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Is ROM Collecting Wrong, or Just Misunderstood?

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the piracy-or-public-domain dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Game Bunker has posted an interesting article on whether you should own roms or not. With the latest piracy concerns, I think it's a good topic to bring up." The various writers at Game Bunker do a good job of showing the different sides of this issue, with some siding with industry while others, like most of us, merely want to play old games without having to dig up an ancient console.

3 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. Captain Pedantic Strikes Again! by Andy_R · · Score: 3, Informative

    This article isn't about collecting ROMs (which is of course entirely legal), it's about collecting copies of the data from other people's ROMs.

    --
    A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
  2. Re:Someone's not paying attention by Ondo · · Score: 4, Informative

    Get an Action Replay for the GameCube (~$40). It's the only known method of unlocking Zelda right now.

    www.animalxing.com/nesgames.php has a list of the NES games in Animal Crossing and some info on how to get them.

  3. Beatles information by angle_slam · · Score: 4, Informative
    and that someone, in most cases, is either Michael Jackson or the last remaining living Beatle (other than Ringo). Unfortunately, it doesn't really matter who wrote the songs, either, as Michael Jackson owns the rights to songs written by Paul, and Paul owns the rights to songs he did not write.

    Partially correct. Check out this Snopes page regarding ownership of the Beatles. First of all, to say that Paul owns the rights to songs he did not write is untrue. John and Paul had an agreement and followed it--if either of them wrote a song for the Beatles, it would be credited to both of them. Whether or not Paul actually wrote the songs is just wrong, technically speaking, both John and Paul wrote those songs.

    Second, Jackson only owns the publishing rights. He still splits royalties 50/50 with Paul and John's estate (presumably Yoko).

    As long as the Beatles' original albums are still available in new formats (or at least in unprotected formats), and Paul is still alive, I'm ok with paying for those albums.

    So I guess you want copyright terms to be only last the term of life of the author?