Actually, the SNL skit you're referring to had the punchline of "Azwipe".
The "Dumass" you're referring to is either the "Thick-Headed" commercial for A&W Root Beer, or from The Shawshank Redemption tring to pronounce Alexandre Dumas.
I notice that in all your examples, you did not address the simple fact that DOWNLOADING A ROM IS STEALING.
Of course it's OK to switch batteries in your Zelda cart. Of course it's OK to crack open the NES and jiggle the wires. What is NOT OK is to go online and illegally copy a copyrighted work to make up for your "loss".
As for your clarification of the analogy, it's still wrong. You are not reverse engineering a game. You are taking a direct copy of a copyrighted work and playing it as your own. A more refined analogy is that you find a place on the Internet that will ship you the part, free of charge, and that the part was illegally created, breaking copyright laws.
Re: the four factors, you're right - they'll have a hard time with the first 3, but especially with #3. A complete, perfect, digital copy of the work... Not a good thing to a judge. #4 (and to some extent #1) could be OK, but it's the sheer volume of this "service" that leads me to believe they're just trying to make playing pirated games legal.
Yes, you're right, section F4 does say that section 108 does not affect fair use. However, I have already shown that the fair use clauses in 107 do not cover making a copy of a copyrighted work available for download over the Internet.
Besides, you still can't tell me why it's illegal for me to make a personal copy of something
Um, I thought that was why we were quoting US Code in the first place. You (I assume) are not a library or educational facility, and therefore cannot copy any of your copyrighted works.
As for sharing with your friends, I have no problem at all with you taking your copy of Super Mario Brothers for the NES over to a friend's house to play on his hardware. I would encourage it, in fact. But I do have a problem with you making exact duplicates of said game, giving it to those friends, and then kindly asking them to delete it when they're done with it. It doesn't work that way. Plus, by posting on the Internet, you're not sharing with a few friends. You're sharing it with a few hundred million strangers. There's a bit of a leap there...
Got it, sorry, didn't realize that it wasn't the full text. Looking at section 1008 (very short, that), there's a bit of trickery there, but as I wade through the legalese of it, I realized this - They're saying that the manufacturer cannot be sued for copyright infringement because they sold the equipment. Re-read it, it's a bit hard to follow.
No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright... You can't sue anybody for copyright infringement...
...based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a... ...because they made or sold...
...digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium... ...any copier or media...
...or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings. ...or because some schmuck used them to copy the works.
If the car broke down, I would try to get it fixed. If it were unsalvagable, I would damn my luck and buy a new car that would suit my needs. I wouldn't steal another copy of the car to make up for the mechanical failure.
If my video game breaks, I would try to fix it (blowing on the contacts, cleaning the cart, etc). If it didn't work, I would throw the cartridge away and either get a new game (Super Mario Sunshine, a terrific game) or try to find another LEGAL copy of the original.
So you're saying that it should be legal for you to steal a copy of Super Mario Brothers to make up for your loss? You're honestly defending the idea that "I bought product X 20 years ago, and even though it wasn't supposed to last 20 years, I should be entitled to have product X now?"
No, I'm just sick and tired of software pirates continually circle-jerking themselves, saying "It's ok, we're preserving the art/only trying them out/playing illegal games we own."
As for your "legal backups", I point you to this comment that I made regarding the US Code of Laws, as well as this comment about the Audio Home Recording Act. If you would care to reply to any of these comments, please do so. I'm waiting for refutations of my readings.
the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 specifically allows consumers to make backup copies of any digital media
Really? Would you be so kind as to point out to me exactly where the AHRA states that, please? I searched for the word "copy", and couldn't find any pertinant information. I also searched for "backup", "archive", "damage", and about every other synonym that I could think of, to no avail. IANAL either, but you would think that sort of thing ("You can copy this piece of copyrighted information!") would be pretty explicitly spelled out.
But you see, the problem comes in making the leap from meatspace to cyberspace. It's one thing to give a single, static, unchanging copy of a book to a friend to read. It's another thing to give him a copy of a book that he can easily reproduce and save for himself. The problem is that it's so damn easy to make copies of digital works that the same laws cannot apply.
Re: reverse engineering, I was assuming that all code within the ROMs was copyrighted and protected by patents. Otherwise, you're right, it's legal.
Finally, as for it being "black and white", I refer you to this comment that I made detailing the US Code laws in respect to fair use. In that case, I do believe that it is "black and white." If you make a copy of a copyrighted work and make it publically available, you are infringing copyright, and therefore engaging in an illegal act.
What rights to software owners have when software is abandoned?
What rights do car owners have when their car is abandoned by the manufacturer? If I own a 1980 Zephyr station wagon and the parts are no longer available for me to fix it, does that mean that I can go out, steal somebody else's car, and be legally free from ramifications? After all, the car was new when I bought it! And if the manufacturer chose to stop making them because they weren't in demand, that's not my fault! I should be able to take whatever car I want, because I bought one way back when!
Or, in your case of owning an NES but not the games, you own the engine and frame of the car, but not the seats. You should therefore be able to go out and steal seats, wheels, a drive shaft, car mats, and every other "accessory" to the car. After all, you have hardware that can use that, right? So you're entitled to them, right?
Maybe you should unplug for a while and try to understand that piracy is not good. Downloading copyrighted games is illegal, no matter how you slice it. Eventually, in several dozen years, they will fall to public domain as the copyrights expire. Then you can download them to your heart's content. But until then, you're breaking the law, and there's no way around that.
the fair use...including such use by reproduction in copies...for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching... scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright
(emphasis mine)
Exactly where in there does it say "You're allowed to make a copy and make it available for all the world to copy at their leisure"?
Perhaps you were talking about Section 108, but I find that hard to believe because of paragraph c2 says:
The right of reproduction...solely for the purpose of replacement of a copy [is legal]...if - (2)any such copy...that is reproduced in digital format is not made available to the public in that format outside the premises of the library...
I eagerly await your reply to this explicit statement that digital copies made available to the public are illegal.
Is there such a thing? Every emulator site that I've ever been to has been populated by the scum of the Internet, pushing their warez as being legal and not an infringement on the intellectual property of hard working men and women. Someday, you'll make a piece of software, pour your heart into its development, and then watch as it's stolen by thousands of children downloading it from the Internet. Then tell me about how pirates aren't evil.
Re: Dumping cartridges, you can only do that if the EULA (in the back of game manuals) explicitly allows it. This site is hosting Nintendo games. I know for a fact that every licensed Nintendo game explicitly forbids copying of the games, including "dumping" the ROMs for "backup" purposes. The only exception is Gauntlet, one of the few non-licensed games for the NES. Now, whether Nintendo is justified in preventing copying is an argument for another time.
The library analogy is flawed. There are consequences when you move from meatspace to cyberspace, and that means that direct analogies are inadequate. The biggest problem is the easy with which you can copy the copyrighted work. In meatspace, such copying is irrelevant because of the time and materials involved, and even then, it is not exact. In cyberspace, the copy is simple (ROM is stored in memory, hell, I could write a 2-line program to save that to the hard disk). The copy is exact. The copy can be done thousands of times with no degredation. THAT is the difference between cyberspace and meatspace. And that is why this is illegal.
And I'm sure that the 14-year-old kiddies who are downloading these games are doing it for the "preservation of art". What a load of bullshit. If you honestly believe that people aren't downloading ROMs to play games for free, then I admire your naivete. Actually, no, admire isn't the right word.
You people have to be kidding. "Sounds reasonable"? "Borrow" ROMS? "I wonder if this will allow an end-run around some of the questionable legality of file-sharing"? Here's a hint - NO!!!
Dispite what you may read on the Internet, it is not legal to make a "backup" copy of any modern media. It is not legal to have a "24 hour trial period" for games. And it is definately not legal to download a copyrighted piece of material that you have no authorization to see and load it up on an emulator (itself on shaky ground because of reverse engineering) to play.
The more that I read about file sharing, the more that I realize that most "freedom of information" types on the Internet are not concerned about distributing information. They're not concerned about preserving information for future use. They're only concerned about getting copyrighted material for free. Copyright owners be damned, I want my free music/movies/ROMs/software.
Flame me, mod me down, whatever. I'm just sick as shit at the pirates who continuously spout off about "freedom" without thinking about the consequences.
Yeah, yeah, I realize my folly. I had originally intended to not point out the broken link, but I really wanted to read the story and so I decided to point it out in the vain hope it would be fixed soon.
Just think about it in the same way you think about the Naked Gun quote: "I can sum that up in three words: Quinton Hapsburg."
Firstly, the link to the ABC story is broken, but I assume that'll be fixed soon.
Secondly, the story about the Ottowa man who was jailed for "selling modchips" was actually jailed because he had 417 pirated games that he was selling to customers. Christ, people, read more than the headline next time!
Finally, I don't see how it could possibly be illegal to modchip a Playstation. I bought a piece of hardware (PSX). I bought another piece of hardware (modchip). When I buy them, I buy the rights to modify them in whatever way I want. There is no EULA on hardware. There is no contract that says "I will not modify this piece of hardware." What I do with my toaster/PSX on my own time is my own business. Is this one of those stupid "DMCA illegalities" that we keep running into?
CNN also has a story about Gates'.NET evaulation, and it says he gives is a 'C'.
I wonder how he grades the Xbox, with its horrific launch in Japan (still haven't sold through their initial 250,000 shipment), terrible software sales rate (less than 2 per console sold), and overall terrible showing at E3. He'd probably give it a 'C+', or maybe a 'C#'.
Unfortunately, as I recently found out, they don't MAKE modchips that only modify the PS2 to play imports. The Gamecube has a nice little jumper, with a very simple mechanism that will let you switch between Japanese and English configurations. Quick and easy.
Every (and yes, I mean EVERY) modchip for the Playstation has its primary requirement as "Plays backup copies". It's frustrating, because I don't want to play backups, just imports.
It's a MILLION FUCKING DOLLARS. At 6% interest, that's fucking $60,000 a FUCKING YEAR. Better than a lot of people that I FUCKING KNOW. What more FUCKING JUSTIFICATION DO YOU FUCKING NEED?!?!?!?!?!
Just a week ago, you praised Neverwinter Nights for going Gold and celebrated its launch, despite clauses in its EULA that say "Community created modules belong to Bioware."
Now, it's praise of Blizzard software for their wonderful Warcraft III, when 5 months ago you were up in arms about bnetd being shut down.
Listen up, people. It's not that hard to live without these things. If a company does bad things, you stop using that company. My cable provider has been giving me shitty quality picture and no digital channels for the past week. So, I cancelled my service and am going with a satellite provider. In the same way, I have not watched a movie, bought a CD, or played a video game from a corrupt company in more than a year. It wasn't that hard. You find other things to do with your time. In my case, it was model building, which helps calm me (strangely enough).
It sickens me to watch people waver in their beliefs. If something angers you, as many of these things seem to, then you should take action. I can't count how many "petitions" there have been to stop the MPAA/RIAA/video game industry from corrupt practices, but at the end of the day, you still reinforce them with your dollars.
Don't buy Warcraft III. Don't go see movies. Don't buy CDs. Do something else with your time and money. Oh, and don't pirate the games/music/movies, either; it just gives them more ammo to trounce our fair use rights.
And the slashbots are at it again. Doublethink at its finest.
First it was the MPAA. We hate the MPAA because they're taking away our fair use rights, destroying our freedom. But then we go nucking futs over Spider-Man, Lord of the Rings,
Slashdot Mirror
The "Dumass" you're referring to is either the "Thick-Headed" commercial for A&W Root Beer, or from The Shawshank Redemption tring to pronounce Alexandre Dumas.
Not that I'm anal or anything.
Can you imagine the Purchase Order for 4000 miles of waterproof cable?
Kiss my jackass, you incompetent monkey-fucking anus licker
New encryption scheme
Sings "Oops, I cracked it again!"
More Britney copies!
Newsflash - People don't care about art, or music, they care about money.
CP: Question
WW: Answer
I just have to wonder what a question would be like to his child, Will Wright II.
CP: Question
WW2: Answer
And God help us all if he has a WW3...
Of course it's OK to switch batteries in your Zelda cart. Of course it's OK to crack open the NES and jiggle the wires. What is NOT OK is to go online and illegally copy a copyrighted work to make up for your "loss".
As for your clarification of the analogy, it's still wrong. You are not reverse engineering a game. You are taking a direct copy of a copyrighted work and playing it as your own. A more refined analogy is that you find a place on the Internet that will ship you the part, free of charge, and that the part was illegally created, breaking copyright laws.
Yes, you're right, section F4 does say that section 108 does not affect fair use. However, I have already shown that the fair use clauses in 107 do not cover making a copy of a copyrighted work available for download over the Internet.
Besides, you still can't tell me why it's illegal for me to make a personal copy of something
Um, I thought that was why we were quoting US Code in the first place. You (I assume) are not a library or educational facility, and therefore cannot copy any of your copyrighted works.
As for sharing with your friends, I have no problem at all with you taking your copy of Super Mario Brothers for the NES over to a friend's house to play on his hardware. I would encourage it, in fact. But I do have a problem with you making exact duplicates of said game, giving it to those friends, and then kindly asking them to delete it when they're done with it. It doesn't work that way. Plus, by posting on the Internet, you're not sharing with a few friends. You're sharing it with a few hundred million strangers. There's a bit of a leap there...
You can't sue anybody for copyright infringement...
If my video game breaks, I would try to fix it (blowing on the contacts, cleaning the cart, etc). If it didn't work, I would throw the cartridge away and either get a new game (Super Mario Sunshine, a terrific game) or try to find another LEGAL copy of the original.
So you're saying that it should be legal for you to steal a copy of Super Mario Brothers to make up for your loss? You're honestly defending the idea that "I bought product X 20 years ago, and even though it wasn't supposed to last 20 years, I should be entitled to have product X now?"
No, I'm just sick and tired of software pirates continually circle-jerking themselves, saying "It's ok, we're preserving the art/only trying them out/playing illegal games we own."
As for your "legal backups", I point you to this comment that I made regarding the US Code of Laws, as well as this comment about the Audio Home Recording Act. If you would care to reply to any of these comments, please do so. I'm waiting for refutations of my readings.
Really? Would you be so kind as to point out to me exactly where the AHRA states that, please? I searched for the word "copy", and couldn't find any pertinant information. I also searched for "backup", "archive", "damage", and about every other synonym that I could think of, to no avail. IANAL either, but you would think that sort of thing ("You can copy this piece of copyrighted information!") would be pretty explicitly spelled out.
But you see, the problem comes in making the leap from meatspace to cyberspace. It's one thing to give a single, static, unchanging copy of a book to a friend to read. It's another thing to give him a copy of a book that he can easily reproduce and save for himself. The problem is that it's so damn easy to make copies of digital works that the same laws cannot apply.
Re: reverse engineering, I was assuming that all code within the ROMs was copyrighted and protected by patents. Otherwise, you're right, it's legal.
Finally, as for it being "black and white", I refer you to this comment that I made detailing the US Code laws in respect to fair use. In that case, I do believe that it is "black and white." If you make a copy of a copyrighted work and make it publically available, you are infringing copyright, and therefore engaging in an illegal act.
What rights do car owners have when their car is abandoned by the manufacturer? If I own a 1980 Zephyr station wagon and the parts are no longer available for me to fix it, does that mean that I can go out, steal somebody else's car, and be legally free from ramifications? After all, the car was new when I bought it! And if the manufacturer chose to stop making them because they weren't in demand, that's not my fault! I should be able to take whatever car I want, because I bought one way back when!
Or, in your case of owning an NES but not the games, you own the engine and frame of the car, but not the seats. You should therefore be able to go out and steal seats, wheels, a drive shaft, car mats, and every other "accessory" to the car. After all, you have hardware that can use that, right? So you're entitled to them, right?
Maybe you should unplug for a while and try to understand that piracy is not good. Downloading copyrighted games is illegal, no matter how you slice it. Eventually, in several dozen years, they will fall to public domain as the copyrights expire. Then you can download them to your heart's content. But until then, you're breaking the law, and there's no way around that.
Exactly where in there does it say "You're allowed to make a copy and make it available for all the world to copy at their leisure"?
Perhaps you were talking about Section 108, but I find that hard to believe because of paragraph c2 says:
I eagerly await your reply to this explicit statement that digital copies made available to the public are illegal.
Is there such a thing? Every emulator site that I've ever been to has been populated by the scum of the Internet, pushing their warez as being legal and not an infringement on the intellectual property of hard working men and women. Someday, you'll make a piece of software, pour your heart into its development, and then watch as it's stolen by thousands of children downloading it from the Internet. Then tell me about how pirates aren't evil.
Re: Dumping cartridges, you can only do that if the EULA (in the back of game manuals) explicitly allows it. This site is hosting Nintendo games. I know for a fact that every licensed Nintendo game explicitly forbids copying of the games, including "dumping" the ROMs for "backup" purposes. The only exception is Gauntlet, one of the few non-licensed games for the NES. Now, whether Nintendo is justified in preventing copying is an argument for another time.
The library analogy is flawed. There are consequences when you move from meatspace to cyberspace, and that means that direct analogies are inadequate. The biggest problem is the easy with which you can copy the copyrighted work. In meatspace, such copying is irrelevant because of the time and materials involved, and even then, it is not exact. In cyberspace, the copy is simple (ROM is stored in memory, hell, I could write a 2-line program to save that to the hard disk). The copy is exact. The copy can be done thousands of times with no degredation. THAT is the difference between cyberspace and meatspace. And that is why this is illegal.
And I'm sure that the 14-year-old kiddies who are downloading these games are doing it for the "preservation of art". What a load of bullshit. If you honestly believe that people aren't downloading ROMs to play games for free, then I admire your naivete. Actually, no, admire isn't the right word.
I pity it.
Dispite what you may read on the Internet, it is not legal to make a "backup" copy of any modern media. It is not legal to have a "24 hour trial period" for games. And it is definately not legal to download a copyrighted piece of material that you have no authorization to see and load it up on an emulator (itself on shaky ground because of reverse engineering) to play.
The more that I read about file sharing, the more that I realize that most "freedom of information" types on the Internet are not concerned about distributing information. They're not concerned about preserving information for future use. They're only concerned about getting copyrighted material for free. Copyright owners be damned, I want my free music/movies/ROMs/software.
Flame me, mod me down, whatever. I'm just sick as shit at the pirates who continuously spout off about "freedom" without thinking about the consequences.
Just think about it in the same way you think about the Naked Gun quote: "I can sum that up in three words: Quinton Hapsburg."
The answer is, "This operating system will open up the path for non-MS operating systems."
BZZZZ. What is "Any operating system that ISN'T Microsoft??!?!"
Correct for $400.
Secondly, the story about the Ottowa man who was jailed for "selling modchips" was actually jailed because he had 417 pirated games that he was selling to customers. Christ, people, read more than the headline next time!
Finally, I don't see how it could possibly be illegal to modchip a Playstation. I bought a piece of hardware (PSX). I bought another piece of hardware (modchip). When I buy them, I buy the rights to modify them in whatever way I want. There is no EULA on hardware. There is no contract that says "I will not modify this piece of hardware." What I do with my toaster/PSX on my own time is my own business. Is this one of those stupid "DMCA illegalities" that we keep running into?
I wonder how he grades the Xbox, with its horrific launch in Japan (still haven't sold through their initial 250,000 shipment), terrible software sales rate (less than 2 per console sold), and overall terrible showing at E3. He'd probably give it a 'C+', or maybe a 'C#'.
Every (and yes, I mean EVERY) modchip for the Playstation has its primary requirement as "Plays backup copies". It's frustrating, because I don't want to play backups, just imports.
And how is it illegal?
It's a MILLION FUCKING DOLLARS. At 6% interest, that's fucking $60,000 a FUCKING YEAR. Better than a lot of people that I FUCKING KNOW. What more FUCKING JUSTIFICATION DO YOU FUCKING NEED?!?!?!?!?!
Christ, people have no priorities these days.
First it was the MPAA, stealing your rights to fair use. That was all forgotten when you watched Spider-Man, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and god knows how many other movies.
Just a week ago, you praised Neverwinter Nights for going Gold and celebrated its launch, despite clauses in its EULA that say "Community created modules belong to Bioware."
Now, it's praise of Blizzard software for their wonderful Warcraft III, when 5 months ago you were up in arms about bnetd being shut down.
Listen up, people. It's not that hard to live without these things. If a company does bad things, you stop using that company. My cable provider has been giving me shitty quality picture and no digital channels for the past week. So, I cancelled my service and am going with a satellite provider. In the same way, I have not watched a movie, bought a CD, or played a video game from a corrupt company in more than a year. It wasn't that hard. You find other things to do with your time. In my case, it was model building, which helps calm me (strangely enough).
It sickens me to watch people waver in their beliefs. If something angers you, as many of these things seem to, then you should take action. I can't count how many "petitions" there have been to stop the MPAA/RIAA/video game industry from corrupt practices, but at the end of the day, you still reinforce them with your dollars.
Don't buy Warcraft III. Don't go see movies. Don't buy CDs. Do something else with your time and money. Oh, and don't pirate the games/music/movies, either; it just gives them more ammo to trounce our fair use rights.
First it was the MPAA. We hate the MPAA because they're taking away our fair use rights, destroying our freedom. But then we go nucking futs over Spider-Man, Lord of the Rings,