| User | Post |
LocalH
Posts: 35/46 |
Nowadays, the big trend is to prosecute citizens of your country for doing things that are illegal in your country, that they may have done entirely in other countries. So, for example, if one were a US citizen, and went to a place where copyright is not legally honored, and sold boatloads of pirated games in a place where it's entirely legal, then if you were to come back into the US you could potentially be prosecuted, even if you did not have any illegal product on you when you exited or entered the US (which would be considered smuggling). |
HyperLamer
Posts: 6947/8210 |
No, because why would that be online?
You might get away with not having an index page and 'forgetting' to not make the directory readable, to make it look like a backup page (maybe throw a misspelled rule in .htaccess) but I doubt it would work. Plus without any links, no search engines would pick it up, unless you manually added it in which case they'd have evidence that you intended for people to know about it. And I think they'd get you for just having the ROMs, which is technically only legal if you own the original cart/disc and backed them up yourself (distribution is illegal, so downloading them from someone who's distributing illegally is illegal).
Though that does make me wonder a bit about distribution laws. Distributing ROMs probably is legal in some countries, so if the hoster is legal, would downloading them be legal too? Or at least would going to a country where it's legal and downloading them be, even if you brought them back home? |
Apophis
Posts: 796/882 |
Originally posted by ShadowSonic
Can't you bypass that rule about distributing Roms if you make a site and plainly say: "These roms are for personal use only and are not meant to be downloaded by anyone else. These are meant for backups only incase my harddrive (or whatever) wipes out...etc..."? Then you don't say anything to anyone about that site and if people find it on there, they can downloaded it or something? Anyone get what I'm saying?
Nope. Wouldn't work. |
ShadowSonic
Posts: 68/69 |
Can't you bypass that rule about distributing Roms if you make a site and plainly say: "These roms are for personal use only and are not meant to be downloaded by anyone else. These are meant for backups only incase my harddrive (or whatever) wipes out...etc..."? Then you don't say anything to anyone about that site and if people find it on there, they can downloaded it or something? Anyone get what I'm saying? |
HyperLamer
Posts: 6929/8210 |
In theory, yes. I mentioned that before, about how you could take a piece of copyrighted data and produce a new and unique output from it. I wonder just how the laws do work regarding that... |
Spel werdz rite
Posts: 81/108 |
Nice bump... 31 days 5 hours and 53 minutes. |
Jaguarstrike
Posts: 21/32 |
well, in theory, no computer files can be copyrighted, because all it is is ones and zeros and a rom is differently interpreted depending on the software you run it on. |
Kyoufu Kawa
Posts: 1936/2481 |
Honestly, the whole "huge IPS" thing reeks.
Also, I just punched a Nintendo of America representative in the face. |
Riku
Posts: 472/1239 |
I would think if you added an IPS that big, the ROM would be leaking with data with the oversize. I don't see how you could. |
Kyoufu Kawa
Posts: 1933/2481 |
Let's just keep it at this: it's impossible to prevent ROM distribution, so why even worry about the legality of your ROM? It's not like some Suits with the Nintendo logo on their jackets are gonna bust down my door after I post how I have ROMs of every single NES game ever released, right?
Edit: Doorbell's a-ringing, lessee who it is  |
firemaker
Posts: 154/247 |
i would just give up because not matter how much we try, having roms will always be illegal unless you have them as a back up. |
HyperLamer
Posts: 6330/8210 |
Nope. The only real way that would work is if 2 sources only supplied half the data, which would be a huge pain. Plus they could probably still treat it the same as if you gave out the actual ROM, since your intention is clearly to do just that.
Now suppose someone made a program which could make relatively cool music out of any arbitrary file, and supplied ROMs for the purposes of playing them as music... I wonder how legal that would be?  It's the same idea as the "same data, different output" condition I mentioned before, but applied to the entire file. |
Kei-kun
Posts: 22/27 |
How about splitting a rom into two pieces? Not by cutting it in half, but by putting every other byte into a seperate file? First byte into file one, second byte into file two, third byte into file one, and so on... A simple program could be made to cut the roms in half and piece them back together. Either half is just random crap.
Wait, nevermind. Pretty much any idea of getting around it won't work. Such as zipping a rom. The data means nothing until the file is decompressed, yet zipped roms are still illegal. ;P |
Spel werdz rite
Posts: 41/108 |
What's the song with the high pitch voice saying he's lonely?
They used an original song. |
beneficii
Posts: 378/567 |
Originally posted by The Crimson Chin
Originally posted by Disch
Plus IPS patches which expand the ROM typically ahve a copy of the last PRG bank in the ROM inside them, so they contain copyrighted data too.
Could they really sue over a patch containing a small part of their code? I mean I've written games with a lot of similar if not identical code to commercial games. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised to find some random JPEG file or something containing a string of bytes that happens to be identical to a chunk of code in a game. Does that make those illegal too? For that matter, suppose I write a graphic engine which uses the same input data as some copyrighted graphics in a game, but produces different output. My game still contains copyrighted graphics, but the graphics it actually displays are different. What now? And probably the biggest point of all... things like Mario's image are copyrighted, aren't they? Screenshots of the games contain these. Are screenshots illegal?
So yeah. I can't imagine anyone being sued over a patch that contains 32K of the code of a 2MB ROM.  And if Nintendo cared about us using their graphics in hacks, they'd have done something by now.
The same applies to music as well. If you look at different pieces of movement, you'll see that you can find that pieces of different melodies are about the same. In fact, a melody you make up may end up being similar to one you heard long ago (or even not heard), but that doesn't meant you copied it or plagiarized it. It's a very grey legal area; I'll grant you that. |
dan
Posts: 674/782 |
Nintendo will probably never sue a ROM hacker. It would be bad publicity, and they probably wouldn't get much money from doing it. |
HyperLamer
Posts: 6201/8210 |
Well, no. What I'm saying is Nintendo won't give a damn if I relocate some code in a hack and end up including said code in my patch. I'd only be copying a few kilobytes of the game. Your idea is basically taking the entire ROM and putting it into a different (and less efficient) format. It's still a ROM, you just need a special program to read it. |
Spel werdz rite
Posts: 18/108 |
______________________________________________________________________
I can't imagine anyone being sued over a patch that contains 32K of the code of a
2MB ROM. And if Nintendo cared about us using their graphics in hacks, they'd have
done something by now.__________________________________________________
That's exactly what I was stressing about the whole time. You seem to be the first person in this whole thread to realize that!  |
HyperLamer
Posts: 6144/8210 |
Originally posted by Disch
Plus IPS patches which expand the ROM typically ahve a copy of the last PRG bank in the ROM inside them, so they contain copyrighted data too.
Could they really sue over a patch containing a small part of their code? I mean I've written games with a lot of similar if not identical code to commercial games. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised to find some random JPEG file or something containing a string of bytes that happens to be identical to a chunk of code in a game. Does that make those illegal too? For that matter, suppose I write a graphic engine which uses the same input data as some copyrighted graphics in a game, but produces different output. My game still contains copyrighted graphics, but the graphics it actually displays are different. What now? And probably the biggest point of all... things like Mario's image are copyrighted, aren't they? Screenshots of the games contain these. Are screenshots illegal?
So yeah. I can't imagine anyone being sued over a patch that contains 32K of the code of a 2MB ROM. And if Nintendo cared about us using their graphics in hacks, they'd have done something by now. |
neotransotaku
Posts: 3705/4016 |
Originally posted by Disch
But whatever -- I mean we all know we're breaking the law. I doubt anyone here really cares.
exactly...it is the game makers best interest to try to stop pirating for things that are currently available instead of things the stopped making money off of years ago... arresting someone for distributing 10-15 year old games is as lame as suing the maker of an RV because you did not know that cruise control doesn't steer... |
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