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ColecoVision Homebrews & IP Rights Discussion


TPR

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Copyright infringement in some of the examples discussed may not even be criminal. The affected party will have to sue you in a civil case. Software piracy is criminal and the police can arrest you.

 

Edit:

Maybe you should provide examples where a musician using someone else's melody in their song is referred to as piracy. Or when someone's video game was found to resemble parts of another video game is referred to as piracy.

 

When trying to look up examples for you I found some explanations for the differences between piracy and copyright infringement that isn't piracy. After understanding their differences(or at least I think I do) I'm finding it strange that these distinctions aren't made in dictionaries. Anyway, from what I gathered we are both kind of right and kind of wrong.

 

Piracy is as you say a full copy but it is more about the quantity of what it copied than the quality of it and it has nothing to do with how much work is put in while copying it. In other words, it isn't limited to perfect copies that can be made quickly like downloading a ROM, using a copy machine to copy a book, taking a picture of a painting, or any of that modern day tech with perfect copies with an identical quality to the original work. For an example, if you copied a book just by writing it down in note books with extremely poor handwriting with your mouth because you have no hands then it would still count as piracy even though it is of less quality because you copied the entire work. Intent when it comes to quantity matters too. For an example, if you did just like the note books example but had spelling errors, missed some punctuation, overlooked a sentence, etc. then it still counts because your intent was to make a full copy. Another part of the quantity of what was copied is copying the intended use. For an example, if you copied a book to a note book then you are coping its intended use which is to read it which would make it piracy but if you copied it by making it into a movie then it is just copyright infringement because you didn't copy the intended use. Also, it doesn't matter what the copy is made out of because it is about the content of the work that is copied. For an example, if you copied the game Monopoly on a wood board instead of cardboard and made the pieces out of glass instead of plastic it wouldn't matter because you copied the entire game as well as the intended use which it to play it as a board game.

 

So, it stops being piracy and just copyright infringement when the quantity is effected with modification like changing the intended use like above by making a book into a movie, play, video game, etc. or changing it some like a different title, changing characters names, changing the story a little, etc. Basically the kind of changes that you can tell it is a modification of another work. A common example is putting a mustache on the Mona Lisa. You couldn't have made your new work without copying Mona Lisa. However, since all works are somewhat a remix of past works and adopting ideas from them the line between infringing on a copyright and fair use is completely arbitrary. What it comes down to is the copyright holder making their case that you couldn't have made your work without theirs and that yours isn't unique enough, you making your case that you could have made it without their work and it is unique enough, and then the judge or jury decides who has a better case.

 

What still confuses me about them both is that the word piracy was chosen to be a pejorative term to equate the act with pirating ships to make it seem like the worse type of copyright infringement possible and as you said piracy is a crime but just copyright infringement gets you sued. That seems backwards because with just copyright infringement you are doing everything that you would do with piracy(copying and maybe distributing it for free or at a price) but violating one more right that is reserved by a copyright which is modifying the original work. That makes no sense to me because it is making doing less worse. It would be like if you went to jail for robbing someone but if you would have stabbed them too then you would have just got sued.

 

Anyway, I think Kung-Fu Master would fit the criteria for a pirated work. Not for the software side of the issue because that is what it is made out of like note books instead of books, wood instead of cardboard, ink instead of paint, VHS instead of DVD, etc. But because the quantity of the content is the full work. It has the same title, it has the same content, a port by definition is a copy because it means to carry over(copy over), the intent to make the same thing instead of a modification is there with it even admitted on the box,"Plays, sounds, and scores like the arcade game", it shows the arcade machine, it says it is by Data East, it has the same intended use because instead of being made into a movie or something else it is a video game like the original, etc. In other words, instead of paying money to play an official version you can take potential profits away from the copyright holder with this version because the quantity of the content and the intended use of a video game is all there as a total replacement alternative to the official versions(a.k.a. piracy, stealing, theft, bootlegging, etc.). Now if I'm wrong about that, which I likely am because intellectual property laws seem so messed up, then I doubt that there actually are clear definitions of piracy, copyright infringement, and all the rest. If with paintings, movies, music, books, board games, plays, sculptures, etc. it is all about the content that I the end user receive regardless of how the copying took place but with video games it has more to do with the underlying code that generates the content that I never see(especially if the source code isn't even publically available) then these definitions are inconsistent and arbitrary.

 

Anyway, as to your requested examples, I think this might be close. A lot of unofficial old school Atari 2600 carts have graphical hacks and other changes which would seem to be closer to copyright infringement since it isn't the exact content but they are referred to as pirate carts made by pirate companies.

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The example of hacks/mods is interesting. Hacking a videogame itself is not illegal nor copyright infringement. However, if you are distributing the complete hacked game you could be arrested for illegal copying. [Maybe you call it piracy, doesn't really matter.]

 

Some examples:

A) I take the MSX version of Kung-Fu Master, hack it to make it work with ColecoVision and distribute the result. Assuming the result has a significant chunk of the original code, I am doing illegal copying and distribution of that code and could be arrested. I could also be sued by Irem or Ascii, if they care, since they both have copyrights that were violated. Not likely to be sued since I have no money. Wether you call that piracy doesn't really matter. Ethically you might say anyone can easily get the original version illegally for free anyway so it makes no difference. And morally you might be right but the law doesn't care about ethics or morals.

 

B) I completely program my own version Kung-Fu Master with my own unique code and distribute it. I do make it look as close as possible to Irem's original. Nothing criminal but I could be sued by Irem for infringing on their copyrighted graphics/music/sounds. Unlikely since I have no money. They could tell me to stop distributing under threat of lawsuit but they or anyone else, like an angry competitor, can't call the police to arrest me.

 

C) I hack the MSX version of Kung-fu Master just like example A. Except this time I seperate the changes from the original code and only distribute the changes. Ie. A patch. I have done nothing illegal nor have I infringed on any copyright. That doesn't mean someone might not try to sue me and bankrupt me in the process.

 

The law is not a dictionary, it is a combination of legislation and case judgement history.

Edited by mr_me
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I'm grateful for your work. Furthermore, I'm grateful for your fixes. If I'm not mistaken, you're the one who fixed that HORRIBLE glitch in Turbo. I remember when it would say 00 cars passed, and then a car passes you and it says you passed 99 cars! If I'm not mistaken, you're the one who fixed that. What Sega feckupeth, sir Daniel B. fixeth!

Not sure if Daniel was the one that fixed that car counter bug in Turbo, but more than likely, it was.

 

Also, Turbo was either programmed In-House at Coleco or outsourced to another company. It was not programmed by Sega. The only game Sega released (maybe programmed by them In-House) for the CV & Adam was "Up'N Down", all the rest of their games were licensed to Coleco.

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Not sure if Daniel was the one that fixed that car counter bug in Turbo, but more than likely, it was.

 

Also, Turbo was either programmed In-House at Coleco or outsourced to another company. It was not programmed by Sega. The only game Sega released (maybe programmed by them In-House) for the CV & Adam was "Up'N Down", all the rest of their games were licensed to Coleco.

 

AFAIK, Turbo was made by Nuvatec :

http://www.colecoboxart.com/colecovision-publishers-developers.htm#nuv

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A) I take the MSX version of Kung-Fu Master, hack it to make it work with ColecoVision and distribute the result. Assuming the result has a significant chunk of the original code, I am doing illegal copying and distribution of that code and could be arrested. I could also be sued by Irem or Ascii, if they care, since they both have copyrights that were violated. Not likely to be sued since I have no money. Wether you call that piracy doesn't really matter. Ethically you might say anyone can easily get the original version illegally for free anyway so it makes no difference. And morally you might be right but the law doesn't care about ethics or morals.

 

B) I completely program my own version Kung-Fu Master with my own unique code and distribute it. I do make it look as close as possible to Irem's original. Nothing criminal but I could be sued by Irem for infringing on their copyrighted graphics/music/sounds. Unlikely since I have no money. They could tell me to stop distributing under threat of lawsuit but they or anyone else, like an angry competitor, can't call the police to arrest me.

 

C) I hack the MSX version of Kung-fu Master just like example A. Except this time I seperate the changes from the original code and only distribute the changes. Ie. A patch. I have done nothing illegal nor have I infringed on any copyright. That doesn't mean someone might not try to sue me and bankrupt me in the process.

 

Finally, someone that seems to understand the situation!

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The example of hacks/mods is interesting. Hacking a videogame itself is not illegal nor copyright infringement. However, if you are distributing the complete hacked game you could be arrested for illegal copying. [Maybe you call it piracy, doesn't really matter.]

 

Some examples:

A) I take the MSX version of Kung-Fu Master, hack it to make it work with ColecoVision and distribute the result. Assuming the result has a significant chunk of the original code, I am doing illegal copying and distribution of that code and could be arrested. I could also be sued by Irem or Ascii, if they care, since they both have copyrights that were violated. Not likely to be sued since I have no money. Wether you call that piracy doesn't really matter. Ethically you might say anyone can easily get the original version illegally for free anyway so it makes no difference. And morally you might be right but the law doesn't care about ethics or morals.

 

B) I completely program my own version Kung-Fu Master with my own unique code and distribute it. I do make it look as close as possible to Irem's original. Nothing criminal but I could be sued by Irem for infringing on their copyrighted graphics/music/sounds. Unlikely since I have no money. They could tell me to stop distributing under threat of lawsuit but they or anyone else, like an angry competitor, can't call the police to arrest me.

 

C) I hack the MSX version of Kung-fu Master just like example A. Except this time I seperate the changes from the original code and only distribute the changes. Ie. A patch. I have done nothing illegal nor have I infringed on any copyright. That doesn't mean someone might not try to sue me and bankrupt me in the process.

 

The law is not a dictionary, it is a combination of legislation and case judgement history.

and bam...that is it. regardless of how much of a scumbag chris is...he owns the copyright. he can say or do whatever he wants.

 

personally i think he is a fucking buffoon you have people who are willing to support your system and you don't have to lift a finger? ask for a 10% royalty to use the name and call it a day

 

Chris...wherever you are. you need to learn how to properly do business man...you're doing it wrong.

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No, RWB doesn't own or have rights to any copyrights with colecovision. We may not know who exactly owns the copyrights of the Colecovision game code. Some say Hasbro, others say Atari/Infogrames, some even say it could be Mattel.

 

RWB is claiming the ColecoVision trademarks (name and logo). And even that is debatable. Even with the trademarks RWB has no authority over the production of Colecovision games.

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