pimpmaul69 Posted July 21, 2015 Share Posted July 21, 2015 (edited) Maybe, but there are certain people around which we not want to support pirating our games at all. Also I personally heavily dislike those people who buy pirated games from those pirates. For me, its not about the money. i havent been around the atari section much lately. There is someone pirating your games? I would never support someone who is trying to profit from robbing the little guy. I guess now is good enough time to thank you for all the games/ conversions you have done. So thanks. I personally would be more willing to support someone who does it for the love and not the money. I understand the money too though if that helps put food on your table. Edited July 21, 2015 by pimpmaul69 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GroovyBee Posted July 21, 2015 Share Posted July 21, 2015 I imagine most of the target audience couldn't give a rat's ass. For pretty much the same reason we're not seeing rampant piracy in this field. I suspect DRM'd ROMs sell about as many copies as non-DRM'd ROMs, all else being equal. If DRM'd ROMs are selling much worse, then I'm surprised that (some) developers keep insisting so strongly on DRM. If they're selling much better, then I'm even more surprised by the defensiveness towards the practice. If they're protecting your sales so well, then obviously the market is fine with it. The only other reprogrammable cart with DRM features is the jaguar's SkunkBoard. It has a unique serial number per board and has protection against running one particular homebrew called BattleSphere. Both these features were requested by developers at the time of its conception [1]. Said developers are no longer active in the scene and not a single homebrew game has been released that makes use of the serial number DRM feature. It seems rather prophetic of the Inty scene, with Elektronite hinting at their departure. [1] There have been claims that homebrew piracy was/is rampant in the jag scene. However, no solid evidence has ever been produced with just the insane ramblings and finger pointing of a vocal few (much like the Inty scene to be honest). 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DZ-Jay Posted July 21, 2015 Share Posted July 21, 2015 Maybe, but there are certain people around which we not want to support pirating our games at all. Also I personally heavily dislike those people who buy pirated games from those pirates. For me, its not about the money. To me either, which is why I give away my ROM. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted July 21, 2015 Share Posted July 21, 2015 To me either, which is why I give away my ROM. Same here*. I like developing in public, with sharing my work in progress and asking for feedback. IMO this is generally better for the result than developing behind closed doors. I also like to share my source code for everyone. Still those pirates and their customer's suck! *Except for BD, where I am not allowed to do that. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr SQL Posted July 21, 2015 Share Posted July 21, 2015 If I would lend software, yes. But that was only a hypothetical thought during the discussion. No, I only wrote Thrust for the Atari 2600. Well, your games are awesome and have that Adept quality like you've been doing this since the 80's. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted July 21, 2015 Share Posted July 21, 2015 Perfectly understandable. In the end, you have to decide which is more important to you; stopping the pirates or not offending any honest customers. BTW, concerning Intellivision if I understand correctly sales of bootleg carts are difficult for Intellivision anyway because you cannot just solder a new EEPROM onto an old PCB. So this is probably more of an issue with other Systems. What we have done on the Lynx sometimes is simply put a disclaimer first for our Freeware. If you paid for this, you have been cheated. A similar disclaimer could be made pointing out how to identify a legit cartridge. Another thing some people do is to place a mark on the released ROM. The guy who did the Super Mario Smurfs hack did a small run of carts, then released the ROM on the internet with "ROM" graphic blazened on the title screen. This pretty much ruined anyone trying to procuce bootleg carts of his rom hack. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pimpmaul69 Posted July 22, 2015 Share Posted July 22, 2015 Another thing some people do is to place a mark on the released ROM. The guy who did the Super Mario Smurfs hack did a small run of carts, then released the ROM on the internet with "ROM" graphic blazened on the title screen. This pretty much ruined anyone trying to procuce bootleg carts of his rom hack.thats fucking awesome. People still get the rom but the bootleggers get stopped or at least slowed down. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freewheel Posted July 22, 2015 Share Posted July 22, 2015 If this is about bootleggers, I'd have to think that identifying them wouldn't be rocket science. Given that they're, you know, selling stuff and all. They don't tend to hide very well when advertising merchandise for sale. Also a bit ironic that someone is worried about piracy of a ROM hack. I'm of the belief that a copyright term of 10 years is more than adequate for video games, but with the laws the way they are today... heh. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted July 22, 2015 Share Posted July 22, 2015 Also a bit ironic that someone is worried about piracy of a ROM hack. I'm of the belief that a copyright term of 10 years is more than adequate for video games, but with the laws the way they are today... heh.Funny you mention, the game ROM had to be pirated first before it could be hacked. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freewheel Posted July 22, 2015 Share Posted July 22, 2015 Funny you mention, the game ROM had to be pirated first before it could be hacked. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to be morally judgemental here. I think IP owners are near universal asshats when it comes to how much they protect property that is sitting there doing nothing. We shoulda had Smurf for the Intellivision, but Peyo is a greedy bastard (mind you I think Sydney Hunter ended up *better* for its original design). But pirating something, and selling it - and then getting upset that someone does it in turn to you? Seems a bit rich. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted July 22, 2015 Share Posted July 22, 2015 (edited) Many feel that pirating abandoned software is no pirating. But doing the same to something new or the changes done to something abandoned, is pirating. For those the difference is: Does someone care for what you pirate or not? (legal rules aside) Edited July 22, 2015 by Thomas Jentzsch Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
townparkradio Posted July 22, 2015 Share Posted July 22, 2015 Many feel that pirating abandoned software is no pirating. But doing the same to something new or the changes done to something abandoned, is pirating. For those the difference is: Does someone care for what you pirate or not? (legal rules aside) Well let's put it this way: I bought Activision Anthology on my tablet, PSP, PS2 and PC, Midway Arcade collections on my Ps2, Wii, 360.. intellivision lives on... you know what? I bought pretty much every retro game collection you can think of. Why? Because they made them available to me. Some things aren't available to me, but I still have them. On the PC side of things? I've pirated... one game in the last 5 years... and then later on I bought it. I've got 400+ games on my now 12 year old Steam account, and plenty of them were first day purchases; I decided the 60 bucks they were charging was a fair price. If you make it available at a decent price, I'll buy it. If you don't? I might or might not play it anyway. Unlike others I won't try to claim this behavior is anything but terrible and basically theft. I have no "right" to play anything I haven't paid for, and I have no "right" to demand you not protect your investment. Nobody has the moral high ground here because all of us are pirates. There's no good guy or bad guy here, there's simply what is and what is going to be. People are going to steal intellectual property from others (DKA, Miss Pac Man and so on), and there's shades of grey to all of it. For example, people who sell ROM collections. Shady but.... what exactly ARE they paying for? Are they paying for those roms or are they paying for the convenience of having them all gathered into one place? One could argue all someone is purchasing is someone else's time. Would I prefer people only buy legally licensed rom collections? Yup. But like i said, this isn't about right and wrong, this is about what's going to happen, and how you deal with it. I can;t speak for anyone else I can only speak for myself: So, do you want my money or not? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted July 23, 2015 Share Posted July 23, 2015 (edited) Unlike others I won't try to claim this behavior is anything but terrible and basically theft. I have no "right" to play anything I haven't paid for, and I have no "right" to demand you not protect your investment. Nobody has the moral high ground here because all of us are pirates. There's no good guy or bad guy here, there's simply what is and what is going to be. People are going to steal intellectual property from others (DKA, Miss Pac Man and so on), and there's shades of grey to all of it. For example, people who sell ROM collections. Shady but.... what exactly ARE they paying for? Are they paying for those roms or are they paying for the convenience of having them all gathered into one place? One could argue all someone is purchasing is someone else's time. Would I prefer people only buy legally licensed rom collections? Yup. You are not paying for the ROMs; you are paying for the media and somone's time assembling the collections and burning them. Case in point. I paid $4.95 + $5.95 s/h for a MAME4ALL DVD with 2271 ROMs for my Raspberry Pi arcade. Do I regret the purchase? No I do not. Am I thankful I didn't have to deal with broken ROMs that flat out don't work, or painful and cumbersome conversion tools because the usual ROM repositories only offer the latest sets and not the "ancient" 0.37b5 set that I needed? Yes I am. Call me a pirate. I don't care. I don't have the finances nor the room in my home to store 2000+ arcade machines, much less one. Edited July 23, 2015 by stardust4ever 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rev Posted July 23, 2015 Author Share Posted July 23, 2015 Where do I get this dvd rom collection? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SiLic0ne t0aD Posted July 23, 2015 Share Posted July 23, 2015 Can I put the rom on the LTOflash (when its released and obviously buy it) since I already own a CIB copy of Boulder Dash? I'd really hope so. I leave my flash carts plugged into my systems, only swapping carts if it doesn't already have the rom on it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
108 Stars Posted July 23, 2015 Share Posted July 23, 2015 I hate the guys who sell ROM collections on eBay. Reported some, but they always pop up again. I am also a pirate in some regards, but I dislike people making Money for it. Call it compensation for work and material if you will, in my eyes it is making profit with something that does not belong to you. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted July 23, 2015 Share Posted July 23, 2015 You are not paying for the ROMs; you are paying for the media and somone's time assembling the collections and burning them.I get your point. Legally it is still not OK, because someone is making profit (maybe, asking for compensation) with the intellectual property of someone else. E.g. a book is only be allowed to be printed by the publisher which has an agreement with the author. E-books are only allowed to be distributed by such a publisher. What is allowed is providing a list of links which lead to legally provided copies of the ROM. That's a service you can ask money for. But providing the physical or virtual copy is legally not allowed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mord Posted July 23, 2015 Share Posted July 23, 2015 Are they paying for those roms or are they paying for the convenience of having them all gathered into one place? One could argue all someone is purchasing is someone else's time. Would I prefer people only buy legally licensed rom collections? Yup. I'm sure anyone trying to make that argument in a court of law would find out how weak that argument is as they get handed the judgement against them. It's like saying "I'm not buying all these Popular Band song mp3s, I'm paying to have them collected up and given to me." Fact is, neither of you had permission to collect and/or copy it. Odds are you both would end up losing, although the person actually doing the copying and selling would probably be worse off. People using that as an excuse to profit off someone else's work know full well what they're doing, and that it's nothing more than an excuse. (And excuses won't save you if you end up seeing the inside of a court room.) There's a reason why legit publishers that will publish stuff you made for you require you to sign paperwork to verify that you're the copyright owner of the stuff being copied. It actually protects them in court (And will hurl you under the bus if you don't in fact own the copyrights.) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted July 23, 2015 Share Posted July 23, 2015 (edited) I'm sure anyone trying to make that argument in a court of law would find out how weak that argument is as they get handed the judgement against them. It's like saying "I'm not buying all these Popular Band song mp3s, I'm paying to have them collected up and given to me." Fact is, neither of you had permission to collect and/or copy it. Odds are you both would end up losing, although the person actually doing the copying and selling would probably be worse off. Generally copyright infringing material is not treated as illicit contraband like drugs, weapons, child pron, ect. No police force is going to do a sting operation to catch people trading some old bootleg movies or game roms when there are much bigger crimes being committed. In the case of IP infringement, the hammer goes to the distributor of such goods rather than the consumer. This makes peer-to-peer networks such as bit torrent risky because you distribute pieces of the file you are downloading to other users. Generally speaking someone else is putting themselves at risk by hosting or providing the content to the customer. From the FAQ of one such provider of these "services." It's definitely a strawman's argument at best: 26. Is this legal? Top For all intents and purposes yes. I do not sell these games, I am merely providing the service of burning DVD's. Burning is a non-profit service meant to preserve the life of games that are otherwise impossible to find or play anymore. Burning sets is a labor of love considering it can take up to an hour to burn a single DVD. The goal is not selling games but providing the service of distribution so that as many people as possible can continue to enjoy these great games which I provided only to people that agree on the terms of ownership. All monies received from the sales of these sets goes solely into the media, packaging materials, and shipping costs involved. However, if I am distributing any game that an owner feels to be unlawful, I will be happy to remove them from my distribution archives. Edited July 23, 2015 by stardust4ever Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
108 Stars Posted July 23, 2015 Share Posted July 23, 2015 26. Is this legal? Top For all intents and purposes yes. I do not sell these games, I am merely providing the service of burning DVD's. Burning is a non-profit service meant to preserve the life of games that are otherwise impossible to find or play anymore. Burning sets is a labor of love considering it can take up to an hour to burn a single DVD. The goal is not selling games but providing the service of distribution so that as many people as possible can continue to enjoy these great games which I provided only to people that agree on the terms of ownership. All monies received from the sales of these sets goes solely into the media, packaging materials, and shipping costs involved. However, if I am distributing any game that an owner feels to be unlawful, I will be happy to remove them from my distribution archives. That Argument is so ridiculous, if he was put in court the judge would laugh in his face. Sadly, sometimes myths live on. Like people taking the term "abandonware" serious. There is no such thing. Just because nothing is done with a property does not mean it is abandoned in any legal way. Yet plenty of people still think abandonware is a real Thing. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted July 23, 2015 Share Posted July 23, 2015 Atari is abandonware... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
108 Stars Posted July 23, 2015 Share Posted July 23, 2015 I wonder if Atari agrees... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+nanochess Posted July 23, 2015 Share Posted July 23, 2015 I wonder if the remains of Atari agrees... Let me correct that for you 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr SQL Posted July 23, 2015 Share Posted July 23, 2015 That Argument is so ridiculous, if he was put in court the judge would laugh in his face. Sadly, sometimes myths live on. Like people taking the term "abandonware" serious. There is no such thing. Just because nothing is done with a property does not mean it is abandoned in any legal way. Yet plenty of people still think abandonware is a real Thing. I think Stardust's quoted argument holds water; particularly since only shipping and handling is being charged and the provider is offering to remove ROM's the owners wish to hold onto after 30 years. I participated in such a compliation when the promoter contacted me 15 years ago, said it was no problem to include all of my company's ROMs' from the 80's and gave them the warez that they didn't already have! (except that DRM game I couldn't get the protection off) and I thought it was cool to see people enjoying my games now AND that they were preserved instead of being lost to history - another great point there. That promoter had the same policy - they went out of their way to contact the vendors they could trace, but still included the retro ROM's for those they couldn't get in touch with. Along those lines, I was disappointed when Google cleaned up their pirate links and I didn't see my ROM's and the hosting warez sites searching google anymore, that was fun I think that guy on the Assembly line packaging the compilation actually becomes more important than the programmer when it's about sharing the retro goodness the programmer and software company have long abandoned. But I agree that repro's are another story if the repro's are of games still actively being sold by Atari via emulator game packs for the iphone and modern consoles. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
108 Stars Posted July 23, 2015 Share Posted July 23, 2015 But it doesn't work like that. For one, it is a claim that he does not make money with it. He could argue he does not make much, but certainly not nothing, or else we would have some very akward pricing. And even then he sells it on a sales platform, the price he sells it for is beside the point. Secondly, it does not even matter. Whether he sells it, or gives it away for free, he does not own the content unless the copyright holders explicitly say so. Not the games, not the emulator, and not the logos on the cover. It is cool if you allow such a thing; and personally I also find it better than the stuff being forgotten. But that is no legal grounds on which you can base a right to distribute stuff without permisson. I especially dislike how he says that if someone does not want his stuff on his collections he can contact him; so I have to tell him I don't want my stuff to be stolen. I guess everyone who does not know of the seller is out of luck then. That is exactly the other way around than it should be. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.