampage World Tour, a Midway game released in 1999. A quick check of a few big ROM sites turn up the ROMs for this game. This game is STILL ON THE SHELVES for consoles, and the ROMs are being traded. Any half-way excuse of "preservation of classics" is out the window at this point.
I like classic games more than most. I've got an extensive library of old game boards in my basement. I also like having the games on my PC, but I buy the classics CD's when they come out.
Remember, just because something isn't for sale anymore doesn't mean it's free, or even should be.
-- Kevin
i guess "re-releasing" is apparently now a synonym for "distributing stolen goods"?
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
Game ROMs are expensive, thats true, but anyone knew this allready when buying this stuff. If they take measures against illegal copying its their right to do so. They live from producing and selling them. ...
I think this is diffrent from the Napster discussion, as most people I know are not satisfied with mp3 quality so they buy the CDs they like anyway.
This is pure illegal software spreading so you should not wonder about them closing down the sites, this is nothing new
Reading the subject on that post makes it sound like Sega is doing big evil things... Here is the catch, they aren't. First of all, video game companies shutting down the rom sites is something old as hell... They'll stop bothering with the Genesis in a couple of years most likely.
,1337!!!) wants DC games. And those are whats getting shut down. I'm not sobbing over the those sites being shutdown... And I doubt anyone else who has 2 brain cells to rub together do either.
But here is the thing, these roms sites that sega is shutting down, I'm 99% sure it is Dreamcast rom sites. See, the encryption recently got broken, so now every kiddie (
I'm sorry, but I think SlashStaff need to research the articles that they are going to post, at least a little... I mean the story really gives it a "Sega baaaaaaaaaaaad" vibe right off the bat, but when you get the full explanation, it makes sense. I'm getting sick of badly written slashdot subjects, its like being back in Montesori school and playing Telephone. Bleck.
http://www.somethingpositive.net Funny + bitter = comedy gold
IMHO, going after Napster was wrong, because it isn't Napster that was sharing the copyrighted files, they only provide a service which happens to be used for illegal purposes often.
But Sega is suing the actual people who are illegally copying their copyrighted materials. This is unquestionably within their legal rights. As a business, it is right and proper that they should keep others from making unauthorized copies. You can argue that they aren't making any money from it now, but who is to say that they won't be selling legal copies of game ROMs in the near future? Whoever owns the Intellivision system now did just that fairly recently.
However, regardless of what is right for them to do, the copyright protection of older ROMs is clearly not supplying a significant motivation for them to create new materials (which is why we're supposed to be tolerating copyright in the first place). I think we should all speak out loudly and often in favor of shortening copyright terms to 5 years. If a copyrighted product isn't going to pay enough to justify its production within 5 years, it isn't going to be made for profit (in other words, nobody makes a game or movie because they'll be able to sell it in a "classic collection" ten years later). When copyrights were first made they had a short term: I think around 20 years or so. Since then, publishing moves much, much faster, though constant lobbying from the publishing industries have increased the term by an absurd amount (of course they're always going to want more! who turns away profits? that doesn't mean it's good for the rest of us). Most profits from video games are made in the first few weeks after release, ditto for movies, and even most novels probably pass their peak sales within a year of their release.
It managed to creep up slowly, because it's hard to raise a passionate public opposition to a 10% increase in copyright term. In the past, very few people were capable of making copies, and most of them had a vested interest in longer copyright terms. Well, now we are just beginning to all be able to make perfect copies, and most of us have a vested interest in shorter terms. Now, a five-year old movie, book, or game is a historical artifact and a part of our cultural heritage that should be free to share and preserve, just like a 200-year old book or painting.
I think if we make a loud enough noise about it (not here, of course), we can stir up widespread support.
Businesses should be expected to follow their own best interests. However, the voting public should also follow their own best interests, and limit intellectual property for their own benefit.
And, of course, all of these arguments go double for software. Nobody will decide not to write software just because it'll go into the public domain in 5 years.
OT question: does anyone know the basis for merchandising monopolies? How the heck does copyright on videos featuring a certain purple dinosaur translate to a monopoly on stuffed purple dinosaurs that look similar to the one in the video?
---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
How can companies like Sega be convinced that products that don't make them money anymore should be made GPL?
The copyright isn't just on the actual games themselves; it's on the characters too. So even if they're not making any money off the original "Sonic the Hedgehog," for example, making it GPL would release Sonic to the public --allowing people to make bootleg Sonic games, merchandise, etc. And it would almost certainly damage Sega's image, not to mention making it less profitable for them to sell "Sonic the Hedgehog 13" (or whatever number they're at now) for the Dreamcast.
This would be akin to Disney GPLing "Fantasia" and releasing Mickey Mouse to the public. I can only imagine the flood of bootleg Disney merchandise once the copyright runs out on "Steamboat Willie."
In short: sometimes if something isn't free, there's a very good reason for it.
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
While we're on it, note that unless you can prove you're a game developer, the backup of the ROM *MUST BE EXACT*. I.e., you burn a ROM based on the ROM you have. [ROM refers to the actual hardware chip, not a ROM file here]
I don't know if the 'backup' must be done using a native copier, or it can reside on disk temporarily as a side-effect of backing up.
Note that game developers are the only people allowed to have a copy of the ROM in another media format. For the majority of us, it's ROM->ROM only.
I think the reason behind this outbreak is Sega's plans to introduce a pay-to-play game service that they plan to open in Japan real soon.
The gist of this service is that people can pay a small fee for the right to checkout a ROM image of a classic Sega / Turbografx-16 game from a website and play it to their hearts content on their Dreamcast console.
They plan to shut down these ROM sites, probably because these sites will detract from their service (IE, all people, including me, are cheap bastards.) and steal away profit.
Try www.rpmfind.net or ftp.wesmo.com for LinuxPPC precompiled RPMs. Note that these should work fine with LinuxPPC 2000, YDL CS 1.2, and MkLinux R1, but not necessarily with SuSE. If you use Debian/PPC, you should be able to use alien to install them.
For other such questions, I suggest the new LinuxPPC.org site or the LinuxPPC mailing list archives.
cya
Ethelred
(who knows that he's risking an Offtopic mod but is begging and pleading for clemency)
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
What happens after this is gone? How come Napster can stay and these services can't?
Wait I take that back. Napster may or may not stay... I posted too quickly. And also, if Swapoo is gone, then that would probably set a legal precedent for Napster, or vice versa. Of course, there would be hundreds of baby Swapoos just like baby Napsters...
What happens when they DO decide to go after people selling these things secondhand? What happens when they simply "license" the game, CD, DVD, or operating system to you? Oh yeah - we've started to see that now haven't we? What happens when the flea market gets raided and the LEGIT copies of DVDs get grabbed because the person isn't a "licensed seller"? When will these companies begin trying to set the price on used sales and require that they receive a portion of the profits?
I honestly see this coming if we're not careful and it may even be happening somewhere that I'm ignorant of. The snowball is already rolling downhill - pretty soon this slide will be unstoppable.
Guess it's time to get those ROMs into some of the distributed filesystems out there huh? Oh that's right - the programmers who programmed those could actually find themselves liable now too. Cute....
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
If I could buy CDs with an emulator ala MAME and a pile of my old time favorite arcade games I'd be all over it! However these things aren't being offered for sale at any price, short of an entire cabinet that likely needs repair, so I do the emulator thing. For that matter I don't even do much more than dabble in MAME simply because tracking down the ROMs, setting it all up, and getting it working is a pain. Put some $$ incentive out for the programmers and it would become MUCH more user friendly I'm sure. And yeah, the Arcade article a couple of days ago got me interested again but I've not yet gotten to try the newer emulators and frontends - but I will :-)
Kripes, give us a choice and make some money - don't just take the choice away!
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Get 'em while they're hot! no pun intended....
antihero http://www.xappeal.org- Daily OS X News
You must protect your trademarks from dillution else you risk losing them. Patents and copyrights don't lose their power unless they expire naturally (17 years for a patent and 95/120 years or life + 70 years for copyright) or you explicitly give up your rights to them by entering the material into the public domain.
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
There is a huge difference, legally and otherwise, between Napster, which is merely a cataloguer and arbiter of content distributed by others, and a server providing copies of copyrighted materials.
From a legal standpoint, the server *IS* a direct infringer of the copyright, by distributing copies of the roms. 17 U.S.C. s. 106. This was never true of Napster, where the complaint doesn't even allege direct infringement.
Moreover, the number of people who can claim to be time- or space- shifting for their copy of a coin-op video game can be counted on the hands and toes in my immediate family. Thus, Napster's primary defenses would not apply to these other situations.
There is not other way to spin it: the "ROM sites" are direct piracy sites, no more and no less.
These remarks would not, of course, apply to a file sharing service along the lines of Napster -- although those who copy content for which they are not space shifting would themselves be direct infringers, even if the file sharing services were not.
This was what I was talking about in the "Emus And Do-It-Yourself Arcade Construction" article reply just two days ago. (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/08/04/12412 17&mode=thread)
You can talk about open sourcing and free software all you want, but in the end it's the courts that will decide how the internet and new technology will be shaped. And typically this is decided by the side with the most expensive lawyers.
Huh... and the emu article was only two days ago...
I think that the patent applications that I referred to happened even before that though. It should prove interesting to the debate to get the facts though...
I'll go browsing and see what I can find.
I do remember stories of Bill Gates in the early eighties saying that the software industry required intellectual property laws, or the industry would never get off the ground. And I think that those comments were made after various failed attempts at patent applications.
actually I would never try to LICENSE any software to begin with...
You're asking the wrong guy that type of question. I don't try to make a living selling software packages on shelves to people who don't know where the on/off switch is. I get hired to write programs.
Which means, I go in, get the functional description, do my job for a month or two, get paid for my time... and then I go on to the next job. Plus, there will always be a next job, since technology is slipping out of our hands more and more each day. I have no fear that I will always find work.
So my question to you is: "Why do you feel so insecure as to insist that your services require a compensetory model completely different from any other service industry?"
Why doesn't the waitress charge by calorie... and then roaylties in inderect proportion to your excrement? Why doesn't a lawyer charge your family for every year you live as a free man AFTER you are acquited of murder? Why doesn't your auto mechanic charge you for every piston stroke plus a surcharge by gallons of gas your car consumes? These are as crazy ideas as your so called "proprietary" products.
Why do lawyers lose their licenses for charging two different clients for the same hour? That's called "double billing," and is illegal in service industries. However, you feel entitled to charge THOUSANDS of times for the same hour's work... and feel that it's stealing if you DON'T.
My point before is that under United States Constitutional Law... intellectual property CAN NOT exist legally. There ISN'T such a thing. No one owns ideas. It's a crock made up by people who know that their product, left to natural economic forces, won't make money without MAJOR government protection.
It's corporate welfare.
So let's say I write a piece of software... which I do every day. The deal is I don't make my living off of the code. I make my living off of the service. The "licenses" that Sega has written giving certain people the RIGHT to use their software are VAPOR! We haven't ever pushed the fact because it wasn't hurting anybody. We felt that as long as they made a good product, who were we to take on huge corporations on technicalities that didn't really affect us. Plus, who's going to waste the money to fight something in court that was completely HYPOTHETICAL... more of a legal argument to be argued by grad students in mock trials.
But now, thanks to the "dot coms," everybody wants to make money off of US, the techies and geeks. They want to apply the old rules to our new economy. They want to take what is in our heads and put it in neat pakages and sell it for a tidy profit.
This isn't about ego... if you wrote good code, I'll give you huge amounts of credit. This isn't about my programs keeping food in my mouth... I'm in a service industry, I don't make anything that I want to be sold as a product. It's about corporations claiming the rights to our most basic of freedoms.
Intellectual property. There is no such thing!
No.
You obviously don't know anything about patent law. You're taking the last two or three years of software patents as your basis, and those patents won't hold up. The problem with those patents is that they're being given without any understanding by the patent office of the technology itself. As time goes by that will change. In the meantime, those patents that have been awarded will never stand up in court, where patent law inevitably functions.
Patent law has may more hurdels to jump through than does copyright law. I know, I have several. There is no way 99% of ANY programs would ever get a patent because they are not new ideas. Plus, most fall under the common sense clauses.
Copyright law is to protect publishers from other publishers. It has nothing to do with protecting artists. It's a limitation to free speech and should be used sparingly in assigning to a publisher it's PUBLICATION rights. But the artist has no control of his works. Once released he has no right to them. At least thats the way it's supposed to work. But people have this moronic idea that their ideas are theirs and they OWN them.
So copyright law has been twisted to this view.
But I'll bet you it will take only one case to get to the supreme court, and all of this stuff goes away as unconstitutional.
As to your book of recipes, the recipes themselves are not copyrightable. You'll find tons of them published in Sunday newspapers across the country. The collection itself is though.
Slashdot should do a story on "intellectual property." There is no such thing. Copyright law applied to published books and written works. It was protection between publishing companies. The author sold his rights to the publishing company via CONTRACT. If no contract was signed, it was typically the author's right to go write for someone else. The company with the copyright never owned anything tangible, just protection from the U.S. government from other publishing firms.
Patent law dealt with inventions and manufacturing. (i.e. tools) The U.S. government would grant protection FOR A LIMITED TIME for any invention granted that it:
1. Wasn't of common sense. Meaning no one in that particular field wouldn't have made the logical leap themselves.
2. They had to show that they would put it to good use... that they weren't just sitting on it.
Both of these ideas have been completely warped. Everyone now thinks that they have the right to "get rich quick" with one idea. Like if I put a year into this program, my great-great grand children should be able to live off of the royalties.
I propose that the government simply remove it's protection from copyrights dealing with computer programs. They should have fallen under the patent law to begin with. In fact it is my understanding the the computer companies originally had attempted to file for patents for software, AND WERE DENIED. So they obtained copyrights instead... which I would view as unconstituional.
Let them make all the contracts they wish, with both author's and consumers... but the government should have no authority to offer it's protection in obviously CIVIL cases like this. And the judicial branch should review the latest bunch of intellectual property laws coming out of the legislative branch... and declare them unconstitutional before it's too late.
They may be part of our society, but they aren't legal. Not in the United States anyway.
It's a tough concept to wrap your mind around, especially if you grew up with shrink wrap licensing being the norm, but Freedom of Speech protects freedom of thought. Freedom of the Press doesn't mean of the media. Hell, the media didn't even exist when the constitution was written. It meant that you can transmit any thought or idea via the most highly tecnological advances of the time... the printing press.
Which means that no one has a RIGHT to any idea. The government CAN NOT regulate it. Period.
Now if a company wants to go into a binding CONTRACT with you, then you may (under special circumstances), give up those rights voluntarily. But both sides would have to agree to that. I don't believe that shrink wrap licensing can possibly hold the same weight as a notorized, signed and witnessed contract. Plus contract law itself is controversial. There are millions of people who would even disagree with the idea that you can voluntarily give up your rights under ANY circumstances.
You base your argument on the idea that thoughts belong to someone. That you can actually come up with an original idea that no one else has ever thought up before. That you should be paid for being such a genius. That any idea used twice is stealing.
Yes, people have put a lot of time and effort into programs. No one doubts that. But as a programmer I can tell you, all of my programs have code taken from somewhere else. Every line that they teach in college was written by somone else before I got there. Where should the line between information and product be drawn? And who is to determine it?
My suggestion simply is that if programs are ideas, (since that is copyright laws' jurisdiction) then you can not own them. And if they are tools, then they should be ONLY covered by patent law... and all the limitations to which patent law restricts these ideas. Thus after 17 years (or 19...I can't remember) these programs would become public domain. And any code found to be of common sense could never, EVER be patented in the first place.
So if you can make a program that moves the world forward by THOUSANDS of years of evolution, then apply for a patent. The government should give you a limited monopoly for a third of your life to benifit from the gifts you've given to mankind.
But if your program is obsolete in five years, then how beneficial was it to humanity in the first place. Why do you feel that you should be given a monopoly when our constituion specifically states that we have a right to those ideas. And how can I possibly STEAL something to which you had no right in the first place?!
What distresses me is how quickly people are willing to give up their rights for money. How quick you were to judge this as STEALING. Like it was something physical. Like I was breaking into someone's house and raping his daughter. It's a fricking program!
Programming is a service industry. It is not a PRODUCT industry. You don't make X amount of dollars on every widget you sell... you get paid X amount of dollars on every hour you sit there at the console... doing your job. The old timers remember those days... before Microsoft. Before programming was warped into a money making machine for the technology stunted.
Stop giving them the edge. Wake up. You're not stealing anything. They're programs. Like every other scientific advancement, we're SUPPOSED to be building new programs on the foundations of the OLD ONES! That's all. They are ideas expressed in ones and zeros. They only have value if WE GIVE THEM VALUE. Stop feeding the marketing types.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/08/06/21132 16&threshold=-1&comments ort=3&mode=thread&pid=52
Is not Flamebait and should not have been modded down.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
How can companies like Sega be convinced that products that don't make them money anymore should be made GPL?
First, the designs of old games can be an asset to a company. Look at how old collections of Williams, Midway, Konami, and Atari games have sold very well for the PlayStation. Second, games can contain other property that can be valuable. Would Sega really want to start GPLing games that contain Sonic?
Either way, GPL is pointless in this case. If Sega just let the ROMs be copied freely, that would be enough. Nobody really wants Sega to give up all rights to what it has spent millions of dollars creating. Only real loons would take the opposite stance. They'd be saying that Stephen King should give up all the rights to what he has created, letting other people modify and sell his novels. That's idiotic.
>Sega is just trying to protect itself.
no they're not. they're protecting their wallets.
Figure out for yourself whether it's good or bad, but this isn't about continuing existence, but about money.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
It just occured to me that Nintendo and Sega may be shutting down ROM websites because when people decide to play old games, they are not buying the current crop of games which are the ones they can make money with. Think about it, why buy a brand new Sega game while you're busy having a great time playing some game you got for free? It the end, Sega sells games less often and their market share is smaller. Especially when people are starting to feel nostalgic and want to play old games. And also, let's face it, games are often not what they used to be : compelling and fun.
Here is a good, organized selection of PPC stuff. Even EveryBuddy is there. :-)
"Don't try to confuse the issue with half truths and gorilla dust."
Bill McNeal (Phil Hartman)
I'd agree that games that no longer make money for a company might as well be released into the public domain, but why GPL?
:-)
Don't misunderstand me - I spent nearly an hour yesterday trying to find a copy of the Zork Trilogy in z-machine format. (I believe Activision released them as freeware some time ago, but then, that might just be what the pirate websites *claim*
But I think you might be a little too enamoured of the GPL to think clearly in this case. Releasing the ROM is one thing - it permits groundswell fanclubs for old titles and truly is "sharing" in the best sense of the word. But releasing code and allowing modifications could conceivably leak too much proprietary information onto the internet for the comfort of the parent companies.
My guess is that Sony sees this as a simple screen-time equation. Every minute you spend playing a free ROM is a minute less you'll spend playing a purchased Sony CD on a purchased Sony Playstation. I happen to disagree with that assessment, but then look at how the government managed to shred the "Napster makes me buy more CD's" argument in court - real surveys impress suits far more than vague theories. In the absence of hard numbers, Sony will follow it's gut. And that means no ROM's for you.
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
http://www.loc.gov/copyright/docs/circ1a.html
United States Copyright Office
A Brief History and Overview
.....
May 31, 1790
First copyright law enacted under the new U.S. Constitution. Term of 14 years with privilege of renewal for term of 14 years. Books, maps, and
charts protected. Copyright registration made in the U.S. District Court where the author or proprietor resided.
--
Don't forget, for those who think about all the plusses of a 70 year copyright law.. I hope you're not doing anything related to Christmas.. Rudolph the reindeer is still under copyright for another 50 years or so. And your book better not contain the lyrics of Happy Birthday, as that's copyrighted too.
It's a doubleedged sword, you have to no innate right to use other's artistic works, whether they be Rudolph, Happy Birthday, Darth Vader, Mickey Mouse.
Of course, if copyright had always been 70 years, Rudolph never would have been created, as Santa and his sleight wouldn't have left copyrigh until the 70's. (Thomas Nast, the creator of Santa, died a in the 1900's.)
> but if you want to play the games legally you still have to buy them.
That's part of the problem, finding the older games for sale.
Capcom has been very supportive of emulation. They allowed HanaHo Games to distribute a CD of roms for old Capcom games with their HotRod Joystick. I don't think Sega ever really did much to support emulation.
I don't see how 14 years can be reasonable, lets say I just finish my book this year and it sells pretty badly. After 15 more years of writing, one of my books breaks through to the mainstream and there's suddenly a large community of people willing to pay to read my old stuff which is suddenly considered gold, don't laugh this happen a lot to sci-fi authors, look at Vonnegut's career.
.50 cents, case closed." The only reason SEGA isn't still selling these games is because the profit margin is so low.
Now the book I wrote in 2000 isn't mine but is public domain so anyone publishing company can take my book word for word and sell it to whomever. Exactly who are we protecting here? Sounds like it just gives publishers the ability to make money off work without paying the author.
Some might say there should be a difference between corporate copyrights and artist copyrights. I don't, why should I lose my rights just because I wanted to go into business myself. I need corporate limited liability to protect my personal assets if my business goes into the toilet.
I find 70 years to be pretty reasonable, it'll cover my lifespan and if I happen to die early my family will recieve my royalties.
Back to the original topic, sure SEGA isn't losing a dime from old genesis ROM swapping, but I don't want to lose my personal copyrights within my lifetime because some video game brats are too cheap to run to the flea market and pay 5 cents a copy for Altered Beast and Phanstasy Star.
I'd love to see the lawsuit SEGA would bring on swappers, "The street value for each game is about a nickel, you are ordered to pay SEGA
If I remember correctly, Sega actually licensed a Genesis emulator (KGen, was it?) that somebody had written, so they could package it into a product they were selling. That, IMHO, was pretty neat of them.
Wherever there's a will, there's a motorway.
i obviously can't speak for sega, but does anyone remember the slashdot story on sega's new emulation service on the dreamcast? something along the lines of being about to download games for a day and play them on your dreamcast as many times as you wanted. if there are sites offering the same service for free, why bother using sega's alternative? that seems like a good enough reason for them to try and shut down rom sites. that and the whole copyright issue.
...as Sega has historically been the only video game company to support emulation (as in, they really never went after any ROM sites). Evidently they don't support it anymore. >:/
Further proof that Sega support(s/ed) emulation was that the Sega Smash Pack used KGen - they licensed it from Steve Snake.
*NT* = no text in body
I doubt they are just all of a sudden going after old Genesis ROM sites. This probably is due to the fact that their going after the many pirates trading Dreamcast games over the net. And I know some copyright (or is it patent?) laws say if you don't go after violators, you loose your rights. Maybe they would have trouble in court going after dreamcast pirates if they were not hunting down ALL pirates trading any of their games.
>How can companies like Sega be convinced that products that don't make them money anymore should be made GPL?
Vectrex make a gaming unit and ROM. They released their ROMS under their own licence. A licence that promoted the exchange of the ROM without cost.
Gaming companies Intellectual Property is the code that plays the game. Some of that code stiill has neat tricks, programming tricks that give them an edge in the market.
The proposal of GPLing the code takes something that is costing them nothing and generating no income to costing the company in the future. Exactly *WHY* would any company sign up for that?
Ask them to make the old ROM images as part of a MAME package you can buy.
Or, if the preservation of these old games matters that much to you, start a company that licences the ROMS to all who want to buy it. All Sega has to do is take your check, and you have to worry about the piracy, etc la.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
so you're basically saying that the GPL is great, if you don't want to make any money.
wouldn't it would be better to ask why we can do to convince companies like Sega to GPL thier software in the first place?
---
/bin/fortune | slashdotsig.sh
Well, since Coleco went out of buisness can people legally trade them?
If people don't remember Colleco (is it Coleco or Colleco?), they made an advanced game system for the time with features like 8 bit graphics and a joystick with two firing buttons, a controller and twelve presable buttons for options.
And then they put out a computer, the Adam, a peice of garbage which I still have a fondness for.
Anyway, Colleco ROMs are on the net, and though there are some made by Sega and Nintendo and whatnot, can those made my Colleco itself (Smurfs!) be legally traded?
- Serge Wroclawski
PS if you do get a Colleco ADAM, don't put keep the tape in the tape drive when you turn the machine on, bad things happen!
The programmers who actually write the games only get a few cents per copy sold. They charge $20 for a game with only one or two good scenes. Sega is going to go out of business soon! They are trying to uphold their monopoly of distribution by locking out indepdendent programmers who write games. As everybody knows, the programmers don't need Sega, and could make money selling t-shirts or programming live in front of and audience, which is where they make the reasl money. Also, by giving the ROM's away for free they actually increase the sales of games, because people get to try new games out which they wouldn't otherwise. Down with Sega!!! Let's start a buycot!!!
Your request has already been filled. Don't get greedy, mmmkay?
GOD
Fortune favors the bold. -Virgil
We all invest in IP by giving it space in our brain - if you played a game as a kid you invested in that game. A passive input sure, but that was the only role open.
People who want to spin money from IP are basically no better than drug dealers in my opinion - hook them, and then keep pulling in the cash.
IP is a nonsense term. No man is an island. We all create together - we should all share together.
"Somebody developed something and has the intellectual property rights to it. I want it. Why can't I have everything I want?"
It's getting pretty tired.
Try this restatement:
"Somebody developed something, has failed to make the best use of it, and is preventing others from doing better - or maybe from using it at all - in a manner that benefits nobody. How do I fix this situation?"
-pf
Make affiliate bucks
Swapoo does not let one specify which files can be uploaded from a users computer. Instead *all* ROMs become available not just the legal ones. Plus it only works for new ROMs Nintendo 64 and such. It does not allow BIN files. So it can hardly be defended for preserving old games when all thew old formats are excluded.
Go into Deja's archives of comp.os.ms-windows.setup.win3x, and several posts under the "win 3.x" thread discuss the fact that Microsoft has gone after people serving copies of Win 3.x on their sites. So, apparently they're doing what you thought even they wouldn't dare to do.
/.ers can deal with.
IMO, stories like these help call for the repeal of the Sonny Bono Act and other legislation that has extended copyright to 100+ years on new works. The point of copyright is to promote creativity by allowing authors to capitalize on their works for a period of time, and then have the work pass into the public domain. Thus both the author and society as a whole benefit. Unfortunately, this has changed, and society's benefits are limited to the quickly eroding "fair use" principle during the first century after a new work is published.
When, as in the case of Win 3.1, an old Sega game, or any other product has lived through its useful lifetime of making money for its producer, it should be released into the public domain. Look at ID Software as an example. They made a lot of money off Dooms I and II and Quake I, and when the point where these products would no longer sell was reached, Id released these products to the public. Because of the initial protections of copyright, Id had the incentive to produce these games, while the public at-large received the benfit of having these products go into public domain. This is what copyright is all about.
When a company tries to restrict the spread of a product that no longer has any commercial value, everyone loses. Why should a software company care whether someone can download a copy a 10-year old product on a web site, after the product has no more commercial value? Current copyright legislation allows this situation to occur.
Ideally, I would suggest that the best system for copyright and IP would be to offer an initial 7 year period where the author controls all rights to a work. With today's technology, this allows an author or publisher to capitalize on the work. After 7 years, the author would have the choice of either having the work pass into the public domain or applying for an extension. If the author can prove to a judge or some other authority to be determined that an extension would benefit both the author and society, the copyright should be extended for another 7 years. Otherwise, the application is denied and protection is lost.
Of course, the real world and the ideal world differ significantly, and barring lots and lots of $$, it's going to take a long time to transform IP law into something most
I care about console games! Games whose ROMs have
never been even dumped to computer because
they're to large (Model 1-3) and whose source
code will probably never be seen.
It is my hope that someday in the long-term
future I'll be able to purchase the rights, or at
least the privledge to take a good look at the
source code those programmers wrote for the early
games. Sega in particualr! Optimization, working
under very restrictive systems to create (most of
the time) large, beautiful, and intelligent
games.
However, since Sega, and all other classic gaming
companies, are large profit-motivated
corporations, I doubt I, or anyone else, will
ever get the opportunity to see the masterpieces
as they were ment to be seen.
Scott.
Maybe it's simply because they want ppl spending their time and money on the new games, so they can cash in some extra bucks?
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
Everything must be under GPL because the only software you can trust comes with source code.
Enlightenment is a trap.
I worked as a tech for an amusement company/coin-op distributor for 10 years. With all the junk in our graveyard, I have serious doubts to any claims made that old games are still profitable, with the exception of the big names - Ms. Pac Man, Asteroids, Galaga, etc. That 1% set aside, the other 99% are dead. Try to find a Williams Blaster (in the original round plastic cabinet) anywhere. You'll find the ROMs for MAME and nothing else. Last one I saw had been converted to a Karnov, of all things.
How about all the Playchoice 10 games that Nintendo put out? Gathering dust in a warehouse, or in a landfill is where they are now.
Had an original Cliffhanger laserdisc hanging on the wall in our shop. Fun to watch periodically if you can stand all the gallows scenes.
I certainly have no qualms about ROMs for old games being proliferated for MAME-type apps. Especially from manufacturers who screwed everyone in the food chain when they quit supporting a game after only a few months cause sales weren't what they projected. I got stuck supporting their shitty product, and when I resurrect their old ROMs to play on my PC at home they get uptight.
Anybody got an old Rock-Ola "Wriggler" around? Remember the color green they painted their cabinets?
No sympathy for the companies on the older coin-op games. The console stuff, yeah...I can understand.
You know you've worked in the coin-op biz too long when you and your coworkers have "guess that theme music" contests. And I was in it waaayyy too long.
sine puella vita suget
Why must everything be under the GPL?
How about, make the ROM binaries freely distributable, but not resellable or modifyable.
Putting them under GPL requires a lot of work, as then you'd need to release the source code as well, and keep source servers around, and deal with hoards of linux nuts asking for more source, and why isn't X under the GPL when Y is, and why isn't all new games under the GPL, blah blah blah.
Also, it isn't Sega's decision that all Sega games are free. Sure, they can make freely distributable ROMs of Sonic (made by Sega), but not of Contra (made by Konami).
Furthermore, if Sega wanted to implement a system of redistribution, they would want to control that as well with licensing agreements, which means the rom sites would be shut down anyways.
The point is, while these ROMS are running around, there's less incentive for Sega customers to shell out for updated/repackaged "Classics" or "Compilations" or "Oh, God, Remember This?"
Five tons of flax.
That's sort of like saying that since all of these Eminem Mp3's are available there's no way he can sell copies of his album. I think you would see the whole rom scene dry up real quick if these companies would make these games available at a fair price. (fair price needs to take into account the age of these games, so no charging $30 for toejam and earl). It can be real hard to find many of these older games (both console and arcade) so maybe the companies should sponsor an emu for their systems and make a little money that they wouldn't have made otherwise.
(A little intro here: I am author of the Sega Genesis Programming FAQ from way, way back in the earily 90s - /not/ that it give me any addtional weight to my voice...)
What Sega is doing is attempting to protect their copyrights, as another poster pointed out already. I know for a fact that Sega moved their internal Genesis library over to an EMU a while back, since 4000 boxs and carts could be replaced by a single corporate server.
Anyways, to my point here; We should write to Sega and ask if they would be willing to release their older ROMs to the net either as a package deal for sale, or if they feel generous, as a free download.
What should NOT be done is an emu for the Dreamcast - and frankly, anything that is cutting edge right now. Give the companys a chance to make their money back on the system and bring us new and fun games to play. After two years then the I'd think that the system is fair game. (Same should be said on MAME as well).
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
Dont you have to defend your (c) or lose it in the states?
Sega is, in Japan - at least, selling (renting) old Master System games. They may possibly see this as a threat to their profits from those games.
Well have you ever considered that sega might have licenses and copyrights to other companies preventing them from making the docs public?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Did Jon Katz write that? Why should Sega be convinced of anything of the sort? This assertion implies a banket statement that GPL is automatically relevant the moment profit is no longer an issue.
Other posters have mentioned the great point that copyright on Sega games extends to the characters - also if you read the article carefully, you'll notice this passage:
It is because of this that Sega MUST take action. As the rep explains in the article:
Without the existence of an AHRA for video game content (which is blurring the lines with movie and cinema content- think Final Fantasy), Sega and other game companies HAVE to protect their content aggressively or risk losing their rights.
Just because a given video game doesn't earn them money at present doesn't mean they can't leverage it later. Blindly spouting off about the GPL is a bad habit and the GPL has no relevance to this matter.
--
______________________________________________
Don't blame me - I voted for Howard Dean. http://dean2004.blogspot.com
The GPL is a great license, don't get me wrong. It has provided the Free Software community the protection of not having some scumbag corporate entity or institution from taking the source code and not sharing it back. We all know this...
You hear about GPL violations, and how people go after them. Usually, in the case of GPL violations, it is the individual or a group beating a corporate entity or institution over the head.
So, now you hear about Sega going after people that are offering/trading ROMs. Usually, in the case of sharing "stuff" (ROMs, mp3's, movies), it is the corporate entity beating individuals they happen to catch over the head.
The first point is, that the GPL is not the end all, be all of the spectrum of licenses. Indeed, games are usually one type of software that doesn't fit well under the bazaar model. I respect and vote with my pocket book to buy games like Quake 3 Arena, precisely because John Carmack "gets it" (Quake 1 is GPL'd). Those companies that don't, I might not be so inclined to hand them my money.
The deeper issue, to me, is one of copyright length. All I want is what is fair. A work shouldn't be under copyright for a century. Another reader I read is right, copyright needs to be reasonable to allow the creator profit from that ideal for a limited amount of time. This is my second point.
I plan on looking at specific copyright laws, patent laws, and trademark laws. Perhaps the time is right for an uber-geek and lawyer to sit down and craft a "Copyright/Patent/Trademark Reform Act"? What would we want if one were to be crafted?
I welcome any comments.
OTOH, nowadays you just have to shout "Napster" to get 120,000 hits in 12 days. Slashdotted two times, CNET two times, CNBC TV, USA Today front page -- if you have some TCP/IP programming skills and want to be famous, you should work on .. well, perhaps Stitchster for sharing those needlepoint patters?
--
I have an Uncle (hey Kenny Conrad) WHo downloaded some of the Roms and the program to play them,
out of about 20 or so he downloaded, only about 3 worked.
And, How exactly do they copy the Rom from a cartridge to the computer?
Once again, it's important to make the distinction between making your own backups for protection and downloading a 'backup' copy. They're two totally different things.
.mp3's. There's a difference between ripping your own and downloading a 'backup' for a CD you ( may or may not ) already own.
It's the same with
It's the same with buying/selling a 'backup' copy of software on e-bay (which I don't think you can do anymore) instead of making your own backup.
It's also illegal to redistribute your own personal 'backup' copy which is what these ROM sites are doing.
Granted, most people don't have the equipment to backup ROM's, but that's your problem.
While we're on the subject, does anyone have any documentation that the 'you're only allowed to keep a ROM for 48 hours' rule, or is that an urban myth?
- My password is slashdot
EveryBuddy compiles fine on my iMac...
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
I use the base LinuxPPC 1999 system, with most everything compiled from source and a much more recent kernel.
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
Why should they do this? By centralizing rom distribution at the company's "official" website the company could generate revenue on their old games by using web ads. Once a few gaming companies have given in to releasing their roms and the site has become popular the other companies who haven't yet released their old game will be ridiculed by users for their obtuseness
Eventually a standard will evolve as to when games are dated enough that they should be released in binary format. I think ten years sounds like a good number. Can you think of any games from 1990 that are still making money??? Furthermore, Nintendo/Sega could build this "ten years and it's free" into their licensing agreements with gaming companies. This would leave the decision out of the gaming companies hands.
Well the games are Sega's to begin with, they are the ones who spent money to create those games and why should anyone be so surprised if they decide not to release it free and under GPL?
Possibilities are like someone else posted, selling them again as 'classics' or totally making a newer game based on the older one. They created it, so they should have the right to do with it as they please. Yes having illegal copies of ROMS are a copyright violation and especially in the gaming industry, ideas, look and feel, etc etc of games ARE Intellectual property.
Question..
..
Lets say you write a piece of software which you license etc and make your living off that. Now if I come along as say you must make it free, even after all the time you spent and all the work you did, would you want to make it free thereby denying you the income you hoped to generate and completely nullifying the reason you created that piece of software?... Nope didnt think so
Or if you write a piece of software and release it under GPL, and I use your sources to create a binary proprtietary product and sell it and make money, will you stand still for that?
IP, copyright and GPL are there to protect what the author had in mind for that piece of software that he/she created. We all scream bloody murder when Be violated the GPL with one of their libraries, yet we see stealing proprietary code as ok. This unfortunately is our double-standard.
Its the best stance too. Piss off a normal consumer and you get nothing, but piss off a hard-core fan and watch out :P
I hope that things like this are a wakeup to the industry - start re-releasing games yourself or we will do it for you.
I fail to see why someone would want the sources of an old game for a Sega machine. What's the use of that anyway? If an old enough game, it's probably made with some bizarre asm too.
I could understand Sega going after the trading of their newer games but going after people trading Genesis games is ridiculous. That is like Microsoft going after people trading Windows 3.1, which I think even they wouldn't do. I am a strong believer in copyright protection and intellectual property but the smart move here would be for Sega to open up old games and only protect newer ones.
Maybe it's just me, but I seem to remeber a backup law that applied to digital media. Or has this too been completely nullified by the DCMA, saying that now if you mistakenly damage the stuff, you have to buy a new one? I'm confused...
I am a bad speler. Please ignore speling meestakes in me poast.
This network has been mentioned on Slashdot four out of the last five days. We're still alive and well, so move along already.
Time to give some other sites their beating.
Do you raelly believe the crap you just posted? THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A PRODUCT THAT DOESN'T MAKE MONEY!!! What sega owns belongs to them and they make money off everything... I don't have time now, but I'm not saying we should or should not shair this stuff, but they will never make it GPL 'cuz they will ALWAYS find ways to make money with EVERY resource. If they don't NOW they will NEXT week.
Everything and everyone is an aspect of Gd. So remember to show proper respect!
I think people forget about the enforcement "paranoia" ... whether correct or not, many companies believe that once they stop enforcing their copyrights/trademarks on each transgression, they lose the option of enforcing them against future (and possibly more damaging) transgressions.
I've had a discussion with a member (maybe former) of the legal team at the Mickey Mouse company. Disney has a policy of going after anyone who uses Disney characters ... resulting in some high profile situations where orphanages and low income day care centers were being prosecuted for hand painting Disney characters on their walls. The member's response was that many feel that selective prosecution doesn't work: if you stop prosecuting any transgression, it opens the floodgate for more transgression and greater difficulty in protecting copyrights / trademarks / licensing in later, more significant cases.
As several Slashdot posters note, old games may not be that important to Sega (I doubt even the trade secret coding aspect isn't really relevant for many of these games ... C'mon, a high school kid could program Frogger in his CS class). I think at the heart of the issue is Sega's ability to defend itself in other cases, involving more pertinent technology, such as those in Sega's Dreamcast games or other new generation video games.
I'm not a lawyer so I don't know the exact justification for this "paranoia" but I'd be interested if someone in the Slashdot community can play Devil's Advocate (or maybe a straight advocate) and explain the rationality of this "paranoia." Why doesn't selective prosecution work? Is it sort of like the Tobacco litigation ... basically, Tobacco companies spent so much money on each and every case because they couldn't afford to lose even a single case in fear of a precedent that could lead to a huge backlash (note present situation)? If Sega fails to prosecute these ROM swapping sites, does it create a precedent that makes it difficult for them to prosecute less innocuous swapping sites?
Sega isnt concerned about OLD games.
They are being RAPED right now with pirated Dreamcast games.
--- Tulsa T. Nawi, On Display @ Shattered.com
How can companies like Sega be convinced that products that don't make them money anymore should be made GPL?"
I think the author's judgement on what can and cannot make money anymore is faulty. There's clearly a demand for old video games, a la MAME. However, even if the companies that owned the rights to those games wanted to make money off of them, they couldn't because the games are so freely available over the internet (illegally, of course.) Even if those arcade classics were priced very reasonably, the potential market has been destroyed by piracy. Yet these games I assume the author would label as games "that don't make [the producers] money anymore." Sega is just trying to protect itself.
john
Old Sega games are bying sold for the Neo Geo Pockit color(IIRC). So this isn't a case of going after old games that aren't makeing them ny mony anymore. THar was a full page add for the NeoGeo Pockit is GameFan(IIRC) and almost al the games were old sega games. I'm sorry if this is redundint I'll admit I just skim down the commits.
In the last paragraph of the article, Sega's spokesman is quoted as saying something like, "We realize there will always be a hard-core group who will pirate our games, we just want to keep it from becoming mainstream consumer activity."
This strikes me as a much more realistic and even agreeable view than what the RIAA is saying. RIAA is trying to get existing rights under law taken away from us, but as the guy states in the article, there are no such space shifting laws that apply to console games. However, they're not trying to keep it from happening altogether, and trying to make it a felony or anything, just to keep it from happening wholesale.
While this is not an ideal situation, I find it difficult to condemn such a stance, given that they are being so much more reasonable than RIAA.
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
Become a card carrying member of the GOA.
I propose that the government simply remove it's protection from copyrights dealing with computer programs. They should have fallen under the patent law to begin with. In fact it is my understanding the the computer companies originally had attempted to file for patents for software, AND WERE DENIED. So they obtained copyrights instead... which I would view as unconstituional.
You sir, must be a nut. Software should *NOT* be patentable. Patents are evil. Patents are about keeping others from using a particular method of doing something, whether or not the others came up with the idea independently. Would you like it if Microsoft had patented spreadsheets? Or the GUI? Then just because it was another GUI, KDE and GNOME would be violating the patent.
Copyright, however, definitely applies, at least for the source. Source code is a form of expression, just as surely as a book of recipies is.
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
Become a card carrying member of the GOA.
This is an issue I'd really like to see resolved without it being brought to the courts. Its not unreasonable for Sega to be a little miffed that people are getting their games for free - but they need to see that no-one buys or sells the consoles or the games any more, and therefore that it doesn't hurt their market even one tinsy bit!
Its blatantly in their interest to keep people enthused with their older products - not just for the obvious mindshare - but for the reputation it gives!
If Sega could find a way to come to an agreement with ROM distributers it would also appease large segments of the 'geek' population - who are probably a significant proportion of their market. (and the legally paranoid of us get to play loadsa wonderful games).
(of course, the reason why I feel this way is that it might just show the rest of the world that lawsuits aren't necessarily the best way to 'fix' these sorts of situation)
The answer is simple: Give them a reason to. If they are shown even ONE good reason to give the games away now then maybe they would. But, what benefit would they have from doing it? I mean apart from really flimsy things like "goodwill in the community". I really cannot see any reason why they would. They will probably re-release these games in some sort of compendium one day for some other system, so why give them away now and gain nothing from it, which will reduce the sales later on?
I will say this: it's too bad they're not turning a blind eye to ROM trading and they're cracking down, it probably wouldn't kill them to not crack down, but to think they should go out of their way to make it legal is a step too far. It's their property to do whatever they want with.
sig:
sig:
See the "..for smart people" banners Wired runs here? Look elsewhere guys.
"Somebody developed something and has the intellectual property rights to it. I want it. Why can't I have everything I want?"
It's getting pretty tired.
genesis games? no, with all due respect, its quite improbable that the execs at sega are still turning out a profit for genesis games....the system has been "obsolete" for a good three years now, and I havent seen any place to order or buy copies of "legendary axe 2" in a very long time. With all of this evidence, it doesnt even seem as if the manufacturing of any genesis equipment is still occurring. infringement? maybe, but none of the rom site peeps is claiming they invented these games, and it doesnt seem as if the manufactureres have alot of projections based on future sales of"general chaos" games.
We have the right to have one back up copy of our games in case the original cartridge breaks. The copy may be in any form: another cartridge, or a ROM. These people are offering people the convience of not having to spend precious money on a crazy gizmo to do the copying.
All ROM sites I go to have a notice stating that that is their only purpose; to offer a convienient copy. (Although some people DO abuse this service, that's not the webmaster's problem.) Sega can't shut them down because their offering a legit service--that's why what they're doing is wrong, WRONG, dammit, WRONG !
----
Toora Loora Toora Loo Rye Aye
It seems to me that it has done them some good. ./ :-)
According to their webtracker they had 2880 visitors July 31 and 32534 visitors August 4 when the article was posted on CNET.
They also gained 12000 daily visitors when they were linked to from
---
If only Sega could see that ROM sites may help drum up business for newer games then maybe they would let it go. If you played a Sonic the Hedgehog game on your sega genesis emulator and really really loved it (I don't see how that is actually possible...) then there's a good chance that you'd go out and buy the Sonic game for DreamCast. Sega could easily counter this argument by saying people who steal roms and use emulators are the same crowd who are likely to copy DreamCast games. Sega wouldn't want more people getting into that crowd so it really is in their best interest to shut down these rom sites.
Last version of swapoo i downloaded could share ANY file extention.
Sega is definitely aware of emulation. Shenmue--one of their upcoming Dreamcast games--contains an arcade in the game where a few classic genesis games are playable in their entirety. Rumor has it that these games are run on an emulator--it certainly doesn't make sense to recode all of them. Both Midway and Namco have released "classic" titles for the Dreamcast, each with a few of their old arcade titles. I'm sure Sega is considering releasing their own "Sega Classics", since if a few crappy arcade games can sell, surely a GD-ROM packed with Genesis games would. Heck, little kids that weren't around at the days of Genesis could probably be lulled into buying an all-in-one Sonic series game. With the Playstation emulator Bleem!Cast on the way for Dreamcast (I'm assuming Sega licensed this, as all console companies control release titles--someone correct me if I'm wrong) Sega could certainly seek assistance from the Bleem! programmers if needed. Someone else mentioned that, legally, Sega cannot re-release games they did not develop (Konami games was used in the example). If Sega's allowing Bleem!Cast to be released then surely they're prepared for a legal battle with Sony. If that's the case I don't see why they wouldn't release games by other developers...legally one form of emulation is no different than another. And about the 17-year old that created romnet/swapoo: if he gets in real trouble I'm sure his new employers will bail him out ;)
Q: "How can companies like Sega be convinced that products that don't make them money anymore should be made GPL?" A: All advocates of open-source should pool their funds. With those funds they purchase Sega, and as owners of the copyright for old ROMs, release them under the GPL. Then they sell Sega. If the ROMS really did have no commercial value, the resale value of Sega should be the same as the purchase price, and the cost to those involved would be nothing. So why won't this work ? Transaction costs are too high. There may be millions of socially conscious open source advocates out there, willing to lend $100 for the temporary ownership of Sega, but it's not practical to collect those funds and then to return proceeds from the sale of the company. One outgrowth of a convenient and inexpensive payment system will be social reform by corporate takeover. Buy the company, change the rules, and sell the company back again. The financial loss of lenders represents the social cost of their cause.
I just got back from India and there is a company there that is selling a console, 2 super-nintendo like controllers, and a light gun package for about $50 and the game cartriges to play on it separately. To my surprise each cartrige has dozens of old Atari, Nintendo, and Sega games on them. The company has billboards advertising their machine and games in every major city and everybody is buying one. I can't believe that I forgot the name they're using for their product (it's hilarious), because it includes the name Bill Gates in the title somehow. Yes, the general public in India which is quite large has great respect for Bill. I didn't meet anyone while I was there that could name an alternative to Windows. Heck, they were surprised to find out that there are alternatives to Windows! Anyway, my point is shouldn't gaming companies be going after commerical companies that are selling illegal copies of their games in other countries instead of sites like Swapoo?
Incidently, the Swapoo kid received over 30 job offers immediately after he became national news. I try targetting companies that I know that I can help and can't even get one. It must be the perks of becoming a cyber celebrity.
"The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible."