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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?"
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.
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"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?"
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)
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 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.
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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.
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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.
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.
(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.
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?
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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.
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.
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
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.
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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.)
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
...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!
Your request has already been filled. Don't get greedy, mmmkay?
GOD
-pf
Make affiliate bucks
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
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.
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?
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.
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 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.
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
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.
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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.
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
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I blame Zophar.
-- mp`
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."