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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?"
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'....
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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(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
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.
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.
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
Your request has already been filled. Don't get greedy, mmmkay?
GOD
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.
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
It seems to me that it has done them some good. ./ :-)
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