Rubik's Cube 3D Binary Released

[YOK-dfa]

Legally you are most likely right. But I am absolutely not interested on basing my hobby on lawyers etc.

Neither am i...

 

Without David the ROM would probably have been lost, without him sharing it on carts probably nobody ever would have had the chance to play/own it. And IMO there are probably already enough collectors hoarding their unique ROMs, because they are afraid of all the BS happening when releasing them to public.

Ok, but they are not releasing their ROMs at all. The difference here is that he is releasing it (for a fee). From a moral standpoint that is pretty questionable. So i find it strange that he starts complaining when other people release it too (it's ok when he breaks the law, but he complains when others do the same??)

 

Now i am probably getting on dangerous grounds (and i am not intending to start a flame-war here) but selling 250 copies for $40-$50 each still gets him over $10.000 (minus expenses ofcourse). You have to wonder when that kind of money gets involved if this is still 'love-for-the-community' or if this should be viewed as a commercial enterprise (in which case i'm not so forgiving about breaking the law)...

 

Anyway, don't get me wrong. I am pretty much against all this extended copyright stuff and think that 'creations' should be in the Public Domain after a reasonable time-period (10 years or so)...

[Thomas Jentzsch]

...but will potentially hurt his sales.

Here I disagree, though I suppose David doesn't.

 

That boys and girls is what we call being a hypocrite.

That sums it up quite exactly.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

The difference here is that he is releasing it (for a fee).

Just like DP/CGE is doing. But Matt described that above already.

 

From a moral standpoint that is pretty questionable.

It depends. When he invested quite a lot of money into the ROM he may want to get that money back.

 

Now i am probably getting on dangerous grounds (and i am not intending to start a flame-war here) but selling 250 copies for $40-$50 each still gets him over $10.000 (minus expenses ofcourse). You have to wonder when that kind of money gets involved if this is still 'love-for-the-community' or if this should be viewed as a commercial enterprise (in which case i'm not so forgiving about breaking the law)...

I understand. And I partially agree, 10k are IMO also way above a "love-for-the-community" job (or maybe I am just jealous at his marketing skills ).

 

But we are speculating a lot here, because neither do we know how much money he had to invest at first, how much the production costs, if he has to pay a license fee, etc. pp.

 

And DP doesn't know either, to me it looks like they are just again trying to harm people David, AA, Marc Oberhäuser (Revenge of the Apes)... This sucks!

[Mayhem]

Seeing as AA was stopped from selling their copies of 3D RC (as noted by the removal from the store), then how was David still allowed to? Just curious... I would have presumed he would have stopped as well.

 

Which also prompts the question, how is either DP or here allowed to carry the ROM for it?

 

Ownership? A quick explanaton from someone would answer my wonderings here

[digitalpress]

We didn't release the binary to "hurt" anyone. The game was part of a series of "not on the internet" ROMS that we had. I checked AtariAge's store, where I thought the game used to be sold, saw it wasn't there, and approved the release. It was just one of many released simultaneously on Thanksgiving day http://www.digitpress.com/archives/cc_prototypes.htm

 

I should have done my homework, I suppose. I'd remove the link but I guess it's not necessary since AtariAge has it here as well.

 

Until someone pointed me to this thread I hadn't known that this was an issue - no one contacted me with an objection to the posting.

 

To anyone who feels "hurt" by this, I am truly sorry.

[YOK-dfa]

It depends. When he invested quite a lot of money into the ROM he may want to get that money back.

If you pay a lot of money for a prototype you know beforehand what you are getting into. If you can not afford it, don't buy it. Holding a ROM 'hostage' and not releasing it until you have sold enough copies of your reproduction has nothing to do with 'love-for-the-community'. If someone wants to do the community a favor, just buy the damn proto and release it without any strings attached...

 

Although i guess in the end this is a better solution for the community then someone buying it and not releasing the ROM at all... I guess most of these problems could be avoided if those proto's weren't so expensive. So people, be part of the solution and stop paying top $$$'s for proto's

[Tempest]

If you pay a lot of money for a prototype you know beforehand what you are getting into. If you can not afford it, don't buy it. Holding a ROM 'hostage' and not releasing it until you have sold enough copies of your reproduction has nothing to do with 'love-for-the-community'. If someone wants to do the community a favor, just buy the damn proto and release it without any strings attached...  

 

I don't disagree with that, which is why I was happy when someone finally released Crack'ed, Pick Up, Save the Whales, Rush Hour, and all the other prototypes which had previously only been available to those of us willing to cough up $40.

 

Tempest

[Thomas Jentzsch]

I don't disagree with that, which is why I was happy when someone finally released Crack'ed, Pick Up, Save the Whales, Rush Hour, and all the other prototypes which had previously only been available to those of us willing to cough up $40.

But not everything that makes us (incl. me) happy is automatically good.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Until someone pointed me to this thread I hadn't known that this was an issue - no one contacted me with an objection to the posting.

Scott did know for at least three days now.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Although i guess in the end this is a better solution for the community then someone buying it and not releasing the ROM at all... I guess most of these problems could be avoided if those proto's weren't so expensive. So people, be part of the solution and stop paying top $$$'s for proto's  

Ageed.

 

But then I can never sell my Turbo "prototype" for "top $$$s".

[Godzilla]

all i can say is i stand behind anything that helps preserve these incredibly rare bits of history. and a rom existing would never and has never stopped me from purchasing a repro. as a matter of fact, im more likely to buy a cart knowing the rom is freely available so that if something happens to my repro i can always get a new board made.

[digitalpress]

Until someone pointed me to this thread I hadn't known that this was an issue - no one contacted me with an objection to the posting.

Scott did know for at least three days now.

 

He's known who owned the original ROM or he's known it's an issue? Either way, if YOU knew that, why didn't you mention it to ME?

 

By the way, you can easily quote multiple posts at once, you don't actually have to start a new post for each post quoted. It's a phpBB thing: just type [quote="name of poster"] then their text, then [/quote].

 

Friendly tip courtesy of your pals at Digital Press.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

He's known who owned the original ROM or he's known it's an issue?

The later one. David posted at rgvc at 11/26 and Scott replied less than a day later.

 

Either way, if YOU knew that, why didn't you mention it to ME?

I didn't know until today. And I would have thought, that's up to David, not me.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

<i>By the way, you can easily quote multiple posts at once, you don't actually have to start a new post for each post quoted. It's a phpBB thing: just type [quote="name of poster"] then their text, then [/quote].  

 

Friendly tip courtesy of your pals at Digital Press.</i>

Thanks, but that would harm my post count.

[Curt Vendel]

Although i guess in the end this is a better solution for the community then someone buying it and not releasing the ROM at all... I guess most of these problems could be avoided if those proto's weren't so expensive. So people, be part of the solution and stop paying top $$$'s for proto's  

Ageed.

 

But then I can never sell my Turbo "prototype" for "top $$$s".

 

 

Well, see I don't mind when some cool proto comes along, picking it up, just to own the original and letting the rom out into the wild for all to enjoy, like the Universal dragrace proto that Best auctioned. I won it, released the rom once it arrived, sent to to Matt "Master of Prototypes" and allowed him to further examine, catalog and present his expert findings on the game...

 

 

 

 

Curt

[Godzilla]

That's cause Curt is da man, and many others can only hope to pale in the shadow of such greatness. :-)

 

AKA the way it should be done.

[Xot]

If you pay a lot of money for a prototype you know beforehand what you are getting into. If you can not afford it, don't buy it. Holding a ROM 'hostage' and not releasing it until you have sold enough copies of your reproduction has nothing to do with 'love-for-the-community'. If someone wants to do the community a favor, just buy the damn proto and release it without any strings attached...  

 

I don't disagree with that, which is why I was happy when someone finally released Crack'ed, Pick Up, Save the Whales, Rush Hour, and all the other prototypes which had previously only been available to those of us willing to cough up $40.

 

Tempest

 

Okay, I'm out of the loop. Where can I snag these?

[ubersaurus]

I think the real problem here is that David was still selling copies of the game when the rom was so "graciously" released (this was well known).  David was going to release the rom once all the copies of the game were sold...

 

Tempest

 

While I never wanted to release the binary of this game for obvious reasons,

 

[Tempest]

I *finally* found the quote I was looking for about Peter doing this in his spare time. This is from sound programmer Bob Vieira

 

Peter Niday, who I met in about 3rd grade and went all through  

school with him, etc., wrote the RUBIX cube 3d in his spare time  

while working as a tester at Atari.  After the programmers and  

managers saw it, they decided Peter should no longer be a  

tester.   He was a math whiz at UC Berkeley and is  

analytically gifted AND creative, so it was a good fit. Peter was  

quickly put on Sorc. Apprentice (about the time I started  

contracting/consluting with Atari thanks to Peter) and had no  

time to 'finish' the cube and I suspect no one really knew how to  

make it a game beyond what you could do with the actual cube  

in your hand (as you point out on your site). .

 

Tempest