Slashdot Mirror
Legal Arcade ROM Vendor Talks Business
jvm writes "Remember StarROMs, the company selling legal Atari ROM downloads for a few bucks a piece? They're still around and Curmudgeon Gamer posted an interview with StarROMs co-founder Frank Leibly. Have they been successful so far? How can they possibly expect to compete with free downloads? Are they giving money to MAME as promised? And why has their listing of games dropped from about 60 games to just over 50? It's all here. (Slashdot covered their initial launch late last year, and Slashdot Games recently also recounted a different discussion with Leibly.)"
"How can they possibly expect to compete with free downloads?"
There's a couple of ways:
1.) If they advertise, then people who haven't heard of ROMs before know where to go.
2.) Service. I mucked around with ROMs a while back. It was a pain in the ass finding them. Even bigger pain in the ass downloading them. If I wasn't entering pop-up hell (not so rough these days given modern browsers, etc...), I was being asked to vote for places in order to proceed.
If I ever get the itch to play with ROMs again, they'll be the first place I try. Why would I do that instead of trying to find free downloads? Because free isn't so free when you're hugely inconvenienced along the way.
"Derp de derp."
Not as far as the law is concerned... maybe slightly different if for a jury. But you are no less liable if "everybody is doing it" and no more liable if there are valid alternatives.
I think this could do well to somewhat brush up the image of emulation as a whole that Nintendo have done their best to smear (ultrahle, that handheld emulator) be it commercial or purely as a technical proof (what ultrahle was). Hell, i could even think of a somewhat commercial version of mame that has an itunes music store type thing in which you can buy the roms directly (call it Mame$ or something).
Will wank off Linus Torvalds for fame.
My own feeling is, if a company is still selling old products (such as is the case with these ROMs), and you want them, buy them. But if the company stops selling that product, well, they can't have their cake and eat it too. It's like the old Sierra games. They are very difficult to get ahold of, and several abandonware sites don't even carry certain titles anymore, because of legal problems. Yet, can you buy these titles from Sierra? No. That's just being a dog in the manger, IMO.
I disagree that "StarROM's success/demise will have any effect on the liability of people who illegally obtain copyrighted ROMs," though I get your point.
You're quite correct that StarROM is "just a distribution outlet" that "does not hold any copyrights to the ROMs".
What you seem to be missing is that the courts have shown a tendency to protect secondary markets- meaning, if this business model succeeds *there is a secondary market to be legally protected*.
Implying, of course, that the abandonware defence will no longer be as valid, and the original creator of the ROM will get basically squat (the middleman gets all the money in this). I'm all for encouraging and rewarding creators, but **This does not do that**.
Yes, I think this is bad. Yes, I buy things I think deserve buying and No, I don't buy things I use but don't think are worth my money. This also has nothing to do with this argument- thanks for nothing for your STFU PIRATE! ending remark.
What I wonder is were is Starroms getting their roms? Are they dumping the roms themselves or just making money off someone else's rom dump? It takes about 3 seconds to locate roms on edonkey/kazaa.. That's quite a lot of work for them...
-Tom
Since when has making a product unavailable for purchase meant you can steal er violate copyright?
From City University of New York's discussion on fair use:
"The fact that a work is out of print or unavailable, or that there is no ready market for permissions weighs toward favorable to fair use."
Not exactly a guarantee, but the fact that, for most abandonware, no legit source exists weighs positively in favor of otherwise-illegally obtaining it falling under fair use.
Of course, considering the four points that determine whether or not a given activity falls under fair use, I'd say the idea of abandonware scores at best a 50:50 shot. For the "purpose and character", noncommercial preservation of culturally relevant materials weighs as a positive. For "nature of the copyrighted word", a game purely for entertainment scores a negative. For the "substantiality of the portion used", I'd call 100% a definite strike against abandonware. And for the "potential market", that could go either way... Currently unavailable would count as a positive, but by infringing copyrights to get the ROMs, one could argue that downloading them would tend to reduce the potential market (though, I would personally say it increases the market, when a friend comes over and plays Pac-Man via MAME and then goes out and blows $1500 on a vintage machine...).
PS - IANAL, as if it needs saying.
By implication, are folks who violate copyright by downloading various roms more legally liable if StarROMs' business model succeeds?
I'd imagine so, and I don't like it.
Nope. Copyright infingement is still copyright infingement. It's just now there's going to be an easier reference point for how much value you've been taking instead of the court having to throw darts to pick a number.
If the developers are still employed making new games, the old games being available for free hurts them because it gives people an alternative to buying the new game. It hurts the game vendors the same way.
It also makes it harder for competitors to sell new games. Under things the way they stand now, 'abandonware' should cease to exist, because if the software exists, there is an interested body who will want to buy it, and either distribute it or bury it so they can sell their game to you instead.
And 'abandonware' assumptions destroy the market for those games we can all buy for $5-10 on the 'bare jewel case' rack at stores. This hurts the game itself, because it means there's no 'official' distribution, just people passing around random old copies.
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You can't do this. The licence is for non-commercial use only. If you want the ultimate in retrogaming in the arcade get yourself a cabinet from these guys UltraCade who have games licenced for commercial use.
No there isn't an "exemption". If you have any references saying otherwise, please share them. You may notice in some books notes to the effect that "every attempt was made to contact copyright owners, but some could not be found" and asking them to get in touch. If they did, they'd have to negotiate; showing good intentions in this way makes claiming damages by the owner unlikely, but it doesn't revoke their copyright at all.
I'm not sure that's necessarily the case.
I'm in my early 40s and into retrogaming in a big way because I remember Space Invaders, Defender, etc. in the arcades and all the games I had on ZX Spectrums and Amigas. I also play a lot of the PC games from 10 years ago also.
I would imagine that most of the people in the retrogaming scene are of a similar age group and not really in the target market for games manufacturers anyway. Plus I think we're all a little older and wiser based on the amount of money we've probably spent in the past on games, particularly dire ones!
Don't get me wrong, I'm eagerly awaiting Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 but I'm simply not prepared to part with hard-earned cash for most of the average games that get output by the games companies these days - that would be the case whether I retrogamed or not.
I just really don't see that MAME and a few Space Invaders ROMs are going to compete with the likes of Gran Turismo for the younger generations.
It also makes it harder for competitors to sell new games. Under things the way they stand now, 'abandonware' should cease to exist, because if the software exists, there is an interested body who will want to buy it, and either distribute it or bury it so they can sell their game to you instead.
I think there are interested bodies who would want to distribute old software. I think the problem is that it will never happen because with the amount of games company mergers over the years, it's such a legal minefield deciding who owns the right to these games in the first place that there's no financial incentive for any company to do the distribution.
I also think that a games author is more likely to allow free distribution of his/her game rather than letting a third party sell it and make money from it that he/she won't get a slice of.
And 'abandonware' assumptions destroy the market for those games we can all buy for $5-10 on the 'bare jewel case' rack at stores. This hurts the game itself, because it means there's no 'official' distribution, just people passing around random old copies.
Yes, but look at the bargain software racks and they are filled with a majority of games that were released within the past 2-3 years - there are exceptions but not many.
Also, what about "long dead" platforms like the ZX Spectrum, Commodore Amiga (please don't rip into me about the state of the Amiga market, it's just a generic statement!), etc?
If we're talking music CDs or films, I can generally pick up any music or movies released over the past 50 years with little or no trouble - why can there not be a similar mechanism for games?
I personally don't see a problem with Abandonware provided no-one is making any money from those games currently and that when someone does decide to redistribute them, those titles are removed from the Abandonware classification.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
The hard work is arranging the licensing. You know - negotiation, people skills, all that? sheesh -- yep got karma to burn
If you could copy a Ferrari without taking it away from the original owner, you should go right ahead.
Your analogy is flawed.
" why dont they pass a new Public domain law for software "
"THEY?"
They can have practically any laws they want, but it means working in the framework of the political process, which means being involved, not just reactionary. The laws that do get passed, do so because people are involved in the process. People vote, people attend political meetings, people run for office, and people make careers out of bing political consultants and lobbyists.
Then you have people who DON'T participate in the process at all, who really wish there was another way, but like the drunk looking for something besides the alcohol to blame the hangover on, they don't see the solution.