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Borrowing ROMs
An anonymous reader writes "It looks like Console Classix is trying introduce a new old concept to the world of P2P file sharing, at least as it applies to NES and SNES ROM images. You download their client program, and then you can "borrow" one ROM image at a time from their site, play it, and then release it for someone else to use. There are a finite number of ROM images on the site, each one ostensibly dumped from a legitimate and unique cartridge. I wonder if this will allow an end-run around some of the questionable legality of file-sharing... and I wonder if this could work for MP3s, movies, and other forms of media?" I think its pretty reasonable, but I doubt that the industries will agree.
This sounds sort of similar to the MP3 locker program that mp3.com had a few years back, except more stringent. I don't think it'll fly, and if it does, it'll be AFTER legal battles.
Didn't seem to work for MP3.COM, and I thought that MP3.com had a better chance than Napster. After all, MP3.COM wanted to confirm you actually had the CD you were trying to play, and Napster didn't.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
I like this idea, but because it will hurt business, it'll go away.
Of course, "fair use" states that you can lend, borrow, and sell used merchandise (CDs, PS2 games, etc) but when it's on such a large scale, businesses will fight back to try to make up for lost sales. If it stays limited to older nintendo and sega ROMs, they might slip under the radar... but I don't know anymore.
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
Ok can someone tell me why Nintendo doesn't partner with Gamespot / Fileplanet & let an infinite of roms & mame playing go on with a membership. (With Nintendo collecting a small royalty fee).
Are there any of the older video game companies offerin thier old games for purchase? (in any format) Or is it pretty much lawers protecting IP that the company no longer uses. If that's the case it seems like a big waste of $ to me.
___________________________
I'm not a geek, but I play one on TV.
How long beforce some one figures out how to bypass the locking and keep the ROMs on local machine? My guess 48 hours.
good idea! Public libraries have been operating like this for centuries.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
This will be as accepted to Nintendo as mp3.com's "beam it" software was to the RIAA.
Do you really care what the industries will think about this? They are the ones that created licensing agreements, and we are just finding the loopholes. What really matters is what congress (or the courts) thinks. If it falls under fair use, lets do it!
Why do you think the game manufacturers don't release these games/ROMs? Because there is still money to be made from them, no matter how old or tired they are. Hell, if they would just SELL them they could make a killing.
Clearly, you have to own the console game itself to be able to use the ROM. All other "methods" of obtaining them are usually illegal.
Quintus malus puer est.
What are the legalities involved with swapping software both physically and "virtually" like this over a central server?
If it was checked out and fully uninstalled once you were finished using it, before it was returned, would this fly?
'He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.' - Douglas Adams
Napster was cool, i miss it!
...and then someone will release a crack for the client that will allow you to "return" the game without actually returning it, and you're back to where you started.
Oh wait. Isn't that what Blockbuster does? Why is this a problem again?
blarg.
When they allow PSX games and ISO downloads, I'll play.
Of course, I'll NOT burn them to cd.......(heh)
I mean, I expect the first corp bot to "check out" all the roms within a few weeks, and never release them.
Didn't scientology do this court records, at one point?
"I think its pretty reasonable, but I doubt that the industries will agree."
Well, I hope these guys have good lawyers, because I doubt that the video game industry is going to just watch this site,and the cops in South Carolina (The apparent home of Jonathan Cooper, the site admin.) aren't among the nation's more liberal police forces. If he's lucky they'll just try piracy charges via some DA unable to comprehend software licensing and such, and not try to sneak in some DMCA violation on top of it.
Don't drop the soap, John.
I believe this application is the kind that the TCPA and Palladium were designed to enable. In lieu of their deployment to consumers, the rule of "THE CLIENT IS IN THE HANDS OF THE ENEMY" still applies, so I'm pretty sure the "content holders" will follow the FSC ("Freak and Sue Contingency").
Funny to see the same story played out again and again. Maybe we'll even see the same comments stamped out by a dim-witted, cookie cutter of a mind...
I was created by Jon Katz for the pleasure.
Lobby congress for a specific law that allows them to hack this p2p network, and perhaps sell anyone who uses it into slavery, creating a new world economy!
WWJD? JWRTFA!
You could loan your porn to people without worrying about it being returned all (ahem...) "sticky".
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
if not it won't fly. Everything else is irrelavent...
"What we can't make money on the net, so let's change it then. What people are using it, SO..."
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Sure, I will borrow it...
But we all borrow our friends CD's and now have a copy of them. Who is going to stop someone from "borrowing" a COPY of a item, and just keeping a copy on thier box.
When you get down to it, it is a copy of the item in the first place- They are not going to delete and create the file every time, so they are just sending a copy.
It won't Work, and they are going to end up in a simmilar situtation as Napster.
I have a couple of old games I would like to electronically "donate" to such a cause. Do you think they'll ever set up such a system? Could I "donate" games that I don't have?
Some people have a way with words, and some people... erm... thingy
Blockbuster pays on the order of 10 times as much for a copy of a video that they can rent as compared to the copy that you can pick up at Target. Not having worked at a rental store or anything, I can't speak definatively, but aren't there special restrictions on rentals that extend beyond fair use? And may not this apply? If not in the case of console roms, at least, perhaps in the case of "other media", as mentioned?
-Andrew
If it doesn't maximize corporate profits, then it is theft.
What else could you possibly expect, considering what the media companies pay for Premium Legislative Services in the US and the EU. The idea that you do not own what you have bought is absurd, but the bankrolled politicians are turning that hallucination into a scary reality.
Anybody in north central Florida got a Donkey Kong ROM?
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
I proposed something very similar for mp3s about a year ago on kuro5hin. There were some good comments on the idea's merits and drawbacks.
Here is a link.
I believe as if yhere were partners. i could see SNES /. " real
and NES and Neo geo games pased around. Thats great. we all love the old games. But a partner should serve "borrowed" N64, DC,Xbox,And PS1/2 would be alittle hard to have a borrowed actual "Rom image" But would be good for sales on the XB,PS2 games...but would be difficult cause of the copyrights. If only the day would come! Im patiently also waiting for a X-box Emulator for PC Since the x-box is so close to the X86 design. shouldnt be hard for the emulator but i dont think anyone will stand on it... Bleem went down and they were sony hungry..but still. Just keep "
Commercial rental of copyrighted works is governed by its own set of rules. Libraries and some other institutions are special. Perhaps this would work if it falls under fair use, but then you may not have to worry about "lending" anyway.
I think it is at least worth while to read their "legal" page (http://www.consoleclassix.com/legal.htm)
"We allow you to rent our games, not buy them. We allow you to access our ROMs, but we don't distribute them."
Interesting idea, but it seems doubtful that anyone would go through the trouble given how easy it is to find NES and other console system ROMS online, and how relatively small the files are... you can have hundreds on your harddrive and they take up very, very little space and take very little time to download...
I wouldn't wait around to check out a copy of Super Mario Bros. when I could just as easily find a web site that I could download it from and keep it...
My Stuff: pspChess and foobar2000 plugins
License a user-built emulator, re-rip every cart for your system, and offer them for sale. Make it cheap- maybe $1 per Rom, or maybe charge per megabyte, or release compilation CDs, or whatever. Don't make it too expensive. Then, advertise it a LOT. Make the emulator easy to use, maybe even have it integrated with the buying system so you can play a demo of the game before you buy it, then you can just enter your CC# into the program and you've got the whole thing.
I like my Roms, and I could get them free by lurking around a dozen shady P2P networks or download sites with gay porn banners for hours, or I could just pay a few dollars to get the same without any work on my part.
Sega actually does something close to this already, they've licensed the KGen emulator and sell a couple of the Sonic games for PCs in stores. I know this because I own them all.
They don't sell any carts anymore, so they've stopped making money from them. With this system, they'll start making money from them again, as well as get an ASSLOAD of publicity.
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If this was legal, then where is the N64 emulator and N64 roms? And why doesn't NetFlix.com start checking out DVDs in online form... it would reduce tons of overhead as far as shipping goes.
Ultimately, he does not own the copyright of those games, and making them availiable online would probably count as an unauthorized form of distribution.
I'm not disputing the chance that this guy owns all of these titles, mind you.... Though I've never heard of "Hogan's Ally", most of the games on that list are common, and the fact that he only has 2 Mega Man ROMs up indicate that he may indeed be late to the game as far as collecting goes.
Nintendo already sent them a "Please stop" letter quite a while ago. The owner of CC replied with a complete explanation of the programs workings and there has been no response from Nintendo since then. The program keeps the game in RAM at all times, and even if somebody does figure out how to keep the games; I don't see rental stores beeing shut down by Sony because people can make an ISO of any PSX game they rent.
Well, what does the legalize in the back of the book say as to copies? I'm sure that if it even allows it, it only allows it for your own personal use. I seriously doubt that this type of trading is allowed.
These roms have no real market value as far as the games themselves go. They're not sold new anymore, and for the most part, they're not sold used either, unless you can find ebay auctions or a garage sale. However, the roms for all of them are available online. They're small, easy to transfer, and players are available on multiple platforms. The cat is out of the bag, and Nintendo and ohers don't have much they can lose from this, but obviously, they'll want their piece of the pie.
Has anyone tried to work with them on this? About the only thing the games are worth to them is the IP rights to the artisitic content. Of course, from my point of view anyway, that content value would only increase if it had a greater market saturation. Nintendo can reasonably expect $0 from the sale of game cartridges at this point. Therefore, if ANY amount of money is offered in exchange for legitimizing the rom sceme, they might be willing to go for it. Its a steady revenue stream from somewhere that no previous revenue exists, and with no work on their part.
They might just go along with it, grant permission, and forget about it. Just throw a couple ads on the site, provide nintendo with 100% of the profit (after bandwidth and other expenses) and they might go for it. At least this way there would be no concern about legal battles, assuming they go for it.
And if they don't go for it, you're no worse off than you are now.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
need to start selling roms.
They need to be realistic:
There is a demand for them.
If you make it so people don't have to "hunt them down", i'm sure atleast some people will pay you a buck per game.
Making a buck per game from some people sure beats making no money because the only way to get ROMs is to pirate them.
Do they actually expect people to keep thier NES hooked up to thier TV for 20 years?
I appreciate their usefulness, but what's stopping anyone from going out and picking up old games? Two days ago my roommate bought an atari 2600 and 20 games for 10 bucks. Are people really that lazy that they won't go to a local video game store which sells old games? (of which we have at least two in Champaign). I could understand using roms if you can't get ahold of the cartridge-stuff like Ogre Battle or Chrono Trigger are really, really hard to find. But on the whole, I think getting ROMs is just laziness, and as long as the games are available for purchase if you look hard enough, they shouldn't be downloaded.
Colin Winters
This is a good idea. I know it is similar to mp3.com but honestly this is the kind of battle that really needs to be fought. It is alot harder to say something like this breaks copyright when the original game is a legal copy.
Dan Mayer: my blog, essays, art, etc
This is just what cost mp3.com 400 million bucks. The problem here is that when you copy the ROM from the chip to disk, you are making a copy of a copyrighted product for commercial use. This is illegal. It doesn't matter what you do with the ROM images on disk, once you make the copy you're screwed. The only way for this to work would be to rent the physical rom chips.
http://www.consoleclassix.com/legal.htm
At least they did their homework.
Good luck to them.
This is yet another false layer of security... No offense, but I've seen this scheme before, and it just doesn't make sense.
Ok, so... user downloads a file as long as there's one available according to the system... Ok, so then when the user is done, they "check it back in" and the program deletes it/changes permissions/so forth to the local copy... What's to stop the user from keeping a copy while it's "checked out?" It IS saved on his machine... Even a user with rudimentary knowledge can break this system so they get to keep the files.
The more that I read about file sharing, the more that I realize that most "freedom of information" types on the Internet are not concerned about distributing information. They're notconcerned about preserving information for future use. They're only concerned about getting copyrighted material for free. Copyright owners be damned, I want my free
music/movies/ROMs/software.
Thank goodness, a reasoned voice in the cacophony of hypocrisy. I often wonder what kind of reception would be had if someone setup a P2P service with all sorts of GPL'ed software, with all the GPL licenses/comments/etc. stripped, out allowing users to escape encumbrances which really aren't different in spirit than the encumbrances attached to the properties most commonly traded on these networks.
Think there'd be hell raised ?
If I were in a position to do it (hell knows I'd love to work for Nintendo...) I'd do pretty much what you just said, but stick to the compilation idea. An emulator, a nice front end for choosing your game, and a couple thousand roms would probably fit nicely onto one of those GameCube discs. Bundle it with an old-school NES controller that's been adapted to plug into the cube, and sell it for $30-$40. Do the same thing on cd or dvd for the pc market, with a usb version of the controller. Hell, if the licensing fees aren't prohibitive, release versions for XBox and PS2. Pay attention Nintendo: THERE IS MONEY TO BE MADE HERE.
do not read this line twice.
I'm sick as 5h17 at those who continuously spout off about the "consequences" of piracy without being able to show REAL evidence of any.
I'm not advocating piracy, and don't doubt that those huge factories that churn out bootleg MS CD's for China have probably lost MS some revenue (I own stock, yes). Come on though, downloading Britney's latest song hurting her record company...doubtful.
Which brings me to the main point of this post. The various media industries view us not as citizens, but consumers. We all know this, and many of us resent that fact. The solution? Stop being a consumer!
I am not a psychologist, by any stretch, but I would suggest that some people are downright addicted to media. For some, they need to have music playing all the time. Others seek only to collect hunderds of gigabytes of media they may or may not have any intention of viewing/listening to. These are the people the xxAA's want to sink their hooks into, because there is the most money to be made from them.
So how about this. Cast off your media addiction and go do stuff that shows the various entertainment industries that they and their product are not needed/wanted. Find other hobbies/activities that don't support the monopolistic organizations. Maybe pushing the idea too far here, but maybe take up a sport!
We will always be considered consumers first as long as we behave like consumers. If we want to show the entertainment industries that we don't like what they're doing, remove yourself from their market pool.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
So as far as the law's concerned, it doesn't seem to matter one bit that there's a stack of legal cartridges in the corner. If copies have been made and are downloaded to customers, it's infringement.
Just another area where common sense and judicial rulings disagree. Of course, my.mp3.com was just one case, and maybe another judge will disagree.
314-15-9265
So if they physically have the ROM and can provide a good checkout system, then how could this be any different than renting the game at blockbuster? Even if the ROM could be copied...the same argument could be said about renting the game at a video store. Besides, SNES and NES games are getting to the point that they aren't selling hardly at all.
"I bet I'll get blamed for this." --Mayor Quimby
I don't think Nintendo would like this one bit. They state quite clearly that they are against ROMs, Emulators, and the like. I'm pretty positive Nintendo would come down hard on anyone who would try such a thing. I even know of "underground" ROM sites that don't put up any Nintendo ROMs for download for fear of being shut down by Nintendo. They're highly agressive with their IP.
What? How did this get modded up?
The 24-hour trial period is a myth. However, reverse engineering old consoles is not legally shaky. Look at the faqs on MAME.org or some other respected emulator site.
As for dumping cartridges, other then any possible DMCA concerns, it is 100% legal. Fair use, remember? As for transferring copyrighted material from an owner to a borrower, I did that last week at a local hangout known as the 'library', which allowed me to grab a few books, music CDs, and VHS tapes.
As for 'copyright infringement', I would be willing to bet that in 50 years, the only reason that some of the early 70's and 80's era games exist are because of emulators. Heck, right now, MAME emulates games that would be physically very difficult to find. Atari cartridges are also deteriorating over time. Sure, the guys who pirate the latest XBox and PS2 games are scum who aren't willing to pay for game developments, but there are guys who are into emulation for the old games which aren't available anymore. Games are a work of art, why let them be lost? Preservation has always been an admirable goal.
Last time I checked I was no longer able to buy brand new original 8-bit Nintendo cartridges.
I still own a brand new 8-bit Nintendo.
It works fine.
I am prevented, from a legal standpoint, of any easy way to back up or restore games to and from cart's, as far as nintendo is concerned.
Nintendo may have this right, but in reality nintendo does not provide replacements for the cart's themselves, how do you deal with that?
What rights to software owners have when software is abandoned?
None?
It's one thing to pirate music you can go buy from a store, I tend to beleive it's another thing alltogether when you download a replacement copy of software you honestly do own -- but even if, the law has made it difficult to put the game back into a cart for play on the original system, so when you talk about roms+emulators, then everyone automatically assumes you stole XYZ and your a damn dirty ape just because that's what corporate america has spoon fed them.
Mabye you should start thinking more about freedom and less about being pissed at people who cry wolf early and often to preserve your rights.
You people have to be kidding. "Sounds reasonable"? "Borrow" ROMS? "I wonder if this will allow an end-run around some of the questionable legality of file-sharing"? Here's a hint - NO!!!
So what you are saying is that it's illegal for me to loan my game cartridge to my friend for a couple of weeks. That the only way I can buy something and loan it to my buddy is to have him come over and play it on my game console?
Dispite what you may read on the Internet, it is not legal to make a "backup" copy of any modern media.
Care to tell me why I can't? Maybe you could cite some legal statute? Maybe a court case that backs up your point?
BTW, Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 107 of the U.S. Code allows for backup copies of media if they are non-commercial in nature and don't affect the marketability of the copyrighted work.
IANAL, but it seems to me that this backs up both sides arguments. First of all, it's technically a commercial use since there's a company behind this. Second, it affects the marketability of the games. However, on the other hand, it doesn't affect the games that are currently no longer on the market. Seems to me there really should be some place that I could go buy/play games that I can't get any other way.
This is one of the F***ed up arguments made by IP apologists. Once someone makes something and sells it, that it should be that persons property forever. That was never the intention of copyright, nor should it be. Nowadays we have great novels that are out of print, and nobody is allowed to print new copies of them because the current copyright holders won't let them. The same goes for video games and movies. If you're going to let this stuff just sit in a vault somewhere tell your copyright expires, then you should lose the copyright to it. It's far too valuable to waste like that.
Try reading the method that this site uses to deliver the servce, first of all it IS LEGAL under fair use laws to make one backup copy of software that YOU OWN outright (though it must be destroyed if the original is ever lost/stolen/sold/etc). These people legally used their games to make their roms and in the process took every measure possible to ensure the legality of what they where doing. The client keeps the game in RAM at all times to prevent (or at least combat) piracy.
If this ends up catching on, the game for you as an author will no longer be to create something of enough importance that it will be of interest to the greatest number of people over the next few decades, but rather it will be to create a sensation that results in the greatest number of people experiencing your art simultaneously. It will be a matter of the 1-day fad, where everything will be hyped worse than today's "we-the-entertainment-industry --r .
of-the-united-states-of-america --
have-ordained-that-X-is-the-summer-blockbuste
You-will-see-it-within-opening-week --
resistance-is-futile".
It will be a matter of getting a million people to view your art simultaneously, for then you have sold a million copies. (Versus a scheme in which your artwork is interesting for decades to come, but is viewed in a staggered scheme. I'll read it today, a friend of mine will read it tomorrow, etc."
You wouldn't need many copies of War and Peace to allow everyone in the U.S. to read it sometime or another.
Many less than would be required to let everyone hear the new Spears single just as it comes out....
Is that what we want of our artists? To create 1-day sensations? Or lasting works of art....
I think that a much better scheme would be like this: I as a consumer will allow my devices to record, in an anonymous way, all the art that I consume. I will receive all art for free, but will pay $80/month for the privilege. In a month a person has 30*24*60*60=2,592,000 potential seconds. Of the seconds that I use up, each author gets her share of my $60.
The problem in this second scheme arises when the quality of the art, or possibly the amount of time one spends on it, is not in proportion with the amount of time spent on it. For example, an accurate map of an uncharted island is possibly worth a great deal to you and to a few other people who must navigate it, but although the whole of the work must be accurate (a difficult prospect!) it takes very little time to look up the part of it with which you yourself are concerned. Another example: If I am reading a scientific study that tells me that I should not be willing to try recreational drug xyz because of its inherent dangerous-ness, (or conversely, that I should have no qualms about trying marijuana, because of its inherent inoccuousness) this information (more specifically, the scientific process and wealth of research behind it) is worth a great deal to me, even though I might spend very very little time actually reading in detail the publication of those results. Do you see? I might want the information in a huge $90 book of scholarship, but that information might take me 5 minutes to take, "on faith".
So a good system of compensating our artists addresses the following issues:
1. The greater extent to which the art becomes a lasting part of our cultural heritage, the more the artist should be compensated. Genius should be its own reward.
2. The more frequently compelling a work of art is, the more it should be rewarded. Although an artist should be duly compensated for producing 1 work of such importance that everyone will want to be familiar with it (some highly successful movies are like this, many a book), in general if it's not a matter of "Have you seen this (once)" but "would you like to go see (that again)", the reward should be still greater.
3. Compensation should be commensurate to some extent with the amount of time and effort put in by the artist. We don't want artists "set for life" with 1 work of staggering genius, so that they are not financially compelled to produce more. At the same time, if that "one work of staggering genius" takes a lifetime of research, then there should be compensation for it.
4. Etc. (I have to go, sorry. This isn't a troll, but if my ideas are worth discussing, do reply, and perhaps I'll join the discussion.)
Its a good idea, but they probably will have to have a deal like public libraries or the local video store in the end... but honestly, with the climate today I think it will just end up in court, the (record/movie/game/insert-another-here)industry is terrified by anything distributed digitally and its get no better if its done by a P2P network.
http://www.intellipool.se/ - Intellipool Network Monitor
Wow, I suggested this not too long ago on SlashDot:
"High speed CD brokerage house"
Nice to see someone implementing it.
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
Laws are for sale in this country. Those who purchase the laws are the lawmakers. Lawmakers are part of government. The people own the government. The people own what the government owns. Those who purchase laws cannot complain about intellectual property because as part of the government, they and everything they own, are possesions of the country at large.
If you ignore that bribery is a real force in government, those who bribe get to exist in a
space where law does not apply, at the expense of everyone else. A network of parasites is running the country. The same criminals involved in the stock market manipulations are the same who bribe government officials. The direction of an entire nation is being dictated fo the personal benefit of a small unscrupulous few. This cannot continue for long. While the nation is driven to benefit the corrupt few, it is not being driven for the benefit of the nation. Like a body will sicken if it's no longer driven to eat, breathe, or sleep, a nation driven towards goals other than it's integrity will sicken as well.
This is more like the game-rental system EB had on their website for a while, where you could download current games, play them for a set period of time, and then their system forced the uninstall/disabling of the game.
I hadn't even thought of the Gamecube angle- that's a great idea. I'm sure that there are a lot of people at Nintendo who'd love to do this, but it's almost certainly the lawyers who won't let them.
Username taken, please choose another one.
It's not really like file sharing stuff today in one important sense.
Todays filesharing systems make unlimited copies (one for each person who downloads) of files, which makes more available for more people. So, the number of images of the file actually grows the more it is downloaded, so the queueing stays in check. With a "finite number" of ROM's, as the demand grows, the queues grow, and you just wait all the time for others to release the files.
This would not be an enjoyable way to play a game, like going to six flags on memorial day when they're not charging admission, and letting people who get on a ride ride it as many times as they want. Sure, it's free, but who the hell wants to be there all day and only ride one ride...
mp3.com got busted, big time. expect the same here.
-Esme
What happens when people start borrowing and then copying? I know it's the same as copying rented movies, but they've already lost that battle. That won't stop them from making the same argument here. The best they could do I guess would be another stupid FBI warning. (Which is pretty funny to see in a DIVX)
if(!cool) exit(-1);
Hi.
Despite what you may have read in your EULA, it is legal to make a backup copy of any modern media. Also, emulators are not on shaky ground because of reverse engineering, since reverse engineering is also legal. Granted, there may be DMCA implications if the result of reverse engineering an access mechanism is the ability to escape it, but that's really a separate issue. It's also legal to borrow a copyrighted work from someone.
Not that I think this will fly, nor that it should. Obviously "borrow" is going to become "copy", at which point it's just sharing copyrighted material no different than Napster. And at that point, you're right, it's not legal. So we basically agree that this is a bunch of crap, I was just pointing out that most of what you said was illegal isn't.
The enemies of Democracy are
I've spent the last 3 years building up a pretty decent classic cartridge collection. At this point it's up to several hundred or so. Not a single one was purchased at a video game store, as the oldest thing anyone sells here (Canadian city with a population of over 700,000) is Sony Playstation games. The profit just isn't high enough for stores to carry Super Nintendo, let alone Atari games anymore.
How did I accquire all of this? 3 solid years of hitting several hundred garage sales per month, and visiting the local junk shops at least once a week. That's a hell of a lot of work, and it's a good thing I really enjoy doing it. But there are literally hundreds of games I've always wanted to play, and simply cannot find. I'd much prefer the original, both for the authenticity in playing, and the collecting factor - but in many cases, I simply have no choice but to download the ROM image. Paying some guy on Ebay $200 for a rare Atari game doesn't put one dime more into the pocket of the copyright owner, so who's it hurting?
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Before you go making forcefully declarative statements about Copyright Law, maybe you should actually read it.
While I agree with your assessment that 24 hour trial periods are not legal, the other activities you decree against the law are under no such prohibition. For instance, the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 specifically allows consumers to make backup copies of any digital media they purchase for the purposes of archival and protection against media damage.
I also don't see what possible legal arguments can be constructed against "Borrowing". U.S. Courts have consistently held up the "First Sale" doctrine for copyrighted works. When you purchase copyrighted work on any media, you are legally free to dispose of that particular copy of the media in any way you choose, save distributing multiple copies. You can give it away, loan it out, rent it, lease it, or sell it to a third party. Studios, and later game companies tried to sue video rental chains for renting movies and games when that practice first started, and the rental outlets won. This is really not much different, although a savvy IP lawyer might argue that the vaguaries of "ephemeral copies" made in internet transmissions make this a totally different ball-game. It is uncertain, sure, but hardly the cut-and-dry sort of case you're claiming.
Another question I have is how is emulation on shaky ground due to reverse engineering? Reverse-engineering has been held to be perfectly legal in hundreds of court-cases, at nearly all levels of the judiciary. Even video-game emulators have been held to be a legally permissible product of reverse-engineering technology for compatibility purposes, in the case Sony vs. Connectix Software. Case law is firmly on the side of reverse-engineers in this regard (unless of course patents are infringed upon, in which case there is no need for reverse-engineering anyway, since the patent definition is a publicly available spec of the technology in question).
You seem to have a strong emotional feeling on this issue. I don't care to argue the philosophical or moral issues involved in freedom of information, or the balance of the right to share knowledge against the benefit of providing knowledge generators with a socially useful reward for their activities, because your tone indicates you are not capable of conducting such an argument in a rational and civil manner.
I will, however, happily correct your glaringly false statements about the law regarding these issues, as it has nothing of the black-and-white clarity you seem to think it has.
and the thousands of companies that are owned by a media company. cant buy sony electronics, many brands of cars because they have a sony cd player etc in it.
keep going with that idea, and what cant you purchase now, that is not music/movies etc, but still come from those companies in one way or another
On one hand I totatly agree with you that people just basically want to get stuff for free and all these people just want their copyrighted material for free.
On the other hand, it's way to hard to get this material in any other fashion. When talking about
a 16K video game from 15-20 years ago, I mean how in the world are most people going to be able to play these games? Nobody is making these machines anymore, you have to find 2nd hand shops and hope that they have what you want, most of the time they don't.
It is not legal in the slightest to distribute, or play these games with emulators since copying them is very hard to justify. However, Video games are a part of modern pop culture, here today, gone tommorow fad like trends. All games have followed this pattern, with the exception of a few (Ms. Pac man, Galaga come to mind) Most games from more then ten years ago are gone, nobody is willing to sell them anymore. Where do I go to buy a new copy of Mr.Do, the Last Ninja, Way of the flying fist, River Raid, keystone cops (sp), or a hundred other games? The timeless games get remade for new systems (GBA) and the crappy ones get rolled into the next generation of pop culture video games.
Does it hurt publishers of video games when you copy a ten+ year old video game, yeah a little. It's small enough to put it in a grey area since so few people actually care.
First of all, yes the true motive behind all of this P2P stuff, and loopholes is getting free stuff you would normally have to pay for. People like free stuff.
Second, the other motivation is simply this. If I can copy some zeros and ones to my hard drive, then find a program to turn those zeros ones into pretty moving pictures that I can use to play games or do other stuff I need to do, well I don't really care who wrote the software or if they make money because it's my computer processing my zeros and ones. IP is basically just a bunch of BS anyway. Who cares about IP? Not me, not many people do. I am a software engineer I write software and try to sell it, but what I am really selling is the pretty little box and instruction manual that I am packaging and the ease of getting it buy paying for it. If someone cracks, steals, copies, my software I don't care, (doesn't mean I won't try to make it harder to do), but really I think someone has a right to copy whatever they want to thier own computer, whether I was the one who created this unique combination of zeros and ones or someone else did. So yes, I am glad to support the piracy of software, but I also buy software and games, because I like to have the shiny little instruction booklet or because I want to support that company. But I have a choice to do so, and I always will, because you can not protect your zeros and ones, because no matter what the law says you will never own it. Now if you are selling someone's zeros and ones, that's different, but most bucanneers don't sell pirated software they use it for themselves.
Basically no matter what laws are imposed there will always be loopholes as far as this is concerned, because people (no matter how much they refuse) generally deep down agree that they should basically be able to do whatever they want with something as trivial as zeros and ones stored on a magnet.
$40 divided by 1,000 roms is 4 cents each- and would be much less (2-3 cents) when you account for the cost of providing the compilation itself. Is that fair? It's certainly a far cry from the original poster's $1 per game.
On a side note, I own an infocom text game CD-ROM collection, and it's neat. Really neat. But infocom had long been bankrupt and their assets sold to activision, and text games are far from popular, so they probably didn't have any choice (whereas NES games and newer still have large potential markets)
-bugg
Do Rental car companys like National, Budget, Alamo, etc, have to get special licences from Ford, Dodge, Chevy, etc to rent their cars/trucks to people???????
Is there such a thing? Every emulator site that I've ever been to has been populated by the scum of the Internet, pushing their warez as being legal and not an infringement on the intellectual property of hard working men and women. Someday, you'll make a piece of software, pour your heart into its development, and then watch as it's stolen by thousands of children downloading it from the Internet. Then tell me about how pirates aren't evil.
Re: Dumping cartridges, you can only do that if the EULA (in the back of game manuals) explicitly allows it. This site is hosting Nintendo games. I know for a fact that every licensed Nintendo game explicitly forbids copying of the games, including "dumping" the ROMs for "backup" purposes. The only exception is Gauntlet, one of the few non-licensed games for the NES. Now, whether Nintendo is justified in preventing copying is an argument for another time.
The library analogy is flawed. There are consequences when you move from meatspace to cyberspace, and that means that direct analogies are inadequate. The biggest problem is the easy with which you can copy the copyrighted work. In meatspace, such copying is irrelevant because of the time and materials involved, and even then, it is not exact. In cyberspace, the copy is simple (ROM is stored in memory, hell, I could write a 2-line program to save that to the hard disk). The copy is exact. The copy can be done thousands of times with no degredation. THAT is the difference between cyberspace and meatspace. And that is why this is illegal.
And I'm sure that the 14-year-old kiddies who are downloading these games are doing it for the "preservation of art". What a load of bullshit. If you honestly believe that people aren't downloading ROMs to play games for free, then I admire your naivete. Actually, no, admire isn't the right word.
I pity it.
The obvious problem to this is licensing. How much of a share are you going to pay Konami, Capcom, Enix, or any of the other NES licensed developers to use their titles. Sure Nintendo owns the system, but each company will surely want their piece of the pie from any rom CD.
It won't fly, for a very simple reason: "Content producers" will not be able to make as much money as if they sold one cartridge to everyone who borrows one.
The only issue I can see with this : royalty compensation to the original authors. I've never seen an agreement that developers must sign with NOA (or any of the console manufacturers), so I'm not sure if NOA has the right to redistribute the ROMs for ALL of the carts for ALL of their systems. With the sheer number of carts out there, it would be hard to track down each and every developer (many of them are probably defunct) to send checks for the ROMs purchased.
But I do agree with the sentiment -- at the bare minimum NOA should do this for their own titles. I for one would pay a few bucks for each ROM, for each Nintendo first-party title.
I thought I just heard about a new sonic mega collection being offered for gamecube soon. I hear it will have every sonic on it but Sonic CD (for obvious reasons). And I suspect it will be as unaltered as the super mario advance games, that is to say, better graphics but otherwise unaltered game levels and mechanics.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
Ok, Nintendo games, and in fact most games have a strict clause about copying/distributing and using for a public viewing.
Blockbuster does not copy the games that they rent out, nor does a Library. I think that this plan while good in theory, just won't make it in execution. Yes, information wants to be free, but not intellectual property of conglomerates?
The other issue that I can clearly see is Nintendo or any other gaming company wanting to have the peace of mind that the copies being distributed are in fact, legitimate copies.
For all they know, the people behind the company could have mass downloaded the finite Nintendo roms from any number of sites and said "Yeah, we own it." Who is to prove otherwise?
what are you rambling about?
guess what, i can make a website that has all of the license info stripped out. i am not distributing the changes. Its totally legal then.
if i distribute it, then its illegal. just as if i distribute copyrighted material. but since a p2p creator is NOT distributing the material, only making a medium which can distribute ANY material.
License a user-built emulator, re-rip every cart for your system, and offer them for sale.
Exactly. That way Nintendo can offer something that is better than free. Now, if the music industry could just find a way...
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
It didn't work for my.mp3.com, so I don't know why it would work here. As I recall, the judge in that case effectively ruled that even though the company guaranteed that a particular copy of music was directly linked to a real CD, it was still somehow "different" from the original and so they were found to be distributing an illegal copy.
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
The CC letter was extremely well written without the self-righteous screaming seen in most letters linked to from here. They did not challenge or belittle the Nintendo lawyers, there were no veiled threats of counter-litigation and the letter displayed all around civil behavior. A refreshing change from what we have seen here in the past few weeks from geeks who want to 'take on the man'....
While dust certainly is a problem for any electrical connection, for the most part the old blowing trick really doesn't do very much. The main problem with Nintendo cartridges (all video game systems, eventually) is corrosion. The cartridge contacts build up an incredible amount of gunk on them, eventually rendering them almost useless. This problem is made worse by the fact that cartridges and the connectors within a console are often made from different metals, and some funky electolytic reaction goes on (chemistry majors feel free to expand upon this).
The original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was notorious for this, due to the way the cartridges go into the unit. Remember being able to slide the cartridge back and forth even when it was as firmly inserted as possible? Also notice how no other game company has again made anything close to the NES, and all used very firm connections? A dirty NES cartridge has to be EXACTLY aligned in the console, which is pretty tricky. Taking it out and blowing on it more likely just meant that you put it back in a slightly different alignment, hopefully one in which the contacts were nicely connected.
The solution? Good old rubbing alcohol. Dip a Q-tip in it, and rub the hell out of the cartridge contacts. Any NES cartridge that saw much use will give you a rather black Q-tip. You can usually use quite a lot of force (in fact, you may need to). I've restored hundreds of NES games this way (and a few for other systems, but 99% of the problem is that damn NES console !@$$!@#!@$), and have yet to see one that doesn't work eventually. The consoles themselves, strangely, seem to require little to no cleaning.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Exactly where in there does it say "You're allowed to make a copy and make it available for all the world to copy at their leisure"?
Perhaps you were talking about Section 108, but I find that hard to believe because of paragraph c2 says:
I eagerly await your reply to this explicit statement that digital copies made available to the public are illegal.
This is indeed a great idea, but just imagine the outrage that book publishers would have if someone tried to set up a large, public repository where someone could borrow books, read them, and return them! Oh, wait...
(for the humor impaired: I am always completely serious)
As long as a check-in/check-out model exists, and possession of the intellectual property actually changes hands, there will be people creating software to override the application security to obtain copies. This would probably be one of the main arguments against such as system from the media companies. Perfect example of this is Streamripper for Shoutcast. Shoutcast streams audio through winamp, and Streamripper allows you to rip the Mp3's from the stream.
They were complaining that Amazon was prominently displaying used copies of books on the page selling a brand new copy. Understandably, that was cutting into sales, and Alot of author's were a little bit miffed about it.
It was not the publishing companies, the issue was brought up by the Author's Guild, and all they wanted wasa for Amazon to NOT display Used Book Sales right next to the sales for brand spanking new books. They didn't threaten legal action, all the Author's Guild did was suggest that it's members not provide links to Amazon from their own sites, but instead provide links to online retailers that were more author friendly, which seperated their new and used book sales.
But infocom had long been bankrupt and their assets sold to activision, and text games are far from popular, so they probably didn't have any choice
Yes, obviously someone had a gun their head and said "Release the infocom adventures or die".
C'mon. I can't see Jesus sitting there in bed with Mary Magdelene, reading the Kama Sutra. That is of course, the original Fucking Manual.
Besides, if he had, he probably wouldn't have agreed to get on the cross.
What rights do car owners have when their car is abandoned by the manufacturer? If I own a 1980 Zephyr station wagon and the parts are no longer available for me to fix it, does that mean that I can go out, steal somebody else's car, and be legally free from ramifications? After all, the car was new when I bought it! And if the manufacturer chose to stop making them because they weren't in demand, that's not my fault! I should be able to take whatever car I want, because I bought one way back when!
Or, in your case of owning an NES but not the games, you own the engine and frame of the car, but not the seats. You should therefore be able to go out and steal seats, wheels, a drive shaft, car mats, and every other "accessory" to the car. After all, you have hardware that can use that, right? So you're entitled to them, right?
Maybe you should unplug for a while and try to understand that piracy is not good. Downloading copyrighted games is illegal, no matter how you slice it. Eventually, in several dozen years, they will fall to public domain as the copyrights expire. Then you can download them to your heart's content. But until then, you're breaking the law, and there's no way around that.
Did he say ASSLOAD? hmmm.... going back to the gay porn banners... =P
If this same concept were to be applied to movies, would you have to lend the whole content, or could you lend portions such as one frame or scan line at a time? That means that you could then feed out a movie to thousands of people at a time each having a slight delay in-between.
If someone did steal the contents by not checking them back in you would then loose the rights to display that movie again. Unless you have some sort of system setup so you know exactly who is using your contents, you would have a hard time forcing them to check the content back in.
If someone did check the contents back in but really kept a copy, you would be in the clear. The person who copied it would be violating copyright laws (assuming they use that content again). This is comparable to the video rental scheme where they rent you the physical movie media, if you don't return it they cannot distribute that physical movie media anymore. But if you copy the physical movie media and then return it, the rental place can continue distributing it, and you violated the copyright laws (assuming you ever play the video without having it checked out again).
To make it simpler you could do away with the check-in and check-out procedures and simply have a agreement which states that they cannot copy the video. Then you would have a streaming system on the backend that would take care of locking the whole files or portions of files depending on what is considered legal.
Does anybody remember the SEGA Interactive cable thingy which plugged into your Genesis and let you download games for a period of time? Or am I mis-remembering a vaporware concept - I remember seeing it listed as an option by my cable company, but never saw anybody using it. (My appologies for the double post, I hit the return key prematurely!)
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
A similar "ware" idea I've had for a while now, deviating from the standard ShareWare and FreeWare ideas, but more along the lines of the lesser-known CardWare "licensing".
It is the idea of paying a nominal fee (say, for argument's sake, 10 bucks) to a game/utility developer, and once you are done with the game/utility/whatever, you offer it up to the next person seeking it, for the same 10 dollars. Kind of like a rental fee, but more of a "loaner" fee.
That way, you've paid your 10 bux to the developer, and he/she gets to keep it for his/her hard work; however, once you've finished with it and pass it on (my original term for this was "PassWare"), you get your money back from the next person in line.
Now, let's say the developer offered up (theoretically) 100 saleable "copies" or downloads of this product, he/she could be in for a substantial R.O.I., while the only person who pays for it without a "payback" for passing it on, is one who either really likes the app and keeps it, or one who just ends up getting stuck with it at the end of it's life cycle... (but hey, there has to be a pitfall somewhere, right?).
I didn't say it was a perfect plan, but one certainly profitable for a developer, while being truly affordable (you get your money back) for the end-user.
~mw
What gives google the ability to copy all material on the web and archive it for their own good? Let's say my web site has a disclaimer that does not allow it to be copied in any way shape or form unless with written permission. Where does google get off copying it to their servers?
-eric
Then we'd be talking. That would actually be quite the business. Renting ROM's from an online site. Sure you would have to worry about repeat business. However how often do you rent the same movie twice?
Agreed. Some suggestions:
- Help your local schools with computer/technical issues. Help them set up a network of Linux boxen.
- Write free software.
- Take time to help others with their computer problems...
There are much better things to do with your time than merely watching movies and downloading MP3's. If we are serious about protecting our rights online, we need to get out and get the word out - we need to be seen and heard in our communities. Let people know about the issues affecting free software. But don't sit back and do nothing and then complain about how you lost your rights...The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Really? Would you be so kind as to point out to me exactly where the AHRA states that, please? I searched for the word "copy", and couldn't find any pertinant information. I also searched for "backup", "archive", "damage", and about every other synonym that I could think of, to no avail. IANAL either, but you would think that sort of thing ("You can copy this piece of copyrighted information!") would be pretty explicitly spelled out.
But you see, the problem comes in making the leap from meatspace to cyberspace. It's one thing to give a single, static, unchanging copy of a book to a friend to read. It's another thing to give him a copy of a book that he can easily reproduce and save for himself. The problem is that it's so damn easy to make copies of digital works that the same laws cannot apply.
Re: reverse engineering, I was assuming that all code within the ROMs was copyrighted and protected by patents. Otherwise, you're right, it's legal.
Finally, as for it being "black and white", I refer you to this comment that I made detailing the US Code laws in respect to fair use. In that case, I do believe that it is "black and white." If you make a copy of a copyrighted work and make it publically available, you are infringing copyright, and therefore engaging in an illegal act.
That is the worst analogy I have ever seen!! The games are not being obtained illegally, and sharing a game is hardly the same thing as sharing your wife!!!!! Blockbuster shares games all the time. They are only limited by the number of copies they own, which is also the case for consoleclassix.com.
(B) This subsection does not apply to -
(ii) a computer program embodied in or used in conjunction with a limited purpose computer that is designed for playing video games and may be designed for other purposes.
Shockwave Flash movies are the greatest thing to happen to non-sequitur humor since Japan.
Ideas for things to do in your spare time other than buy stuff from other people.
1) Learn to cook. Baking cookies and breads for friends can be very theraputic and win you more friends.
2) Learn to homebrew. Brewing beer, making wine, or even mead can certainly win you friends.
3) Join a club or other organization. A couple come to mind:
3a) Society for Creative Anachronism (don't need even electricity for most of their activities, how's THAT for not consuming?)
3b) NTrak Model Trains
3c) Pick up Ham Radio
3d) Open Source Software. Lots of projects out there.
4) Make your own music. Heck, someone has to make it.
5) Fly a kite.
6) Read to your kids/friends/parents.
7) Play a board game (anything from "Sorry" or "Monopoly" to "Munchkins", "Hackers", or "The Settlers of Catan"
8) Woodworking. Talk about a hacker heaven... turn trees into anything you want!
9) Sports. No, not watching them, particiapting. Try Baseball, Soccer, Football, Rugby. Or if you are more of a loner, Cycling, Running, Swimming, Inline Skating. Or possibly even my favorites: Fencing, Volleyball and Rockclimbing.
10) Art. Paiting, poetry, pottery, photography.
There, 10 things that anyone can do and do well with a minor bit of practice that do not consume anything from the media giants. Some of them are even healthy and might reduce your waistline. At least one of them can get you drunk!
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
Good idea, except now that they posted it on Slashdot, demand will exceed supply and I'll never be able to check out the games I want!!
Which brings me to the main point of this post. The various media industries view us not as citizens, but consumers.
Ummm. The "media industries" are not countries, so why would they ever view you as "citizens" instead of "consumers"?
The solution? Stop being a consumer!
So how about this. Cast off your media addiction and go do stuff that shows the various entertainment industries that they and their product are not needed/wanted. Find other hobbies/activities that don't support the monopolistic organizations. Maybe pushing the idea too far here, but maybe take up a sport!
This is the lamest argument I've seen in a long time. Let's think it through a bit...
We're not pissed off because the RIAA/MPAA is selling these items to us. We WANT these things. They provide ENTERTAINMENT. (Just like sports provide entertainment.)
We're pissed off because they are trying to sell us things we want, without giving us full control over those things after we've purchased them.
However, your idea to abstain from everything is not reasonable. The punishment doesn't fit the crime. In other words, you'll never get enough people to join a boycott like this, because the shit the MPAA/RIAA are pulling is not egregious enough to most people for this boycott to make a dent.
Another way of thinking about it is: I love Lord of the Rings way more than I hate the RIAA's actions.
I think a more successful course of action is to practice civil disobedience, whenever possible. In this case, we're not necessarily trying to change any laws (although that would be nice), we are primarily interested in making it more obvious to the RIAA/MPAA that things have changed.
Share MP3's of your albums with your friends. Crack encryption on products you've purchased, for the purpose of being able to use them without any restrictions. Crack encryption that will be used to limit the usefulness of HDTV or other digital broadcast signals that you've purchased and receive in your home. Break macrovision's and other companies' attempts to prevent you from ripping CD/DVD's to your hard drive. Create programs that make it easy to move television shows from your PVR to your computer, and vice versa. Avoid hardware that uses proprietary media formats whenever possible.
These are actions which could conceivably work to decimate the MPAA/RIAA's old-school business models that no longer apply in the digital world, and yet give me no moral pause (as sharing my MP3's with the entire world does).
These are things that don't require EVERYONE to do something in order for them to work -- only one anonymous person is needed to write a decryption program and post it on the internet, for example.
The MPAA/RIAA will eventually be forced to revise their business model, or die. If they want to survive, they will become digital-friendly. Sell unencumbered digital bundles of music or movies for far less than you're trying to sell physical products. They cost less to produce and distribute, after all.
If you make it easier for people to buy than to steal, you'll make money hand over fist.
Civil disobedience is the key. I'm just stating the obvious.
"And like that
You're ignoring the fact that "free" is infinitely less expensive than "cheap." The same people that won't spend a couple of bucks to snag the actual carts used and cheap are the same ones that wouldn't pay a couple of bucks for a rom dump. Of course there are exceptions, but publishers don't necessarily profit on exceptions.
Meanwhile, publishers would be forced to support their emulators for actual customers.
I'm fairly confident that this is the reason why we don't see more emulated Sega PC releases. There's too little reward. Those Smash Pack and Sonic collection CDs for Windows go for pennies in the bargain bin.
< tofuhead >
It is still the dark of night.
It was not intended as a troll I spent over an hour putting together that post and to see it crushed out of existence for sake of one persons opinion is not right. I don't post to /. much anymore, and this is a major reason. Why spend time trying to write something of value if it can be obliterated by any single individual who may or may not being doing it out of simple bloody mindedness?
Find me a copy of Dark Wizard for the Sega CD. I can still manage to actually find a Sega CD to play it on, amazingly enough, but only online.
:p
Oh, and I mean a *new* copy, as in, never opened and played, so that Sega/etc. are getting their money, and it's not all going to some cheap ass 'old games!' house.
Hard to do, eh? Yeah, I thought so. You know what? Gaming companies aren't making money off of old games. You can't find them in stores, now, can you? If you do, they're often used. Which means Sega/Nintendo/etc. already got their money once, and aren't getting it again.
Solution? Sega, Nintendo, etc., sell the old games, roms or not. I'd kill for a copy of Dark Wizard; so I'd surely toss Sega some cash for one.
(On a sidenote, it's amazing how much these used game stores rip people off. I've seen *archaic* *NES* games, used, going for upwards of $100. Bloody hell.)
it couldn't hurt sales that much
Which is one of the guidelines for fair use enshrined in 17 USC 107.
they don't market these games anymore.
Konami still markets Castlevania. Nintendo still markets Super Mario Bros. 2 and Super Mario World. Nintendo will soon resume marketing of Zelda 3. Namco still markets its old arcade games. And that's just on one console, the GBA. Think of how many other games are being redone and marketed on the other consoles, not to mention PCs.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Yes, it did exist, at least in certain test markets. I played it at the local K-Mart many, many moons ago.
:)
Recently, a local auto parts store (of all places) that also has tons of obsolete electronic goodies had the original modems for sale. Best 99 cents I ever spent. It plugs into the cartridge port on a Genesis, and your coaxial cable attaches to the side. Now if only someone could write a handy server that I could run off a coax ethernet card...
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
"I may be quite wrong." - Socrates
The "library" in this case is actively bypassing the manufacturer-produced copy protection (the console format)
But does a form factor and a pin assignment count as copy protection? In most cases, the cartridge is just a plain old storage device, just like SmartMedia, MemoryStick, or CompactFlash, that just happens to have data etched into a semiconductor mask. (NES and GBC carts also have bankswitching hardware.) Systems that use CDs generally use a standard (ISO 9660) format.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Maybe you should unplug for awhile, since you obviously have no clue when it comes to how computers work.
Steal a car, and the owner no longer has a car.
Download a rom, and the owner still has his rom.
I'd try to make a nice rational argument here, but the only thing that comes to mind is this:
You, sir, are an idiot.
I think what you should say is that, if you own a 1980 Zephyr station wagon and you can't get parts to fix it, that you should be allowed to steal another 1980 Zephyr station wagon, or the parts from it. There's a big difference.
The way you put it, if I, say, bought Super Mario Brothers for my NES way back in the day, I would be going out and stealing Super Mario Sunshine for my Gamecube to replace it. Instead, I'm getting a ROM of Super Mario Brothers. There's a big difference.
ROM's, abandonware, etc will never be accepted by industry. Everything we buy has a carefully calculated lifespan. We are supposed to throw stuff out after a while - cars, clothes, music, etc. When the next generation product line rolls out, they gotta be sure the timing is right and people are ready to buy. While I'm sure the availability of old ROMS is insignificant in the scheme of things, its probably a variable they'd rather not have to deal with.
...]."
I am not really talking about sales directly. As an example imagine what you, Joe consumer, consider a "cool" game (you are probably thinking graphics more than any other single aspect). Industries put a lot of effort in influencing your concept of "cool" (or fashionable, useful, or whatever). They don't just ask people what they want and sell it to them because, as it turns out, this is not the most profitable way of doing things.
Do you really think the car industry want to sell me a car that I'll be happy with for 50 years? Word processors are a good example of this. They have not changed much at all since the DOS WordPerfect days, yet every year or two Microsoft launches a version of office under the foggy guise of "increased productivity, [buzzwords, etc
Anyway, I think I've made my point... They want the old to disappear to make way for the new.
That's not orthogonal -- folks stealing software off P2P networks know they're stealing (err, engaging in copyright violation), and choose to proceed despite. Removing the GPL notices would prevent the users of this hypothetical P2P system from knowing they're doing something wrong, thus making your example moot.
Anyhow, letting "most" freedom of information types ruin it for those who genuinely do care about distributing information (one of the better reasons to be concerned about laws which attack means of distribution rather than illegal distribution itself) and preserving information for future use (one of the larger reasons for opposing the DMCA) is utterly unreasonable -- much like ignoring the reasonable {Linux,NT} admins who make considered, rational arguments in favor of their chosen OS because of the number of {Linux,NT} "advocates" who simply flame that "{Windoze,Loonix} sucks!".
Games I know are probably different, do they obtain a special license to rent
In the United States, it's illegal to rent PC software without a license from the publisher (17 USC 109(b)(1)). PC software means a computer program designed for a computer that isn't primarily marketed to play video games.
Will I retire or break 10K?
So you're saying that it should be legal for you to steal a copy of Super Mario Brothers to make up for your loss? You're honestly defending the idea that "I bought product X 20 years ago, and even though it wasn't supposed to last 20 years, I should be entitled to have product X now?"
You can't rent out someone's movie or game withought their permission, movie studios sell special tapes for rental, they're basically the same as the home video but they can cost the rental store upwards of $100. These games can be borrowed but they can't be rented legally.
http://www.mame.dk
Yes, MAME.dk is very respected.
That's a fact.
It's not "populated by the scum of the Internet, pushing their warez as being legal".
Come on now, thats a crappy argument. Youre talking about stealing a replacement part from somebody who physically owns it, but downloading a rom is more like building your own replacement part from raw materials that you own.
Are you saying that, if i have the ability and the resources, i should NOT be allowed to build my own replacement part? I should have to wait a few years? Your metaphor and therefore your argument are unrelated to the current discussion. Bah. Score 2 my ass.
------ hi mom
"I wonder if this will allow an end-run around some of the questionable legality of file-sharing"
MP3 sites can't hide behind the "borrow/delete within 48 hours" scam and neither can these people. It's a complete falsehood. There is no end run around. That stupid little statment doesn't protect anybody and if the copywrite holder of the ROM wants to take em out, they will. Considering they don't have the right to give such user permissions to begin with, they've just ensured their service is even more cumbersome and even more of a joke than anything else out there. Oh! Somebody has Chrono Trigger "checked out" and thus unplayable? Dang. Guess I'll have to pop on to Kazaa Lite and download it. Gee, what a great system.
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Why do game companies care if people are using roms from 5 years ago! They aren't going to make any money off them, the only who people who might are used games resellers, and not much. The only thing they do is alienate their customers, with no benefit that I can see.
Those vaults full of IP that they aren't selling but aren't letting go of are just their for them to mine away at when they are lacking in original new ideas for games. Look at the Mario or Zelda games. They've got franchises there that roll the $$$ in and don't think for a moment that they don't drag through the old games from time to time looking to recreate that magic with other lesser known titles.
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Exactly where in there does it say "You're allowed to make a copy and make it available for all the world to copy at their leisure"?
It doesn't. Copyright law is intentionally vague on what constitutes fair use, and what does not. The four factors of what does constitute fair use are:
- The purpose and character of the use.
- The nature of the copyrighted work.
- The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole.
- The effect of the use on the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work.
All four of these factors have to be considered, and depending on the courtroom, some are considered more highly than others.
Take for instance if I am preparing a report for school, and I quote from sources. This would fall under the fair use provisions of copyright law, and I could publish this report on the Internet including the quotes. However, this gets tricky. Commercial publishers restrict the amount of text that authors quote from in order to steer clear of factor 3.
In the current case that we are referring to, these guys are likely going to have a hard time with 3 out of the 4 factors. The fourth is likely the easiest for them to represent because all they have to do is make certain that they aren't allowing games that are still being marketed.
I eagerly await your reply to this explicit statement that digital copies made available to the public are illegal.
Section 107 trumps Section 108 because of paragraph F4.
Besides, you still can't tell me why it's illegal for me to make a personal copy of something. Or why it's illegal for me to share a game with my friends. Those are, afterall, the original arguments that you made that I objected to.
It's one less copy of Mario Advance if you've got a palm PC running a NES emulator.
Nintendo doesn't sell the non-portable NES retail anymore. You either have to get one second-hand or get a game boy advance if you want to play the older Nintendo games (the better selling ones, anyway). If you download the NES Mario 2 and play it on a laptop, which is the closest you can get to an actual GBA with emulators (AFAIK, correct me if I'm wrong), you still have the slightly awkward and bulky keyboard as your controller instead of the very elegant hand-sized GBA controller-screen-system-all-in-one.
And porting the more popular old games to GBA still doesn't cover the hundreds of other NES and SNES games that weren't super-mega-blockbuster hits, but still had respectable followings.
The day that Nintendo releases a port of Muppet Adventure for Game Boy Advance, true to the original in all its super-cheesy glory, I will be buying many people drinks.
Just another freak in the freak kingdom.
See section 1008. It protects non-commercial use of a digital recording device by a consumer. Besides, the link you provide is not the entire AHRA.
After all, playing the games on a TV w/ a controller is so much better than a computer keyboard.
My TV is 13" and doesn't take anything over a 480i NTSC (Never The Same Color) signal. My PC display is 17" and takes up to 768p RGB signal. My game controller is a Nintendo 64 controller connected through an adapter to my PC's USB port. NES games, Super NES games, and Game Boy Advance games feel just fine through my rig.
Will I retire or break 10K?
So you're saying that it should be legal for you to steal a copy of Super Mario Brothers to make up for your loss? You're honestly defending the idea that "I bought product X 20 years ago, and even though it wasn't supposed to last 20 years, I should be entitled to have product X now?"
So what you're saying is that it would be legal for automobile manufacturers to require you to only install their parts. A few years down the road, your car breaks down and the manufacturer is no longer supporting that model. So rather than get it fixed, you'll just let it go to the junkyard?
Console Classics' legal argument http://www.consoleclassix.com/legal.htm could as easily be used by a video streaming service to "rent" movies over the internet. Rules:
- Don't bypass the encryption - digitize a tape or the output of a DVD player rather than using DECSS.
- Stream it to customers using a client that doesn't make a non-ephemeral local copy and dumps cache if the connection is lost (i.e. Realplay, Microsoft's media player with appropriate flags set, or a client of your own.)
- Don't have more streams going than you have purchased copies of the original program. (Might also be good to digitize each copy separately.)
Of course you'd want to rent for a several-day period (like a video rental store) rather than releasing the copy for re-rental as soon as the customer is done with it. Otherwise you'll have a much faster turnaround than a video store and will thus rent more showings per copy. Good for you but bad for the studio, so they're more likely to go after you in court.
Even with the same rental times you'll probably be slightly more efficient than a video chain, since you'll have ONE virtual store with a single pool of virtual tapes to serve all the customers, rather than having to divide the copies among multiple physical stores and guess the local markets right. But that's small potatoes. Your big profit improvement over a classic rental chain will come from not having to maintain the physical stores.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Why [play SMB2 on GBA vs. NES]? Because of the GBA's only true advantage: It's portable!
So is my laptop. So is my neighbor's Palm device.
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i always though it was silly how things were lost in startrek when a transmission fails, 'it's digital, the source must still be there!'
guess they were right after all, we seem to move to a situation where only one copy of a digital file can exist, with the exception of publishers who somehow will be able to make a copy.
But I will conceed that it's kind of close to the mark. I mean, really what rights do you have once someone has quit supporting that "thing" you bought...a decade ago?
People complaining that they have some kind of bizarre right to these ROMs are just plain nuts. You HAD a right to go out and buy the crap out of them when they were on the market. No one would have stopped you if you wanted to buy every single one you could get your hands on correct? Now you HAVE the right to go digging around trying to find old and working used ones "on the market". That's pretty much all the rights you have in this.
Now if these companies want to share their older games with the people who gave them money back in the day that's cool and I'm going to that website tonight to get all my favorite old games. I'm going to get some I don't even like just to be a glutton and because I can.
I can, but it's not a "right". I can because the owners allow it.
Of course they haven't allowed it so I'm not going to download squat tonight but you get my point.
You want to swipe some ROMs and enjoy your favorite old games fine. Knock yourself out. But remember it's not it's not your right to do so.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
I hear it will have every sonic on it but Sonic CD (for obvious reasons).
The GBA can address up to 32 megabytes without bankswitching, even though the largest current cart is 8 megabytes. Most of Sonic CD was redbook audio, right? Would somebody who has a copy of Sonic CD please check how long (in m:s) the first track is? If it's less than 3:30, then it's less than 32 megabytes.
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Alright, Mr. Spock.
If my video game breaks, I would try to fix it (blowing on the contacts, cleaning the cart, etc). If it didn't work, I would throw the cartridge away and either get a new game (Super Mario Sunshine, a terrific game) or try to find another LEGAL copy of the original.
Although the security of such a system might be crackable, the mere existance of security would make such exploits a major DMCA no-no. As a result, it would be hard to accuse the libraries of "piracy".
The key to making this work is (a) development of an open source app that manages the files and distribution, and (b) deployment of such an app via State or University libararies. A local/municipal library would surely be a lightning rod for RIAA/MPAA retaliation, but the states have enough lawyers on payroll to make life difficult for the evildoers. We have 50 chances to find a state attorney general who is not afraid of a fight. This would put the libraries back into the driver's seat of content sharing. A very cool concept, IMHO.
Again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world, and their glory. And he said to Him, "All these things will I give you if you fall down and worship me." - Matthew 4:8-9 He did have the opportunity, but decided against it.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Why should I use their service when I can just download all the ROMs for free anyway?
(and don't give me any "it's their property" crap because all those companies already made their damn money and I aint gonna give them any more)
the copies weren't licensed for rental, only sale.
This is based on a restriction in United States copyright law that applies only to sound recordings and those computer programs not designed for video game consoles (17 USC 109(b)(1)).
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Where does it say anywhere how long a product is supposed to last when you buy it? When I buy any video game, it doesn't say "This product will self-destruct in 10 years." People buy things because they "feel" rugged and solid, and "will last".
If you buy a chair, and it falls apart and the manufacturer is no longer making spare parts, is it illegal for you to look at the old part, say "hmm", and make another part that does the exact same thing? No, of course not. Likewise, when the battery in my copy of Legend of Zelda runs dead, is it illegal for me to open it up, look at the 5V watch battery that's in there, say "hmm", and replace it? No, of course not. And finally, when the poorly-designed insertion retaining mechanism inside my NES finally is worn past the point where the contacts will solidly connect, is it illegal for me to open it up and say "hmm" and figure out a way to do the exact same thing with a general-purpose computer? No.
It's not stealing. It's reverse engineering, plain and simple. A literal analogy would be when your old 1980 Zephyr (or whatever) stops working, you go to a friend who has the same car who developed a complete copy of the part that broke, stare at it, say "hmm", and copy his copy.
How do you fix this problem? Easy. Just buy a new 72 pin connector (a few companies still makes these, and brand new units are always on ebay), or restore your old pin. First, take apart the system and remove the old connector....it just slides off the main board. Get a hook of some sort (I use a dental cleaning tool) and pull down the connector pins a little bit. Then, clean then with alcohol, or even better, Electrical Contact cleaner. Put it back together, and your NES should work like new.
"But the smell-o-scope is brilliant I tell you! Just think of the astronomical odors you'll smell thanks to me!
You can't sue anybody for copyright infringement...
I would fully support buying ROMs across the Internet for one simple reason: I can't get the game anywhere else. I live in a small town in Wyoming where getting the new "popular" games is difficult at times. There is no used game store; the only remote possibility for getting games is garage sales.
I don't play ROMs from being too much of a cheap bastard to spend $10 on a game; I play them because it's near impossible to buy them.
I'm a cucumber
I think the examples of RealPlayer and Windows Media Player are horrible. If you pause, it has to re-buffer, even though there should be a buffer full of the next moment. I think perhaps you should not be allowed to have more than, say, 5 minutes cached/10% of the video, whichever is smaller - this does 2 things. It allows for bursts of transfer when available, and prevents a short connectivity lapse from killing you. But the base concept is sound. I theorized of a lincense-based streaming MP3 server very much like this a short while ago.
As for online streaming video rental - there's no such thing as "good for you, bad for the studio". The studio would probably have very specific regulations on this enterprise (much like with cinemas themselves) and might even block out others and run them theirselves.
Wouldn't it tick you off if you just finished a movie, and you wanted to go back and hear a memorable line again, only to find out that since you pressed "Stop" you have to pay another 1$ to view it again, and then finding out that the selection you made is currently being viewed to capacity?
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
I think you might have some of that crappy argument syndrome as well. I mean, you aren't building a replacement part are you? You have every right to write yourself a game if you are that into the platform. but you didn't write this game. You don't own this game. You never owned this game.
You "owned" the right to use a copy of this game for the period of time that the manufacturer stated that it would last. Nothing more really.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Really? Would you be so kind as to point out to me exactly where the AHRA [virtualrecordings.com] states that, please?
I mistakenly attributed the wrong law here, for which I apologize. However, the Congressional Act from which this law originated notwithstanding, the wording of U.S.C. Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 117 is clear:
it is not an infringement...to make...another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided...that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only...
(omissions made for space do not change the meaning of the quoted passage)
So, the fact that you can copy this copyrighted information (the law addresses software specifically) is pretty explicity spelled out. Reading further, 117 also allows for the leasing of software you own, as long as you transfer all of your rights in the program (as defined by your license agreement with the manufacturer), and no others as part of the lease.
Now of course, the law becomes very grey, because although every U.S. Citizen has the right to make such archival copies, very few of us actually have the means, especially with regards to software distributed on non-general purpose media (proprietary video-game cartridges). It is a very difficult burden on the average consumer to be expected to purchase a ROM read/write device in order to exercise his/her rights under S.117, and a judge could very well rule that the end workaround of downloading a ROM for play on an emulator of a game which the consumer in question owned a legitimate copy is not, in effect, a violation of Title 17, although the letter of the law had been broken, because the consumer had no other way to exercise his/her rights. Of course, if the act of downloading ROMs is not illegal, that says nothing about the legality of serving them, which is where the entire system begins to look like a farce, and keeps this whole cottage industry firmly in the grey market. However, CC's tactic of leasing or loaning the games in question seems to fall within the scope of Section 117, except for the fact that an ephemeral copy is made during the transmission of the lease over the Internet.
I would now argue that it is not inconceivable for a judge to apply some of the rules regarding "ephimeral copies" in Section 112 in this context, even though that section more or less applies only to audio broadcasts. The reason I think this could possibly apply is that while the law is written to allow for Internet music broadcasts, given a reasonably strong protection scheme on the works being "shared", it is arguably a fair way for consumers to exercise their rights under the First Sale doctrine to share items they have I would imagine it would take a very clever lawyer and a lot of case-history research to come up with enough precedents to convince the hypothetical judge to rule in this way, but depending on the court hearing the case, it could happen. A lot of these laws are fairly new and not very well tested, so there is a lot of legal uncertainty here.
You are correct in assuming that the code within the game consoles (generally the ROMs don't need to be reverse engineered to create an emulator, rather the consoles themselves do, at which point if the emulator is doing its job right the ROM images should execute with no further modifications), is protected by copyright, but copyright provides no protection for computer code which is reverse-engineered. In most cases the product of reverse-engineering will not be exactly the same as the original copyrighted code, but will in effect be another work (which can then be copyrighted) which merely expresses the same idea (in this case a set of algorithms) which was encompassed in the original. Any patent protection on the mechanisms involved would be subject to the wording of the patent, and in many (maybe even most) cases, the protection can be worked around by reimplementing the same functionality in different ways.
If my video game breaks, I would try to fix it (blowing on the contacts, cleaning the cart, etc). If it didn't work, I would throw the cartridge away and either get a new game (Super Mario Sunshine, a terrific game) or try to find another LEGAL copy of the original.
So remind me again why it's not legal for you to download the contents of the cartridge onto your own personal computer so that you could continue to enjoy it?
I don't understand your position here. You keep saying that it's illegal for you to make a backup copy for personal use. Why is that?
Yes, you're right, section F4 does say that section 108 does not affect fair use. However, I have already shown that the fair use clauses in 107 do not cover making a copy of a copyrighted work available for download over the Internet.
Besides, you still can't tell me why it's illegal for me to make a personal copy of something
Um, I thought that was why we were quoting US Code in the first place. You (I assume) are not a library or educational facility, and therefore cannot copy any of your copyrighted works.
As for sharing with your friends, I have no problem at all with you taking your copy of Super Mario Brothers for the NES over to a friend's house to play on his hardware. I would encourage it, in fact. But I do have a problem with you making exact duplicates of said game, giving it to those friends, and then kindly asking them to delete it when they're done with it. It doesn't work that way. Plus, by posting on the Internet, you're not sharing with a few friends. You're sharing it with a few hundred million strangers. There's a bit of a leap there...
So we need a re-design of the law.
You can make copies for your use (*cough* Cactus Data Shield *cough*) as well as using others copies if you have the license to do so.
For this you cannot make copies expressly for other people, but other people can use your copies if they already have the right to make their own.
Whaddaya think?
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Is there such a thing [as a respected emulation site]?
Other than this? What about this or this?
Re: Dumping cartridges, you can only do that if the EULA (in the back of game manuals) explicitly allows it.
What do you mean? 17 USC 117 permits a US-resident owner of a program cartridge to dump that cartridge for use on a computer. Because I didn't see any EULA when I handed over my con$ideration, I see no reason why it becomes a binding contract.
(That section doesn't in and of itself permit what these people are doing.)
Will I retire or break 10K?
You say "If you download Mario 2 for free, that's one less copy of Mario Advance they sell." This is actually a flawed argument, and one commonly used to justify absurdly high "estimates" about the impact of piracy.
Downloading a ROM does not mean that the user could or would have bought the product otherwise.
Note that I'm not making a statement about whether or not you should be allowed to download the ROM; just pointing out the fact.
We're on the road to Tycho.
Metal Gear. The Original. No chance of making money now, right? Compilations of the Final Fantasy series? THAT is the only reason I can see them being so anal about copies of Space Invaders and Dig Dug. Potential future use. Like frickin' ET. You only see him once every seven years and when they pull him out of hibernation, he usually is a cash cow. It's not so much about making money off that individual game as opposed to making it a rare and unique experience so they can make more money off either the sequel or a complilation of those games, I'd imagine. The game itself is relatively small change compared to the nostalgia it has the potential of creating if the ROM wasn't so readily availible.
At least, that's my take on it. It's the only halfway logical reason I could think of for companies like Nintendo to be so protective of them. Not that I agree, but...
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If I own a 1980 Zephyr station wagon and the parts are no longer available for me to fix it, does that mean that I can go out, steal somebody else's car, and be legally free from ramifications?
But does it also mean you can't manufacture such parts yourself?
you own the engine and frame of the car, but not the seats. You should therefore be able to go out and steal seats, wheels, a drive shaft, car mats, and every other "accessory" to the car.
Or make them yourself. Get a flash cartridge and copy games onto it, making sure that you possess and own a genuine original copy*. You're protected under 17 USC 117, the law that permits the owner of a copy (e.g. a cartridge) of a copyrighted computer program to make limited copies.
* No, that's not necessarily the situation with the rental outlet described in the present Slashdot article.
Nintendo tries to apply 17 USC chapter 9 (mask work law) to game cartridges in an attempt to get around the backup law. IANAL, but I don't think Nintendo has a case. Apparently, mask work law doesn't apply because it applies to the actual semiconductor masks, not the underlying computer programs. Besides, mask work law doesn't apply to NES or Super NES games because mask work rights last only 10 years (in contrast to perpetual copyright), and the design for NES and Super NES ROM masks was laid down in 1985 and 1991 with the release of the pack-in titles.
Eventually, in several dozen years, they will fall to public domain as the copyrights expire.
Not if you keep voting for Senators and Representatives who continue to extend the term of copyright.
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Of course it's OK to switch batteries in your Zelda cart. Of course it's OK to crack open the NES and jiggle the wires. What is NOT OK is to go online and illegally copy a copyrighted work to make up for your "loss".
As for your clarification of the analogy, it's still wrong. You are not reverse engineering a game. You are taking a direct copy of a copyrighted work and playing it as your own. A more refined analogy is that you find a place on the Internet that will ship you the part, free of charge, and that the part was illegally created, breaking copyright laws.
Here are the steps to get Super Mario 3 on your GBA:
.GBA ROM for upload onto your flash card.
.GBA ROM to flash card on GBA using software supplied with Flash Linker.
1. Purchase Flash Linker from Lik Sang with flash card.
2. Download PocketNES, no not the Pocket PC version, from http://nes.pocketheaven.com/ . It is a full featured NES emulator for the GBA.
3. Download Thingy from the PocketNES site and use it to create a
4. Upload
5. Enjoy playing your favorite NES games on the GBA in full speed with sound and color!
I don't understand why any media industry should view us as citizens and not consumers? I mean, the government (on local, state, and federal levels here in the US) should see you as a citizen. That makes sense. The media is as you say an industry and being an industry they are all about making a profit.
It's what they do. It's pretty much all they should be doing. They have to obey the law (or at least in theory they do)and should be doing that too granted, but for crying out loud, if the people who are trying to sell you things can't look at you as consumers without pissing you off then how is anyone going to make a buck in this world?
I would think that a member of any media industry that didn't view you as a consumer or potential consumer would not be around very long.
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All Nintendo has to do is say that it was intended as such.
The fact that Nintendo made most of the NES cartridge specs PUBLIC in Nintendo Power magazine during the third year of publication kind of blows "anybody who reverse engineers our NES cart edge bus is breaking trade secret law" out of the water.
As an added bonus, the catridge format had the advantage of being a fairly effective form of copy protection, especially in a non-emulated context.
Are you saying emulation is illegal? Try telling that to the developers of Wine and Bochs. If, on the other hand, you merely claim that Game Paks were physically hard to copy, then look at all the pirate multicarts you can pick up in HK.
Sure it was bypassable, but the mechanisms for bypassing cartridge-based protection tended to be fairly elaborate.
I understand that Nintendo 64 Game Paks and later Super NES Game Paks (the one with the SA-1 coprocessor) had a small amount of protection against homebuilt dumping machines, but there is NO protection on Famicom, Game Boy, or Game Boy Advance Game Paks: just write the address, read the data. Write the address, read the data. From there, you can construct a complete backup copy of the binary.
In contrast, the Dreamcast protection was almost non-existent (with an unmodified Dreamcast being able to boot cracked, burned games)
That's about how much protection there is on GB and GBA, and homebrew developers like it.
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What part of "All Rights Reserved" do you not understand? Yes, it sucks that we can't get most music and movies for free. Yes, it sucks that the DMCA exists. But all this grasping for loopholes in IP law is really pathetic. Until the IP is handed to you by the "owner" it's not yours to borrow or steal regardless of how easy it was to obtain. No, "fair use" does not apply here.
-- thinkyhead software and media
How much of a share are you going to pay Konami, Capcom, Enix, or any of the other NES licensed developers to use their titles.
No need. Nintendo itself released hundreds of NES, Game Boy, Super NES, and Game Boy Color titles, and the GCN's 486 MHz PowerPC processor can probably emulate all those systems handily.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Bundle it with an old-school NES controller that's been adapted to plug into the cube
I already know what NES-style controller Nintendo would use for emulating NES games on the Cube: Game Boy Advance with the GameCube Cable.
That is, if we could petition Nintendo to release such an emulation demo-disc for the Cube.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Cheap and easy to get (instead of relying on never-reliable P2P downloads) and gathered together (instead of having to wait through the 75 people ahead of me in the P2P queue) will trump free for the majority of people who just want the damn game.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Learn to homebrew.
Illegal for about 1/3 of Slashdot readers because of lack of chronological age.
Open Source Software. Lots of projects out there.
Once your computer breaks, and the only computers on the market require Palladium operating systems, then what do you do?
Make your own music. Heck, someone has to make it.
Is that even possible? How do you know that when you write a song, you won't "accidentally" borrow a melody from another existing song?
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This is about the first time I have seen someone at slashdot who really gets it.
With classic video games that still have a (relatively) real demand out there, they may be able to hold out for more. It's a very interesting economic problem.
-bugg
.. for audio books. They charge full new price for used books, but buy them back at ~$5 less. So if you don't return them, you've already paid full price. If you do, it's like a rental for $5.
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
I was under the impression that the law protecting individual backups (we know that we can't share those backups, granted) was precisely to guarantee the use of the product regardless of the problems that may affect the original media.
You are saying that the individual backups are wrong (since the products have a defined lifetime, that apparently the creator can choose) or that although they are allowed, and I could do it myself, if I hadn't done it I lost the ability to do it later?
About seven years ago I worked contract for a world-wide consulting firm (with 35 offices on six continents and a beautifully huge WAN) that used KeyServer for some software license management. You could check out a keyed version of, say, PowerPoint, for a specific period of time, use it, and then forget about it. It would expire when your time was up. You only had to be connected to the network in order to check it out, but the time key was stored on the computer, so it was great for laptops and one-time uses at client sites. Worked pretty well, and is cross-platform.
Wordnik, a dictionary project which aims to collect
All this talk has made me nostalgic. I think I should pick up an nes controller for three dollars at the local pawn shop and try my hand at hacking up some sort of serial adapter and driver. A quick google for some roms and an emulator and I'm good to go. Anybody else tried anything like this?
do not read this line twice.
You know this sounds fair to me... If I buy a game or music cd and decide to loan it to a friend I can do that. Why not do the same over a network. As long as only 1 copy of the game/music cd is running at once what is the problem? Another thing has occured to me. If we are just buying a license to use the music when we buy a CD then shouldn't we be entitled to free new media when it becomes available? In the 60's and 70's I bought hundreds of Vinyl Albums. As cd's emerged I was forced to buy the same music on the new media. So as far as I am concerned I have paid for 2 copies of the same music and why shouldn't I be able to give one away to a friend? Why can the music industry charge twice for the same thing and then freak out when people give away a copy. If I truly am buying a license then if I need new media I should not have to pay full price, just a reasonable cost to provide the new media, as I already bought a license. What we need to do to big business is use the power we have as consumers and not consume. Stop buying anything from these crooks for one month and we could change it all for ever!! Thats it!!
Damn straight. When did it become a company's right to place an arbitrary expiry date on something they sell? Can you point me at the sticker on the box of any Atari 2600 cartridge that says "This game must not be played after April 1, 1990." I know why they don't want you emulating games - because all the games you're still playing from 1982 leave you less time to play new games you'd have to buy today.
But that's not a moral position - it's a freaking business model.
In case you've been asleep for the past fifty years, business models have changed - EVERYWHERE. Car manufacturers don't make cars they know will last >10 years, because they can sell replacement, proprietary parts at a great profit. Ever tried to cost building a car from scratch, based on the price of all the replacement parts?
It never used to be that way. Things were built to last, because consumers, righty or wrongly, valued durability. We rich people in the Western Hemisphere have more disposable income than we did a century ago. We consider anyone who doesn't have access to a clothes washing machine to be very poor. We've got gobs of cash, achieved through massive increases in technological efficiency, and manufacturers have adapted to make sure they capture at least as much of it as they used to - lest we spend it on things like, say "education", or "research" or "leisure" or "the public good".
I drive a 1963 Ford Anglia 105e. I know it burns more fuel than new cars, but how much energy would have been wasted, if I insist on a new car every couple of years? Consumption is a choice - not an obligation.
"If you create user accounts, by default, they will have an account type of Administrator with no password." KB Q293834
I'd do this to buy up the old C64 and Atari 8 bit ROMS and then sell them to the public for use in emulators for $1 a ROM file. Maybe even sell a CD with the emulator on it and the ROM images as well.
I doubt that Nintendo, Sega, etc would want to sell their old ROM images, but whomever owns the property of the old Commodore and Atari 8 bit ROMs might want to sell the rights to it as they are not making any money off of them right now.
11) Volunteer for something, preferably something involving people you normally wouldn't hang out with. Great socially, lends you credibility when you speak on tech issues, and makes you feel good.
Oh, please. Public libraries have been lending out original, purchased copies of books, not photocopies of books. Copyright law governs the production of copies, which is in large part why it's called copyright. Sheesh.
/. about what is and is not legal under copyright law, especially since I have some major objections to copyright law as it stands, but this is so blatantly illegal that it's surprising that anyone could miss the point.
I hate to run against the brain-seized thinking on
Making a copy of an entire copyrighted work, except for certain very restricted special cases like personal backup copies, is illegal without the prior consent of the copyright owner. Period. It doesn't matter what scheme you come up with, or whether it actually benefits the copyright holder, or whether it's just plain common sense, or whether you're making any money off of it or not. I'm not saying this is a good thing, necessarily, but it is the law, and it is stated plain as daylight in the copyright statutes using short words that even the data-wants-to-be-free IANAL crowd could understand if they ever actually bothered to read it.
Again, I'm not in agreement with the existing laws, but if it were me and I was pursuing this ridiculous scheme, I would fully expect to be crushed beneath a ton of cease-and-desist letters and civil suits. But my guess is that the twits who are trying this will actually be surprised when their flesh is torn by weasels, and the crowd hereabouts will rally around them the way they do every time some buffoon has his wishful legal thinking shoved up his exhaust port.
Okay, that was harsh, but tell me I'm wrong.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
I have tons of old cartridges and I would buy even more if they would back them up for me so I could play them on my PC.
I would really love to play Clash at Demonhead again on the NES.
I think this is one of the better ideas I've seen in a while. Since everything is stored on their server and loaded directly into memory, it seems very fair since they are accounting for the actual number of copies they have.
I tried it out and it works great.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
They've got expenses, bandwidth, servers, etc.
Eventually they'll almost have to start charging, this is where I see game manufacturers possibly throwing a fuss.
I guess if they're only charging enough to cover expenses they might be able to get away with it. But then again, since the rentals are based on the actual number of cartridges they have in stock, how is it different than if blockbuster rents out a game?
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
You're right as far as the 24 hour trial period thing is. The backup copy thing is real, though I'm not sure exactly how legal it is to get that legit backup copy from an infringing copy.
I agree that the primary motives of many are just to rip of artists, but there really are legitimate reasons for emulation.
(a) The emulation environment is often much better.
I know someone who is a huge Final Fantasy fan. He owns all the games. However, he would much rather play them on the computer than on his systems (this is a guy who bought all his systems for the express purpose of playing Final Fantasy, as well) because of the ability to save/restore anywhere, the ability to skip through lengthy annoying bits, the better image, etc.
(b) Some games are not really playable without emulators.
Some arcade systems are going away, and there is no real way to play the games. That doesn't mean that it's legal, but perhaps you can understand the frusteration of people who love a game and cannot obtain it. Another example would be LucasArts' early adventure games. They require DOS. Lots of us folks don't own, like, or use DOS. We run Linux. Luckily, some smart people have written up an emulator for those games. I suspect that this is a major force driving current purchases of the games, which are still for sale, as it lets people buy the game and then enjoy it in a modern Windows or Linux environment. Furthermore, most abandonware sites refuse to carry games like this that are still being sold.
There are a lot of people out there with fairly pure motives who want emulation. Obviously not all of them, but they're certainly there.
May we never see th
Umm.. lets not beat around the bush here people. How many of you will take option A here:
A) Wait for the ROM to become availiable (a long time for a popular game). Then download it legally from this site, play it on their restricted software (you can forget about using it in obscure oparating systems or on your PDA) and then watch it expire.
B) Load up your favourite browser/ROM-site or P2P app and do a search. Download the file, play.
And, if the demand gets high, they will probably need to start charging or using ad-ware - how many of you would still choose option A? What if your favourite game wasnt on their list, and was only availiable with option B? and finally, what happens when your friend offers you a copy of their super-ROM-CD-collection - still option A?
This is only going to work if the big corporations manage to stop all forms of piracy and file sharing, _and_ decide that this new method is legal.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
A while ago I started writing a book. It's 160 pages so far, and it's a fictional story in the medieval fantasy genre, since that's what I enjoy. It's also taking up nearly all of my spare time, but I enjoy it. I've found that my TV is OFF for 24*7-1 hours a week (1 hour for Farscape). I don't watch any DVDs anymore--at all--so I haven't bought any--at all. I haven't rented anything in YEARS. I'm also involved in a sport, but the point I want to make here is that writing is an option.
If you're interested in writing, take a look at www.hobgoblin.net. I was looking for resources on writing, and I came across this one. Visit your local bookstore and pick up a book on writing; there are LOTS of them. Then, sit back, dream up a story, and work on it. You might find that you enjoy it a LOT more than watching the latest Holywood piece of garbage...
Wind
Actually Sega did do something like this during the Dreamcast's run, but the service was only available in Japan. Basically it allowed you to go online and play quite a lot of Genesis and Turbo Grafx-16 ROMs. I'm not sure if it was on a subscription or pay-per-play basis, but it was a good idea, especially given that playing on a console based emulator is more authentic than using a PC anyway. Unfortunately stuff like this tends not to see the light of day outside of Japan.
Actually, not to be a pizzat, but just for anyone who doesn't know what MAME is, look for http://mame.net/
Mame is a "multiple arcade machine emulator."
It may or may not have legal merit. The issue is up for discussion. Anyone is free to make an interpretation of the law, but the only interpretation that really matters (i.e. is legally binding) is that of a judge presiding over a court of law.
If this company does fight and lose a legal battle, this will effectively illegalize all public libraries, video rentals, used cd sales, etc. These business practices are based on the "first sale" doctrine, not necessarily "fair use".
Obviously, businesses aren't going to like this, which was very evident when the public library system was being put in place. Publishers cited that their business would be destroyed, which we all know to be a ridiculous claim. The same thing with video rentals, etc.
As long as there is a physical cartridge/CD/whatever that is owned for each rom that can be used, and each single image can only be "checked out" by one person at a time (and they can prove this), then any opposition should not have legal ground to stand upon. First sale has already been made, and the buyer can sell/borrow/whatever to whomever he/she chooses.
However, the courts could change their minds, but it would cause a conflict of interpretation in regards to first sale, which could cause many established businesses to suddenly be in potentially bad situations.
But that's the thing...there would be no point in doing this if they were going to do it for cheap. And even if people were willing to pay for such convenience, I insist that they wouldn't pay high enough for any publisher to consider this -- not while Sega et al. can re-hash their games in groups of four or five on one disc for $20-40 every time a new system comes out. How many people would pay $100 for a 20 rom compilation CD? $500 for 100 roms? It's like I said in my last post, there's too little reward in selling such discs.
OTOH, Capcom did something similar in Japan and Europe on home consoles (Sega Saturn and PSX I believe, with non-emulated games), and capitalized on it very well. They released Capcom Generations 1-5, with about 3-5 classic games in each collection, for about the price of one new game each. They could never had made that much on a rom compilation for the PC, where there is a risk of redistribution of individual roms and games typically cost very little.
< tofuhead >
It is still the dark of night.
Since when does it need to cost that ridiculous amount of money?
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
[Actually I don't own a playstation, police go away, hey that's my computer you're taking out of the door. Crap.]
Imagine the Creator as a stand up commedian - and at once the world becomes explicable. -Mencken
While the library example is a compelling argument to defend a service like this, libraries aren't restricted by the same laws. Libraries are exempt for two reasons: First, as public institutions, they receive special protection. Second, they aren't charging for their service, and so they aren't profiting from the rental of the material (they don't rent material, but loan it - a small, but important distinction).
In contrast, Video rental stores (at least all those I'm aware of) do pay a premium on their VHS and DVD purchases to buy what is essentially a rental license. That's why it's legal for them to rent movies, but not for you, who doesn't hold that licence, to do it. Commercial use of someone else's copyright is restricted by law.
Four years ago I had a grand plan to use a very similar model to distribute music. Before doing extensive research I even thought I could circumvent the stipulation because I wasn't going to charge, but was going to generate my avenue via advertising. Unfortunately, the "directly, or indirectly" clause has been interpreted broadly - far more broadly than advertising.
Similarly, because of the way the law is worded, I just don't think there's a way to legally distribute ROM's without entering into an agreement with the copyright holders (I looked into this relatively deeply a couple years ago as well). I do, however, hope that someone does manage to successfully enter into an arrangement with these companies - many of those old games are just too good to lose to time.
You're missing the point. Sega could do what people are discussing, and release 20 roms on a CD, earning them next to nothing. Or, they could take 4 or 5 of those games, re-hash them on a home console (not a PC), and earn $20-$40, easy. To make the same kind of profit (about $5 per game) on a PC release, they'd have to charge $100 for 20 games. That will never happen.
I haven't been articulate enough in pointing this out. But realistically, there is next to no reason for anyone to do this, not when the prices that console games can demand is so lucrative compared to the PC games market. I can buy 5 emulated Genesis/Sega CD Sonic games for Windows for $5. The Gamecube release of these games, plus a few others, will initially earn Sega about ten times as much as that, and that price may someday fall to as low as $20-$30. Which of these two releases do you think Sega will be more pleased with?
The whole idea of releasing cheap roms as an alternative to illegal internet rom trading sounds fine and dandy, until you look at it from the publisher's standpoint. Nintendo will never go for it, the same way Sony will never sell $3 CD albums just to combat the popularity of MP3s.
< tofuhead >
It is still the dark of night.
Forgive me for being blunt, but Nintendo doesn't give a shit about its customers who want to back-up their cd/cart. These customers are a small minority in Nintendo eyes.
Nintendo is far more afraid of piracy. They don't want to provide an easy way for backing-up and restoring cd/carts. The ratio to legally backed up software to pirated is something like 1:1000(made up figure).
They don't give a fuck about the small minority, because believe it or not, it doesn't affect their business. Big wow huh? Most corporations don't _really_care_ about the customer, they only care to the point of making a damn buck.
As soon as they find out, "make customer x happy == $$$ lost", they go "screw x, protect $$$". Remember, you are just a variable in a money equation.
it is illegal to download and play a Nintendo ROM from the Internet.
Hmm. It specificly says internet, does this mean that if I have a CD-R full of rom images I can loan it to my friends and they copy files off of it, then it is legal if I have dumped them myself? Or sharing them off of my computer when I am at college on the schools intranet?
Just some thoughs.
I think this is a somewhat good idea, as some people don't know how to setup a rom/emu environ, and for those of us who do, maybe we can play some titles we don't have.
Hacking the Network
i agree totally with this, but i couldn't bear life without hearing good vibrations at least once a month, i'm picking up good vibrations she's giving me....
http://www.vanillaafro.com - take me seriously and I will shoot you
I close my eyes....joking
http://www.vanillaafro.com - take me seriously and I will shoot you
Sounds to me like a super effecient video store minus the rental fee. RIAA shouldent have a problem with this unless they plan in taking Blockbuster to court...
You are all forgetting something..
For every one good game ther are abut ten crap games for the NES, roughly.
So they can make a decent profit by throwing on extra crap games from the companies that they put the good ones on from to pad out the compilations. The company will most likely allow them to shovel the bad games onto the complilations. Some pople wil want some of those games, but they wont' cost much to Nintendo, because they don't really have much commercial value.
I don't see why the companies would be upset at people freely distributing emulators and roms for old systems. They no longer manufacture either, sot he only revenue is in the used market. Why would the manufacturer care if they are not losing revenue?
Chris
I can rent PS2 games at blockbuster, so what's the problem here?
THe problem here is that the man on the street understands renting a CD or cartdridge containing software, but he understands it on the physical level. Once you start talking about transmitting that copy in electronic (not physical) form, it starts to sound sinister enough to Jonny Q that the RIAA et al can have their way.
It's dumb simple.
Seeing as we're out on the left field a bit here, how about this:
Don't listen to commercial music, get music free from the various mod sites etc. It helps if you are into electronic music, of course ...
Every fun activity you could partake in besides playing the newest super-duper game (and having bought it before) is the game-companies enemy. Even more so if the two are similar. If you spent all your time playing old games you don't have time to play new games and to double your video-game-playing time might get boring fast. So, yes, it's in segas/nintendos best interest to not allow free download of roms they don't sell anymore.
Here goes all of my karma:
Settlers of Catan rocks! I thought I was the only guy that knew it existed!!!
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
Back in my day they used to have a scheme where you could play any available videogame for 10p (er, 25c for the yanks?). This whole ROM sharing thing went on too, but was more of a one-way process when the big kids wanted a game.
Remember that all the IP lawyer people are saying that you're not buying anything when you buy books, music, games, etc., you're "licensing intellectual property." And this is the kicker: if the IP is what's important, then if the object is damaged, I still have the license to the IP. And therefore, I can download a copy of it if I want to replace the loss that occurred. They can't have it both ways: they can't say "yes, you're buying IP, but when you lose the physical object, you lose the license, ha ha."
There isn't clear law on this, I don't think. You can't "illegally distribute" games, true. But you're not illegally distributing them: you're distributing a legal archival copy to people who have the right to possess it.
If Nintendo really wants to stop me from downloading ROMs, then they should support the IP that they never said they would stop supporting. Have a licensing card in each game, and allow me to download a new copy or obtain a new copy simply buy calling it. I'm buying IP. Not buying a game.
And yes, the analogy is correct. Simply because the difficult part of the reverse engineering is done (my friend already built the spare part for the 1980 Zephyr, or whatever) doesn't make copying his copy not reverse engineering. It's just that the gruntwork's already done for me. Isn't progress wonderful?
Honestly, look at the example I gave before. A part on my 1980 Zephyr breaks. They don't support it anymore. I go to a friend, who has the same car, and had the same problem. Before his part broke, he looked at it, made a copy of it, and stored it for safe keeping. I look at his copy, say "hmm", and make a copy myself. This is identical - literally - to the game situation at hand. The fact that "making a copy" was as simple as clicking on something and saying "Save As..." doesn't make it not making a copy.
More so, a copyrighted work I have the rights to use, that sits on a defective peice of media that replacements are not available for.
It's not the fault of the person downloading that a ROM was illegally created, its the distributer/creator of said ROM's problem. As for the person who owns the right to use the game, I hardly think it's against terms of fair use to utilize said software in any form it is available in.
Let's use your car analogy, let's say your old POS car needs a new engine, block up, and you can't find anything. Let's say some other POS owner decides to post the specifications of the engine on the internet, including block casting sizes, etc, but company XYZ that made the 1960 POS dosen't like that, since they still use the block design in a newer car and claim its trademarked/copyrighted/DMCA'd to death/whatever. Do you a) ignore company XYZ's complaint, since obviously, your car is 40 years old and whatever you do to it to replace the engine with one based on the original should be legal, b) flame the guy who loves his car and posted information on how to replace parts of it (that are of value to you) for violating company XYZ's wishes, even though their shitty car's engine block disinigrated because it was made from some cheap crappy alloy.
Hmm?
That's what you get for being a fetus during the NES boom days! It's the breaks kid. I sure would have liked to have been around back when they were making those 63' split window vettes too and I would have loved to have been able to buy one brand new off the show room floor.
Instead I wasn't around then so I didn't get the chance to do it. I can still BUY one and restore it though. I just don't get to steal the parts to make it run.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Check this out: http://nintendo.com/corp/faqs/legal.html#what%20ar e%20ROMs
These guys are nuts!
They claim all kinds of legal things are illegal.
From this website:
Are Game Copying Devices Illegal?
Yes. Game copiers enable users to illegally copy video game software onto floppy disks, writeable compact disks or the hard drive of a personal computer. They enable the user to make, play and distribute illegal copies of video game software which violates Nintendo's copyrights and trademarks. These devices also allow for the uploading and downloading of ROMs to and from the Internet. Based upon the functions of these devices, they are illegal.
Are they allowed to just lie like this? Pirating games is illegal, not making a backup.
Here's another good one:
Can I Download a Nintendo ROM from the Internet if I Already Own the Authentic Game?
There is a good deal of misinformation on the Internet regarding the backup/archival copy exception. It is not a "second copy" rule and is often mistakenly cited for the proposition that if you have one lawful copy of a copyrighted work, you are entitled to have a second copy of the copyrighted work even if that second copy is an infringing copy. The backup/archival copy exception is a very narrow limitation relating to a copy being made by the rightful owner of an authentic game to ensure he or she has one in the event of damage or destruction of the authentic. Therefore, whether you have an authentic game or not, or whether you have possession of a Nintendo ROM for a limited amount of time, i.e. 24 hours, it is illegal to download and play a Nintendo ROM from the Internet.
If I have a copy of the original cartidge, I don't see where they would have any legal leg to stand on saying that I couldn't download my backup copy from the internet. What if I ripped the ROM image myself, move it to my website and download it back to my PC? Does anyone know if there is any actual ruling supporting this or is this just them trying to say that you can't use the word 'mario' without paying the the appropriate liscensing fees?
Copyright law needs to be changed so that, any work that is publicly availible not made publicly availible for sale becomes public domain in n years, where n is less than 75 frickin' years
Life is too short to proofread.
Nintendo should stop this nonsense of protecting NES and Arcade ROMs. Once they are freely available even from Nintendo.com or in an extreme case $1 a pop as some suggest (geez buddy why not buy me a donut and Ill let you copy my ROM of {insert your fav game here} or better yet Ill send it to you by email.)fans will lose interest eventually and perharps will be interested again in 10 more years.
My point is that Nintendo should add value. I dont want to spend money on Millipede or Super Mario 3 again... I already did (or rather, my parents :P ). Now, Nintendo allows me to play Super Mario 2 full color and whenever and wherever I want. That is a feat no emulator can do. And i am willing to pay 30 bucks to play Zelda, Mario and Final fight again in an 8-hour flight in a gb advance, without carrying a pc monolith.
Nintendo and other paranoid ROM protectors should focus on creating *NEW* value, as thats what makes their business alive. ROM profit cannot possibly stand as a core cash inflow... those Roms are a legacy to humanity and all of us have already paid more than was due while Asteroids and SuperPunch Out were in the arcades.....
I've done this (replaced the connector) before and it worked perfectly.
I ordered some speakers from and electronics company and instead of my tweeters, they sent me a pair of nintendo cartridge conns. They promptly sent me the right stuff and said I could keep the connectors, which turned out to be exactly what I needed to fix my Nintendo.
Life is too short to proofread.
What if you do borrow a melody. There is no law against performing someone else's music.
You mean other than 17 USC 106? "the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following: ... in the case of ... musical ... works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly". ("Publicly" is defined in 17 USC 101.)
Where would Las Vegas be without all those Elvii?
Professional impersonators of the late Elvis Presley license the rights to Presley's name, likeness, and catalog of musical works through big clearance organizations to which the amateur musician has little or no access.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The day I can't legally JAM on the melody to 'Free Bird' or something, shoot me.
You have sentenced yourself to death for violating 17 USC 106, which bans most public performance of a copyrighted work without permission from the copyright holder. Thank you for playing ;-)
Will I retire or break 10K?
11) Volunteer for something, preferably something involving people you normally wouldn't hang out with. Great socially, lends you credibility when you speak on tech issues, and makes you feel good.
Great addition to the list!
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
Good for you!
It truely is amazing how much free time you have when you aren't wasting it watching TV.
Me, I would write if I were inspired. Usually I'm inspired to create something physical (you know, build it, bake it etc...) rather than writing. If I had a good subject though I might consider writing a book or two.
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
It sure does. The amazing thing about Settlers and other games of its like is that they are cooperative/competitive games where people have to work together to get ahead collectively. But the key is to always come out slightly ahead in the deals.
The first thing you learn in Settlers of Catan is that if you screw over one person then you get screwed over by everyone else in the game and never get anywhere. If you never do equitable trades then you don't ever do any trades because nobody trusts you.
Maybe some of the folks at the RIAA or the MPAA could learn something by playing Settlers of Catan!
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
i love console classix, and anyone else who has anything negative to say about it should just suck up and bust. you are all just jealous because ur so stupid that u didnt think of that brilliant idea first! so YAY Console Classix!
Mr. Olman was speaking in favor of the Sonny Bono Public Domain Pillage Act (also known as the "Copyright Term Extension Act"). He bewailed the loss of revenues such Communists and anarchists as the Boy Scouts cost the poor, abused Content Cartel every year. (Blatant plug: The Post published my reply. Like a schlub, I've lost the actual WashPost link.)
I guess you didn't try hard to find it... the WashPost link was right there on the page you did link to!
Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay