Why remove links to ROM sites?


The most legitimate method I know of to get the roms is to buy the cartridge used and copy it (or play directly from the cartridge) using a retrode, or building your own device to rip the rom from the cartridge.


The licensing and fair-use issues are still ambiguous and country dependent.
 
The thing I find interesting about all of the ROM topics are just how ambiguous the rules really are. The laws are in place, but dependent on where you are they are different. Even with these laws, there are so many grey areas and misinterpretations (or at least the ambiguity to cause them.) One good example is the Retrode, mentioned in this thread. I have seen the discussions about it. Legal Interpretations, Fair Use rules, etc. and everyone says it's a "legal: way to use games on your emulators, yet Nintendo's site has a page that describes the Retrode perfectly and declares it illegal.


Now I'm not trying to debate the Retrode here, just pointing out that laws are laws, yet even so, people have a hard time trying to figure out what's right. what's wrong, what's ethical etc. There's illegal roms, legal roms, freely released formerly ilegal roms, abandonware, so many lables! One would think in this day and age, things wouldn't be so complicated to understand. Which is why we have these kind of questions, and why generally the advice to just keep everything hush, hush, while it sounds stupid at times, is just the only way to be certain you won't ruffle someones feathers somewhere. :)
 
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The thing I find interesting about all of the ROM topics are just how ambiguous the rules really are. The laws are in place, but dependent on where you are they are different. Even with these laws, there are so many grey areas and misinterpretations (or at least the ambiguity to cause them.) One good example is the Retrode, mentioned in this thread. I have seen the discussions about it. Legal Interpretations, Fair Use rules, etc. and everyone says it's a "legal: way to use games on your emulators, yet Nintendo's site has a page that describes the Retrode perfectly and declares it illegal.
There are two problems here: first, the law itself is ambiguous (and there are multiple separate bodies of law that could apply). It's the job of the judicial system to create precedent which can clarify the interpretation of the law, but that hasn't really happened yet.


Second, and more worryingly, corporations like Nintendo deliberately misinterpret and/or outright ignore the law in order to ... what? Is it an attempt to strengthen their position for any case that might come up in the future? I don't know, but it doesn't help the situation.
 
The thing I find interesting about all of the ROM topics are just how ambiguous the rules really are. The laws are in place, but dependent on where you are they are different. Even with these laws, there are so many grey areas and misinterpretations (or at least the ambiguity to cause them.) One good example is the Retrode, mentioned in this thread. I have seen the discussions about it. Legal Interpretations, Fair Use rules, etc. and everyone says it's a "legal: way to use games on your emulators, yet Nintendo's site has a page that describes the Retrode perfectly and declares it illegal.
There are two problems here: first, the law itself is ambiguous (and there are multiple separate bodies of law that could apply). It's the job of the judicial system to create precedent which can clarify the interpretation of the law, but that hasn't really happened yet.


Second, and more worryingly, corporations like Nintendo deliberately misinterpret and/or outright ignore the law in order to ... what? Is it an attempt to strengthen their position for any case that might come up in the future? I don't know, but it doesn't help the situation.

Then we are in agreement, as when I read your reply it seemed to be saying what I said, yours of course being said better. :D


That is why I brought up the Retrode, by rights and according to most common sense interpretations of known laws, it would be considered to be a device that promotes use of physical media, while it's ability to allow the media to be copied to a computer in a file form allows Nintendo to use it as an example of a device that allows the media to become the file form that gets pirated. So technically, both sides are right. It can be used for illegal purposes but since all these "roms" are out there already it doesn't seem likely to be used for such a purpose. Even so Nintendo considers any form of space shifting the data from cart to file to be illegal, and until a court somewhere rules it illegal, they are just using scare tactics based on the assumption of illegal intent.


R4 cards are the same way, they allow the running of homebrew code, but that wouldn't be enough to warrant large quantities of people buying them, so they enabled running commercial game copies, which while it does create an unjust supposition that anyone with an R4 type card is pirating DS games, in this case we know that the majority of sales was not to play an Atari emulator or Homebrew Checkers game. So I can understand why these companies declare all forms of these devices illegal.


I also find it funny how no one ever touches on the topic of the library, where old NES or other games or CD's and DVD's are available for consumption free, but if you download a Mario Rom, or Get the cart from the Library, the result is the same. You enjoyed the content without paying for the privilege. Even game rentals could be looked at as piracy, as after the first copy is purchased, the second owner sells the experience of the content in bites of time. Seriously I never understood how the industries allowed that!


After all it IS their opinion that if you buy a CD and wish to have a song on your Ipod, you should have to purchase the song in Mp3 format, as ripping it is making an illegal copy. So yeah, these companies are WAY out there in what they believe versus what is reality.
 
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I also find it funny how no one ever touches on the topic of the library, where old NES or other games or CD's and DVD's are available for consumption free, but if you download a Mario Rom, or Get the cart from the Library, the result is the same. You enjoyed the content without paying for the privilege. Even game rentals could be looked at as piracy, as after the first copy is purchased, the second owner sells the experience of the content in bites of time. Seriously I never understood how the industries allowed that!


After all it IS their opinion that if you buy a CD and wish to have a song on your Ipod, you should have to purchase the song in Mp3 format, as ripping it is making an illegal copy. So yeah, these companies are WAY out there in what they believe versus what is reality.

I was going to respond by explaining that legally the borrow or rental of said media would generally be regarded as a temporary transfer of the license or copyright content, but I see what you're saying now. The companies are not being critical of the libraries or the rental stores is what you're saying, and I would suppose that the former isn't all that common of a thing for people while the latter clearly makes the companies money.


The library case I can imagine wouldn't have good standing in court since money or gain isn't really involved, but you make a good point about the rental stores making money off of copyrighted content. Then again, I can sell CD's or games to friends, and that isn't illegal either. I wonder what the average company thinks of that? (They probably generally prefer everyone buy everything.)
 
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Since this is quite an interesting discussion, but not really Pandora-related per se, I'm going to move it out to the Off Topic section now, if that's alright.
 
The library case I can imagine wouldn't have good standing in court since money or gain isn't really involved, but you make a good point about the rental stores making money off of copyrighted content. Then again, I can sell CD's or games to friends, and that isn't illegal either. I wonder what the average company thinks of that? (They probably generally prefer everyone buy everything.)
They absolutely don't like people being able to resell games (and various other media). This is why downloadable content locked to one user account is becoming so common.


Additionally, you have rather disturbing precedents like this one being set.


In this case, someone tried to resell some used Autodesk software on eBay, and Autodesk repeatedly sent eBay DMCA notices demanding that the auction be taken down, resulting in the seller's account being suspended. The seller took Autodesk to court, and after initially finding in his favor, an appellate court ruled in favor of Autodesk, saying that the original sale was of a non-transferable license to use the software.
 
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Since this is quite an interesting discussion, but not really Pandora-related per se, I'm going to move it out to the Off Topic section now, if that's alright.

Not a problem, I quite agree. :)

Additionally, you have rather disturbing precedents like this one being set.


In this case, someone tried to resell some used Autodesk software on eBay, and Autodesk repeatedly sent eBay DMCA notices demanding that the auction be taken down, resulting in the seller's account being suspended. The seller took Autodesk to court, and after initially finding in his favor, an appellate court ruled in favor of Autodesk, saying that the original sale was of a non-transferable license to use the software.

That's sad.


Imagine if abandonware could no longer be sold on eBay or anywhere else, and therefore market-based redistribution is illegal... Deadware, anyone?


// Would love to see the SCOTUS take up any more cases on copyright, but I can't see this one being taken.
 
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^ I'm pretty sure there's actually no such thing as "abandonware" - well, unless you're just applying the dodgy definition of it to legitimately selling your old disks, which does sort of make sense. :p
 
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Right, abandonware DOES exist, although it is not recognized in any way legally. My usage stems from those fringe games whose companies perish or get dismembered by superior market forces, and then from that you might have legally protected IP that nobody claims (and therefore no one can lay claim to). I'm sure people extend it to include software whose IP is claimed but not used, and that doesn't play as much to the tragedy to which I referred.


I think the Black Market would be a somewhat analagous term... of course the law would never officially acknowledge its existence, but it certainly exists and it provides avenues to products that are legally unavailable. But I've never heard of someone fighting in court for something they've bought through the Black Market (Edit: not that no one has, heck I don't know anyone that deals in it either), so I'm pretty sure the analogy ends there.
 
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In theory, it is possible for software to become public domain because the copyright holder was a corporation or organization that was dissolved without the copyright assets being passed on to any other person or corporation, or because the copyright holder died without any heir. This would be the only legally legitimate circumstances under which software could become "abandonware" (The term is not a legal term however; the legal term would be "public domain"). I don't know how, in practice, you could determine whether certain software had legitimately become public domain or had just become uninteresting to its copyright holders, however.
 
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From what I know, "abandonware", while not a legal term, has an understanding as "software that the company no longer supports". I think what bismuthdrummer is getting at is that, if Adobe can successfully argue that you can't sell a copy of Autodesk, what's to stop Nintendo from saying you can't sell (or buy) that old NES cartridge? I honestly don't believe they will ever try, so the question is entirely academic, but it stands to reason that they could, leveraging the precedent that Adobe has set: in that interpretation, it may be that it is actually impossible to legally play a game you have never owned. Can't download it, obviously; can't buy it; can't share it. What a terrible world that would be.
 
^ +2


"Chilling effect" was the term I should have used, I believe. Just like mods assume abandonware and ROM sites to be illegal, so could eBay assume software being sold is not by or with permission from the copyright holder, the result being a total ban on selling used games through them. A strong enough legal precedent could indeed freeze the market from such an angle, although as WizardStan explained this will almost definitely not happen.
 
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