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.

Comments

What nintendo etc needs to do to END illegal roms:

[anotherone]

If anyone from Nintendo, Sega, etc are listening, here is how you can either end or severly limit rom trading:

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.

Re:good idea

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

I suspect that industry would be more receptive to these online libraries if goverments extended such programs into this area.

Quite the opposite, actually. Publishers have hated the idea of public libraries for literally centuries. They have done everything they can to restrict, reduce, and eventually rub out libraries. Only the fact that the public library is so patently a public good -- that it engenders warm, fuzzy feelings in John Q. Voter -- has protected it so far.

In the DMCA hearings, who was just about the only group looking out for anything close to what we might call the average citizen? The librarians' group.

Doubt me? Ask a former Registrar of Copyright, Ralph Oman, who in a letter to The Washington Post bewhined that

"A long list of special pleaders now gets free use of copyrighted works, including small businesses, veterans' groups, bars, scholars, restaurants, fraternal groups, marching bands, Boy Scout troops, nursing homes, libraries, radio broadcasters and home tapers" (emphasis added)

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.)

The evidence is, the Content Cartel would prefer to see libraries go gently into that dark night of perpetual copyright extension, indefinite "access controls", and a denuded public domain.