Slashdot Mirror
Lawsuit Threat Shuts Down ROM Downloads On Major Emulation Site 'EmuParadise' (arstechnica.com)
Following Nintendo's recent lawsuits against ROM sites LoveROMs and LoveRetro, a major ROM repository called EmuParadise announced it will preemptively cease providing downloadable versions of copyrighted classic games. While no lawsuits have been filed yet, the site's founder, MasJ, writes in an announcement post: "It's not worth it for us to risk potentially disastrous consequences. I cannot in good conscience risk the futures of our team members who have contributed to the site through the years. We run EmuParadise for the love of retro games and for you to be able to revisit those good times. Unfortunately, it's not possible right now to do so in a way that makes everyone happy and keeps us out of trouble." Ars Technica reports: EmuParadise will continue to operate as a repository for legal downloads of classic console emulators, as well as a database of information on thousands of classic games. "But you won't be able to get your games from here for now," as MasJ writes. Since founding EmuParadise in 2000, MasJ says EmuParadise has faced threatening letters, server shutdowns, and numerous DMCA takedown requests for individual games. Through it all, he says he was encouraged by "thousands of emails from people telling us how happy they've been to rediscover and even share their childhood with the next generations in their families."
Shirley there is a torrent that contains all the emulation files for these early consoles. It can't be that big.
See cat. See bag.
Notice how the cat is no longer in the bag.
In any case, I know there are private trackers out there for old games for emulators that have pretty much everything. They keep a very low profile because they follow the first rule of fight club.
Besides, most of this content is now floating about on thousands of pirate retropie boxes being flogged off on ebay
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Wrong. By default, every creative work belongs to all people, to be freely copied and redistributed. "Intellectual property" is a temporary privilege granted under the notion that it would lead to the production of more works that would eventually return to the public domain. But if the premise is incorrect, and intellectual property does not contribute to the public domain, it has failed its sole purpose and must be outright abolished.
Circumcision is child abuse.
To leave the Berne Convention, a country must first leave the World Trade Organization because the TRIPS agreement includes the terms of the Berne Convention. That would likely cause other countries to increase tariffs on that country's exports. Copyright thus holds not only culture but also commerce hostage.
So instead of copying a ROM let's just copy the idea of the ROM. Create new games that play like Mario or Donkey Kong but don't use the copyrighted (copywritten?) characters. Let's build an "app store" for old 8 & 16 bit style games that aren't custom written.
We already have one: Itch Direct. There's already a platformer inspired by Mario and Kirby titled Nova the Squirrel by Joshua Hoffman, distributed by its author as an NES ROM that runs in an emulator or on a PowerPak or EverDrive. If you like it, you may also like The Curse of Possum Hollow by Retrotainment Games (also on Steam) or Lizard by Brad Smith.
And if Nintendo or some other company tries to say their "idea" was stolen, simply point to Facebook and FarmVille that was copied.
Until the victim of this "copying" lawyers up in earnest. Then you get things like Tetris v. Xio (2012).