Just a thought on 2600 hacks

[MegaManFan]

Has anybody tried arguing to Info-tari that hacks are PARODIES of the original games and as such would be protected by the 1st amendment?

[Mr Egg]

i dont think it would be protected speech since hacking can be considered as a form of reverse engineering which is protected under copyrigth law .

[Godzilla]

a parody that isn't illegal is one you are capable of performing (or in this instance, creating or coding,) yourself. For example, weird al and his band actually PERFORM their parodies rather than karaokeing over other peoples music (which would be illegal, just like a rom hack.)

 

it's simple, really, if it ain't your code, guess what? it ain't your code.

[Nukey Shay]

Yup...a parody would need to be an original work in at least one respect.

 

Re: hacks in general...

If you alter a significant amount of the original code, the hack falls into the "fair use" catagory (unless the original is patented and the hack still makes use of a patented routine). No routines in 2600 games have ever been patented AFAIK...so "fair use" applies so long as the result is not a 1:1 duplicate of the game engine. And of course, any trademark characters or graphics would still be protected.

 

So the key is to alter all of the GFX (to kill off any trademarks), and modify portions of the display kernal. And to get the "significant amount", modify the ram allocation so that all of the locations differ

I'm not sure, but I think that the game sounds could also be considered trademark...so those should be altered as well.

[Cootster]

Uh, wasn't the Venetian Blinds technique patented?

[Nukey Shay]

Was Activision ever sued over Stampede?