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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.
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.
That said, I don't think anyone has any moral problem with pirating NES roms since, frankly, you can't get the games anymore. But older, classic games being included in newer products (the original Metroid on the Metroid Prime disc, for example) and even Atari games being bundled with a controller that plugs directly into a TV's AV inputs really prove that there is still money to be made with these old games, and it muddies the moral dilemma.
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