Slashdot Mirror
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
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.
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 ?
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.
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.
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.
Username taken, please choose another one.
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.
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
Blockbuster was able to fight off Nintendo and Sega back in the late 80s/early 90s because they had a lot of revenues to hire good attorneys with. As cool as this operation appears to be, I don't get the impression from looking at their site that they are extremely well-funded, and as such, despite the overwhelming favor of legal precedent a competent trial lawyer could bring to bear in their case, The flashier, more connected legal goons Nintendo could easily throw at these guys will likely argue that the fact these guys are operating on the internet makes it all different, and they should be shut down. I wish CC luck, as they are already on Nintendo's radar. However, the only legal correspondence from the company was in July, 2001, so they may actually be giving them a pass.
Now, if they start doing the same sort of distribution with other systems, especially more modern ones (playstation, PS2, Gamecube, or heaven-forbid XBox), they might find themselves in significantly hotter water. In that case I'd recommend the strategy of getting big, fast, charging a good monthly membership fee for content use, and building a revenue base to hire a good legal team.
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.
In theory yes, provided that you aren't talking about oem versions of windows, which I believe are required to stay with the machine they came on. But always make sure to read the license.
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.
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.
Read their page - it doesn't work that way. You have to download a specially modified version of Nester (which fortunately happens to be a very good NES emulator) that connects to their site and downloads a ROM into the program's memory. No files touch your hard disk.
Someone would have to waste a lot of time writing a crack, but I guess someone probably will do just that, if only for the challenge.
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.
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...
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.
Haha. Do you believe your own drivel? The intellectual property industry has shown time and time again, that they will crack down on infringement even when there is no chance of it hurting their revenue stream.
No, they do it for a different reason. Please allow me to indulge in a metaphor. Imagine that they sell bottled water. Not a bad business to be in, everyone has to drink, right? Plus, they're just selling water, and still getting $1.29 per bottle at 7-Eleven. They could easily get rich, lazy, and still have a big inheritance for their spoiled brats... so what's the problem? Well, there just isn't any way to grow this business past a certain point, no matter how well you run it.
Unless.... what if everyone lived in a desert? And they were the only ones selling water? They could ask any price they wanted, and you would either buy their water or die! Fuck $1.29, $19,995 + tax sounds alot better. You can take all they have, every last cent. And as long as they don't die, sooner or later, they'll have more to spend. They're already tooled up, and whatever investment they need to engage in, they've got plenty of capital for. If only they could somehow build a desert all around us, without us noticing...
The MPAA/RIAA/SBA are all busy building deserts. They're busy making sure the only entertainment you can have, is bought from them.
mp3.com got busted, big time. expect the same here.
-Esme
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.
$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
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.
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 bandwidth would be the bigger issue... I pay out the ass for bandwidth and I only have 30 gigs a month - that'd be what, 40 CDs max?
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.
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!
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.
Waste a lot of time for a crack?
All you'd have to do is find where in memory the game keeps the ROM, and dump that to disk. Voila, no difficult crack needed. Run the thing through a debugger, and it won't take too long.
The only way to actually make this secure for more than a day is to have the kind of security called for by Palladium, and I'd rather do without the service, thanks.
The enemies of Democracy are
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.
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
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.
(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.
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 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.
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.
"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.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
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.
All Nintendo has to do is say that it was intended as such. 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. Sure it was bypassable, but the mechanisms for bypassing cartridge-based protection tended to be fairly elaborate. In contrast, the Dreamcast protection was almost non-existent (with an unmodified Dreamcast being able to boot cracked, burned games) and the Playstation's protection was a bit better (requiring a mod chip).
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
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.
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)).
Will I retire or break 10K?
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.
You can't sue anybody for copyright infringement...
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
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
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...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
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.
Will I retire or break 10K?
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.
All it takes is one person to decide they want to do it, then post the binary on the web. I can imagine there's at least one capable programmer who would want to turn this service into ROMpster.
:)
I can't imagine that discovering the slightly different crack for each successive version of Diablo II is very challenging, but they keep showing up. It must be worth it to someone.
The enemies of Democracy are
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.
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
This is about the first time I have seen someone at slashdot who really gets it.
In contrast, the Dreamcast protection was almost non-existent (with an unmodified Dreamcast being able to boot cracked, burned games)
That it could, but they had to hack pretty hard to come up with getting the games off their original GDs. Dreamcast GDs won't read (the game part) in anything but a Dreamcast (or some Yamaha drives I think) so they had to devise a way for the Dreamcast to feed your PC the game data in an ISO-compatible form. In that respect, the Dreamcast had a lot more copy protection than the PSX, but the PSX wouldn't read copied CDs without a mod.
Y2K Compliant since the late 1890s
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
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.
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
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.
Music is a sport. It is just as good as a verb as it is when you treat it as an object. It's a form of emotional communication, it's a form of aerobics (well, drumming), it's a form of meditation, a thousand things beyond merely producing objects for sale in a market.
Some of the most fun I've had in my life has been playing music, just jammin', with people who were able to seize on musical ideas I put out, toss them back to me, grab onto trickier ideas, take them a different direction- it's like playing chess with a bunch of people all of whom are on the SAME SIDE. That would be a jazzy, improv-type approach- if they're rock and roll people, jump around, bang out some loud noises.
If you're already thinking about how to bottle that and sell it to consumers, you're not really there for it- pack up your instrument and go home!
The day I can't legally JAM on the melody to 'Free Bird' or something, shoot me.
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."
You know what? A legal page isn't worth a damned thing when ten Nintendo lawyers show up for a conference to pressure the local DA.
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.
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.
[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.
I'm certainly not a fan of Palladium either, but what if it made services like this commercially viable? The game companies are going to fret over this because it does enable and encourage piracy (people need to stop denying or making excuses for this). But what if there was a way, be it Palladium or some other method, that enabled the game companies to profit from this? Something like Palladium might not be not be so bad if it opens new markets like this. The markets speak.
There ain't no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something.
Well, if it was the game companies themselves doing it, I'd hope they'd be like Emusic.com and just trust us to not be thieves. If the ROMs were a reasonable price for 10-15 year old games, I think that'd be a safe bet.
Otherwise, I say palladium isn't worth it. If the price I have to pay is the ability to control my own computer, then the benefit had better be a damn fucking lot better than some ancient NES games.
The enemies of Democracy are
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.
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?
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.....
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?
You're still not 'getting' jamming. Nyah ;)
Note: in the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) I am often handed a drum and I periodically try to make music with it and sometimes I even get to keep the drum for a while.
How's that for music as a sport?
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
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.
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