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Is ROM Collecting Wrong, or Just Misunderstood?
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.
If you can show me where I can buy an original Pac-Man or Ms. Pac-Man arcade game in mint condition, I wouldn't need to use MAME.
regardless of the arguments for roms, the fact remains that they are illegal under our current laws. since I find it highly unlikely that anyone can justify their rom collection as some sort of silent protest against the tyranny of copyright holders who withhold their creations, people have two choices: don't collect roms or collect them under full knowledge and acceptance that what you're doing is illegal and, if discovered, will justifiably be punished.
Back when feasible emulation first started out Nintendo and others put the smack down on ROM web sites - especially sites by "big time" operations like GameSpy's ClassicGaming.com. They came down on emulators as illegal, but they've amended that stance. I think once the initial emulation hype died down the only people still interested in emulation were the ones who could go find the ROMs anyway. If Nintendo were the RIAA they would be hunting down and destroying computers and P2P networks and suing the pants off of those who download Donkey Kong. They're not. They can't condone it - so places like Mame.dk get knocked out. But they realize it's counterintuitive to try and eradicate it, so they let the people who would go download an old copy of Zelda 2 do what they want. And I think most true old school gamers would much rather pay $5 to the small time video game shop for a cart than play an emulator any day.
Ironically this bit of piracy I alluded to earlier still happens - whenever a new GBA game comes out the ROM image is all over the Internet almost automatically. However, the number of people who would play the game on their PC in lieu of on a real GBA is small - witness the number of GBA's sold, hell, GBA SP's sold, and games sold in the last three years. And notice who Nintendo goes after. Not the people ripping the games or making the emulators (past tactics of theirs) but rather the people who make and/or sell the cart linkers. It's not a problem until or unless the ROMs can be played on an actual GBx/GBA.
Schnapple
It is perfectly clear that the US public doesn't accept the traditional period of copyright + IP ownership. mp3 sharing is a big thing--people have no moral qualms about doing it. The laws should reflect the morals of the people. Why is murder illegal? Because most people consider it immoral.
The issue with these video games is that the company that produced them already made their money 20 years ago. The fact that people now expect to be able to do whatever they want with the rom images (and proceed to do so) indicates the public's moral opinion that the original makers have already made enough money on their original works, and that the information should now be public domain.
The Beatles came out with lots of albums in the 60's that were very popular--they became rich on their work. 30 years later I still have to pay someone in order to legally listen to Beatles music. This is ridiculous. The original creators of the music have already reaped fantastic financial rewards. Now society is better off if the information is free and available. And suprise, everyone agrees because almost everyone who is able to is perfectly willing to swap mp3 files.
Copyright lasting until 50 years after the author's death? Software patents on obvious ideas that have lots of prior art? Get a clue.
The public's actions determine what can reasonably be enforced. Patent and copyright law are becoming irrelevant to life in the real world today, and I say *BRAVO*.
Besides let's be honest here - Nintendo takes some old SNES game and places it on the GBA and sells a truckload. Why would they give that away for cheap? Plus remember that Nintendo didn't make all the NES games - hundreds of publishers did. They can't vouch for them all, and Nintendo's found a much more lucrative venue for their old products.
Schnapple
A few opinions on the subject doesn't change the law. Copyright violations are illegal. Morality is a different issue.
Many people mistake copyright as being about money--it's not. It's about control. If a company doesn't want people playing their games anymore...well they can't stop those who have already purchased legitimate copies of those games, but they can stop future people from buying the games by stopping production. That doesn't give the public the right to pirate the games.
Fortunately for most of us, there's no copyright issue involved in downloading a ROM for a game we already own. At best, there may be a violation of a license agreement in playing the game on a platform for which it was not released (ie an emulator), and in many cases those types of agreements did not exist on the original cartridges. MAME may in some cases be a different situation, as those involve emulation of arcade machines, but even then there are cases where those games were offered on other platforms as well.
You do not violate copyright by downloading or otherwise moving content to another medium for personal use. You violate it by downloading or otherwise copying content of which you do not have a legal copy, or by making copies available to those that do not have legal copies (which is where the whole debate comes from in the first place).
I despise the fact that so many people (especially copyright holders) believe that people use P2P software (or other distribution methods) only to download material of which they do not or never will own legal copies. Personally, I would never own a copy of Metallica's new album if my only exposure to it were through the single song they currently have on the radio and MTV, but if I could listen to the other songs through one method or another, I might buy it (especially since it's dirt cheap compared to other CDs right now). Normally I'd listen to a friend's CD, but thanks to their last two studio efforts, I don't know anyone that would buy one of their CDs any more.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
Actually, you can still find a lot of actual NES games out there; I got a copy of Final Fantasy I from my local game store not too long ago, and they have a wide selection. And if you don't have something like that nearby, there's always the web, right?
The problem with the copyright issue is that it can provide the original company with monopoly powers that are simply too broad, as the dissenting opinions in Eldred state. I see nothing wrong with letting companies keep their successful copyrights, but I feel they should have an obligation to "use it or lose it"; that is to say, companies should not be able to use copyrights to *suppress* works that could otherwise be in the public domain. They should theoretically have an obligation to sell things at a fair market price, but with copyrights, they don't have to. There's no check against their monopolistic behaviors.
However, the illegal copyright infringements of ROMs, of music, etc., etc., has proven to the industry that there is a demand that isn't being filled due to monopoly powers. You didn't see the old arcade games being re-released by the companies and the current swath of remakes we've had until well after the development and popularity of console and arcade emulators. I think it's quite possible that it's now easier to obtain legal ROMs or games because of the interest spawned by illegal ROM copying, and without it, there would be few or no arcade collections released for the PC nowadays.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
And I think most true old school gamers would much rather pay $5 to the small time video game shop for a cart than play an emulator any day.
But is there really much of a difference between buying a used cart than just downloading the ROM? (Honestly, I have no idea...does the publisher ever see any money from used game sales?)
And irrelevent to what you posted (because I agree with most of what you said), I consider myself a "true old school gamer" and would much rather play Atari and NES games on an emulator hooked up to my TV. The Atari stick and tiny NES pad may have a deep sentimental value, but my sexy Sidewinder never cramps up my fingers.
Plus, I never have to blow on a ROM to get it to work.
Kudos to you, my good man.
Of course, that won't stop any of you. Napster, kazaa, gnutella, freenet, emule, mldonkey, direct connect, hotline all exist for the sole purpose of copyright infringment. Don't dance around it.
The point of copyright law is NOT to let artists control their work. It is to reward artists for giving their work out, and thus hopefully encourage more work.
Any company that refuses to give their work out has basically already broken their end of the arrangement. In times past, the work would fall into public domain after a few years...but no work does that anymore. Sadly, there's not a way for that to void the contract under current copyright law...but there should be. As copyright law has been entirely taken over by giant corporations, though, I doubt we'll ever see that.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
In my opinion, it is simply wrong for copyright to continue to be enforced beyond the lifetime of the original work. Why should a 20 year old game cartridge be illegal to copy even when it has ceased to function? Why should a paper placemat at a fast food restaurant enjoy artist's lifetime+50 years when it will cease to exist in less than a month?
Allowing copyright to persist beyond the lifetime of the work itself creates an eternal copyright, especially when the copyright holder takes little to no steps to preserve the work for when^W if it enters the public domain.
And if the only surviving copies are in the hands of the original copyright holder, if the work ever does enter the public domain, that person (or corporate entity) has no incentive to ever publish it again.
All works are not created equal; copyright should not treat them all as equal.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
... illustrates demand. If interest in a game is being rekindled, why not find a way to productize it?
Lastly, translated Japanese roms are awsome. We may not have gotten most of the original Final Fantasy games here to the USA, but now I can play most of them thanks to fan translations.
I completely agree - finding out there's a prequel/sequel to a game you played that's only available in Japanese sucks - but you're wrong about Final Fantasy
Final Fantasy Origins (PSX): FF I + II
Final Fantasy Chronicles (PSX): FF IV+ Chrono Trigger
Final Fantasy Anthology (PSX): FF V + VI
So as you can see, after Sony's E3 FF XI announcement, the only game in the (main) series not published in north america is FF III.
Was using the NES/SNES roms "right" before the games were published on the PSX? Did it become wrong afterwards? what about FF III? How about if you play that, then it's published in your region? Do you have a moral obligation to buy it then?
P.S. Yes, playing cart games on a PSX sucks since you have to deal with loading times, but they did try to improve the games in a number of ways (that an old-school gamer would not disapprove of).
Why would that stop it from happening? Nintendo has already made their own NES emulator for the GC, it's in Animal Crossing. I think some (all?) of the classic gaming collections are just ROMs and an emulator.
The reason Nintendo is the only company all hot and bothered is because they still have a market for older games. Where is this? You have to look no father than your nearest Game Boy system. Nintendo is releasing games like Super Mario Bros. on the Gameboy Advance. Rumors bound of other great games being ported to the GBA, such as Earthbound. Watch Sony get po'd about PS1 piracy once they release their portable gaming system.
Actually, no, I wasn't referring to yours in particular. Yours was quite well stated. I was referring to the fact that most of the highly-moderated comments at the time were "Of course you can't download ROMs, it ILLEGAL!!!!" It's not as though yours and the others were not correct or insightful, it's that they never actually stated the assumption that we were talking about downloading ROMs which the downloader does not own.
.adf file, and be pretty sure about the legality. But if you've got the Amiga floppy, and a .adf file that wasn't converted by you but is a bit-for-bit match of the one your would have generated if you had done it yourself, does that make it illegal? Again, I really hope not, but that's just injecting my opinion where I don't have a definite answer. I can tell you I would have no moral qualms about it, though.
Certainly there are a great number of people downloading a great number of ROMS for which they never owned a physical version of. But there are legitimate reasons for downloading ones you do own. I have dozens of Amiga games I've bought, and with the right hardware/software, I could extract all those floppies to my Win32 hard drive and run them with an emulator. I'd rather not deal with my old Amiga hardware anymore.
The post by PainKilleR-CE was one of the only ones to present this argument, and although he (she?) seemed more sure of the copyright laws than I would be comfortable asserting, I felt it was still well phrased. The response to it appeared to be missing the point (although that was apparently just my own interpretation) so I felt like maybe I could help clarify some of his arguments. Enough of the meta-discussion, however... let's get back on topic.
As to your question about Black. First, we know what the RIAA's answer would be and can move on to fact and reason. If you have a cassette tape and download the MP3, and we make the assumption that the CD cost more, then you might consider that the CD cost more because it was higher quality, and it is very questionable whether or not you can legally download the higher quality MP3.
Now suppose I bought the CD and ripped it with full error correction, using EAC 0.9b5 and encoded with LAME3.9.0 -V 3 -b 112. Is that okay? I sure as hell hope so. Now instead of doing it myself, I found one ripped and encoded using the exact same software, and then I downloaded it. Is that legal? A little questionable, but I personally think it should be.
The ROM issue I usually view the same as the latter, not as the cassette tape one: one can assert that you can convert from an Amiga disc to a Win32
Part of the fuzziness is where you own the PS2 version of Baldur's Gate, and then download the XBOX version; this is more like your cassette tape example. The games are virtually identical, but not completely, and thus the legality is even less solid here.
I think the question asked is "Is it moral?", of course the legality of it leaves little to doubt. However the morals of it, leave a lot of discussion.
This conversation usually is rather interesting, for the most part. here's the way I look at it.
Rewarding the producer is a good and moral thing.
What is more moral. Downloading a ROM image or buying a used cart? The second right?
How? The producer is left in the dirt, and money that WOULD have spent on that product is instead in the product of a third party. Not exactly a moral outcome, is it?
Sure, the reseller has that right (I agree totally), but from the producer type of view, it's still a lost sale. Execpt that one is legal and the other illegal. (But both the same from the producers POV)
So are ROMs moral? For anything that one can not buy an original shrinkwrapped copy, they not really moral, but not the opposite either. It's sort of like a tree falling in the woods with nobody around. Not really doing much of anything.
My suggestion? It's the same for everything. We appoint a copyright court. The standard is, you keep copyright as long as you keep distributing the product at a competitive price. You decide that it is too expensive and not profitable enough to release. Fine. Either release it to the public domain, or risk a challenge being made. If you lose the challenge, you pay the legal bills of the winner. Simple as that.
No more culture going down the memory hole.
I can understand the stance of Nintendo, who wants to re-release older games for Gameboy. What I don't understand are arcade games. There are old arcade games that I enjoyed while growing up and would like to play again. I'm not talking about the "classics" that have been re-released (Centipede, Space Invaders, Galaga, etc.). I'm talking about the more obscure games that I loved growing up and would love to play a few more times. Games like Mat Mania and Karate Champ. These are relatively obscure games that I only played because they were in my local arcade. They are never going to be released as official PS2 or Gamecube games. Even if they were, I would only play it 3-4 times before I craved new graphics. But why have developers driven MAME underground. I downloaded MAME and some ROMS a few years ago and had a couple hours of fun on my old computer. I suddenly had the craving to play an old game and couldn't find MAME ROMs anywhere. All the sites said the ROMs were no longer available. That just irritates me. They will make next to nothing on a re-release of those games, but they still try to reserve it for themselves.
However, let's look at how ROM "piracy" is different from, say, MP3 "piracy".
1. These titles are not available through retail. - Limiting the discussion to 8-bit and 16-bit era console systems, there is no way to get any of these games through retail in their original form, except used.
2. The vast majority of these games are not available in non-original forms. Certainly, Nintendo and a few others have released a handful of games in GBA form, or bonuses in other retail products. Even a couple of "anthologies" have made it to market (there are many for old arcade games, most of which never had a complete, arcade-perfect home translation, but there are far fewer anthologies of games that were home-console titles). However, MOST titles are not available in any way, shape, or form.
3. Used games are subject to availability, wear/damage, pricing, and profit the copyright holders $0. I walked into FuncoLand a couple of days ago, and saw a used Kid Icarus game in the used "old games" bin. The price tag? $14.99. I have also bought used cartridge games that flat out did not work. And most of the old games I'd like to get aren't available in local used stores. Do I want to go on to eBay and buy a cartridge where the shipping cost would almost double the final price, and I'd still be getting a used cartridge that isn't guaranteed to function beyond today? In some cases, yes, but mostly no. ROMs allow us to play the games without worrying about the integrity of 15-20 year old equipment.
4. The flaw of copyrights - "it's mine and I don't have to use it if I don't wanna". Nintendo, Sega, and all the other publishers of the era do not have to make their old titles available in any way if they don't want to. This is where copyrights are a hinderance. If Nintendo and the others refuse to make use of their copyrighted material, some 3rd party should have the right to be able to license the material for some baseline fee, and use it, whether Nintendo/Sega/etc. like it or not. Allowing copyright holders to sit on their copyrights and do absolutely nothing with them hurts the consumer, and doesn't benefit the holder either.
Barring this, however, ROM use will proliferate.