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Author Topic: Why are rom selling sites not closed down?  (Read 2988 times)

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shateredsoul

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Why are rom selling sites not closed down?
« on: March 06, 2010, 02:04:08 am »
I was just curious.. and I won't mention any websites.  It just seems weird how easily they are found online, yet they are still around... but one guy uploads one game and he gets a 1.5 million dollar lawsuits.

Gatt

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Re: Why are rom selling sites not closed down?
« Reply #1 on: March 06, 2010, 05:25:57 am »
They are closed down,  pretty frequently.  Most of them get pulled in short order.

The exceptions are the sites that sell things on physical media,  instead of letting you download,  those come under a different heading and end in a different kind of lawsuit.  Much like the Ultracade one.

The other exception are the sites hosted in countries with little or no regard for copyright law.  Those countries no one's going to force them to pull things down.

As far as the P2P goes,  you're talking about a completely different scenario.  The impact of that scenario is very different from 25 year old ROMs.  Regardless,  that's nothing compared to what's coming.

I'm just hoping that retrogaming isn't lumped in with the enforcement that's coming.

ark_ader

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Re: Why are rom selling sites not closed down?
« Reply #2 on: March 06, 2010, 05:42:08 am »
The economy plays a part too. Investing $$$ to close websites down for something that is trivial and probably 1% of the market is doing.

Not cost effective for retro stuff.  Besides can you go into a typical games store and buy NES, Genesis, DC and Xbox1 games new?

Wii, 360, PS3 different ballgame completely.
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Kman-Sweden

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Re: Why are rom selling sites not closed down?
« Reply #3 on: March 06, 2010, 12:46:24 pm »
Might be that some sites don't sell the actuall roms, they sell a membership or whatnot...

lilshawn

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Re: Why are rom selling sites not closed down?
« Reply #4 on: March 06, 2010, 02:17:56 pm »
in Canada (since we pay a copyright levy on the writable media) if you make a copy of a disk (even one you don't own or procured through ill gotten means) so long as you don't have to circumvent any copy protection on the media, it is absolutely legal to copy it. this levy makes it *legal* to copy audio CD's for personal use. Commercially selling copied audio CD's is still (obviously) illegal. It does not matter whether you own the original sound recording (on any medium), you can legally make a copy for your own private use.
Quote
The wording of the Copyright Act gives rise to some very odd situations. In the 6 examples below, "commercial CD" means a commercially pressed CD that you would normally buy at a retail store.

If someone steals a commercial CD, steals a blank CD-R, and then copies the commercial CD onto the CD-R, they are a thief, but they have not infringed copyright.
You can legally lend a commercial CD to a friend, give him a blank CD-R, let him use your computer, and help him burn the CD-R which he can keep for his own private use.
You can legally copy a commercial CD , keep the copy, and give your friend the original.
You cannot legally make the copy yourself and give your friend the copy.
Your friends Alice and Benoit really like the new commercial CD you just purchased. Alice borrows it and makes a copy for her own use. She then passes the commercial CD on to Benoit, who makes a copy for his own use. Benoit gives the commercial CD back to you. This is all perfectly legal.
However, if Alice had copied the commercial CD, given it back to you, and passed her copy on to Benoit to make a copy for his own use, then copyright would have "probably" been infringed. There is some doubt here because Alice's original intent is important. In the strictest terms, her copy was no longer just for her private use. Pretty strange considering that the end result of examples 5 and 6 are exactly the same!


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shateredsoul

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Re: Why are rom selling sites not closed down?
« Reply #5 on: March 06, 2010, 02:27:40 pm »
Interesting.. thew website I was thinking of sells the roms on media and harddrives. I didn't mention their website because I know it's against policy here but also because I don't want to cause them any trouble.  I was just honestly curious how they were still around after a year.

Dizzle

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Re: Why are rom selling sites not closed down?
« Reply #6 on: March 06, 2010, 03:46:28 pm »
I wonder what the economic impact on some smaller companies would be if anyone decided to really come down hard on the kind of sites you mention.    If roms were extremely hard to come by, would there still be as much demand for products made by GroovyGameGear or Ultimarc?  I'm sure they would still get business, but I imagine that it probably wouldn't be anywhere near as much.  The whole retro gaming solution would probably be a lot smaller than it is now.

Just a thought.

ubiquityman

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Re: Why are rom selling sites not closed down?
« Reply #7 on: March 07, 2010, 01:54:27 pm »
in Canada (since we pay a copyright levy on the writable media) if you make a copy of a disk (even one you don't own or procured through ill gotten means) so long as you don't have to circumvent any copy protection on the media, it is absolutely legal to copy it. this levy makes it *legal* to copy audio CD's for personal use. Commercially selling copied audio CD's is still (obviously) illegal. It does not matter whether you own the original sound recording (on any medium), you can legally make a copy for your own private use.

None of that applies to ROMs though.

lilshawn

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Re: Why are rom selling sites not closed down?
« Reply #8 on: March 07, 2010, 04:01:37 pm »
in Canada (since we pay a copyright levy on the writable media) if you make a copy of a disk (even one you don't own or procured through ill gotten means) so long as you don't have to circumvent any copy protection on the media, it is absolutely legal to copy it. this levy makes it *legal* to copy audio CD's for personal use. Commercially selling copied audio CD's is still (obviously) illegal. It does not matter whether you own the original sound recording (on any medium), you can legally make a copy for your own private use.

None of that applies to ROMs though.

well if you think about it, i kinda does...it sets a legal precedent.

the way the law is, it (currently) it doesn't specify what (if any) information is contained on the original medium. ROMs although in their original state are an unusual medium, are still a form of recording, and albeit an unusual recording requiring unusual machine to extract it...DOES NOT however, require any sort of "code breaking" or "disassembly" or "circumvention" to be able to procure that copy... therefore making a copy of it for your own personal use is absolutely legal regardless of how the original came to be.

Havok

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Re: Why are rom selling sites not closed down?
« Reply #9 on: March 07, 2010, 10:43:45 pm »
Shhhhhhh!

ubiquityman

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Re: Why are rom selling sites not closed down?
« Reply #10 on: March 07, 2010, 11:38:27 pm »
Quote
well if you think about it, i kinda does...it sets a legal precedent.

the way the law is, it (currently) it doesn't specify what (if any) information is contained on the original medium. ROMs although in their original state are an unusual medium, are still a form of recording, and albeit an unusual recording requiring unusual machine to extract it...DOES NOT however, require any sort of "code breaking" or "disassembly" or "circumvention" to be able to procure that copy... therefore making a copy of it for your own personal use is absolutely legal regardless of how the original came to be.

It's probably not a good ideal to tell people something is legal when it clearly is not.

http://neil.eton.ca/copylevy.shtml
Can I make private copies of movies, audiobooks, or software?
NO. The Private Copying Regime only addresses making private copies for your own use of sound recordings of musical works.


The "private use" exemption on copyright ONLY APPLIES TO MUSIC.  
It does NOT apply to all audio recordings.
It does NOT apply to movies.
It does NOT apply to software.  
It does NOT apply to ROMs.
It only applies to "musical works".

Havok's approach may be more appropriate in this situation.   ;)

If you prefer the regulatory text from the Canadian Copyright Act:
Part VII, Private Copying" §80 Copying for Private Use
(1) Subject to subsection (2), the act of reproducing all or any substantial part of
(a) a musical work embodied in a sound recording,
(b) a performer’s performance of a musical work embodied in a sound recording, or
(c) a sound recording in which a musical work, or a performer’s performance of a musical work, is embodied
onto an audio recording medium for the private use of the person who makes the copy does not constitute an infringement of the copyright in the musical work, the performer’s performance or the sound recording.

“musical work” means any work of music or musical composition, with or without words, and includes any compilation thereof;
« Last Edit: March 07, 2010, 11:42:17 pm by ubiquityman »

UberCade

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Re: Why are rom selling sites not closed down?
« Reply #11 on: March 08, 2010, 02:54:10 am »
There's actually a guy who owns a video game shop here where I live and he sells a lot of everything, but mostly used and older stuff, like Xbox, PS2, and more retro systems and accessories, etc. I went in to his shop one time and he was selling a modded Xbox with a big hard drive chock full of roms for a lot of emulated systems! I was like  :o. I didn't want to be a jerk and rat him out, but, damn...

I think more often than not the wide swinging hammer of justice just hasn't come around yet to knock them off their pedestal. They'll get found out eventually. But, depending on what they're selling, if it's several decades old like original Atari/Namco/Williams roms, those companies probably aren't going to pitch much of a fit about it, because like other people have said they're not making money off those games anymore, but they still own the intellectual rights. If the site is hosted in a country with no internet laws though it makes it harder for companies to prosecute. That's why most P2P sites are hosted in those countries.
« Last Edit: March 08, 2010, 02:55:47 am by UberCade »

Gatt

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Re: Why are rom selling sites not closed down?
« Reply #12 on: March 08, 2010, 04:25:17 am »
I wonder what the economic impact on some smaller companies would be if anyone decided to really come down hard on the kind of sites you mention.    If roms were extremely hard to come by, would there still be as much demand for products made by GroovyGameGear or Ultimarc?  I'm sure they would still get business, but I imagine that it probably wouldn't be anywhere near as much.  The whole retro gaming solution would probably be a lot smaller than it is now.

Just a thought.

I think there's a fine line with the topic of Rom's.

Mame has been funded through donations from a group of fairly highly technical users,  without their support,  Mame likely wouldn't have advanced nearly as far as it has due to funding restrictions.

Companies have,  in the past,  found value in Mame's code,  either as a reference or a template,  for their own rereleases of arcade packs.

I strongly suspect that so long as Mame remains in the domain of a group of fairly highly technical users who would be considered small by market standards,  that at least some companies are content to ignore Rom distribution in favor of benefits from Mamedev's work in reducing time to market of their own arcade packs,  which likely sell to a much larger market.

What I mean is,  theoretically,  Microsoft could use Mame's codebase to rapidly build a library of arcade games on Live,  and sell people the roms.  I doubt Microsoft cares about a couple thousand Mamers in contrast to the millions of X-boxers they can sell to,  and they know they'll do better releasing more classics faster.

So I strongly suspect that any niche distribution will go overlooked as long as Mame remains a product that isn't accessible to the average user.  Especially since I'd imagine that all of the companies in question have some significant percentage of employees who themselves are fans of emulation of old systems.

Lets be honest,  all of the companies in question know about Mame,  and it's distribution methods.  They are software companies,  they have computer scientists and software engineers everywhere,  who generally are well aware of emulation.  If they were going to make any major push,  they already would have.

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Re: Why are rom selling sites not closed down?
« Reply #13 on: March 08, 2010, 06:09:10 am »
I wonder what the economic impact on some smaller companies would be if anyone decided to really come down hard on the kind of sites you mention.    If roms were extremely hard to come by, would there still be as much demand for products made by GroovyGameGear or Ultimarc?  I'm sure they would still get business, but I imagine that it probably wouldn't be anywhere near as much.  The whole retro gaming solution would probably be a lot smaller than it is now.

Just a thought.

I think there's a fine line with the topic of Rom's.

Mame has been funded through donations from a group of fairly highly technical users,  without their support,  Mame likely wouldn't have advanced nearly as far as it has due to funding restrictions.

Companies have,  in the past,  found value in Mame's code,  either as a reference or a template,  for their own rereleases of arcade packs.

I strongly suspect that so long as Mame remains in the domain of a group of fairly highly technical users who would be considered small by market standards,  that at least some companies are content to ignore Rom distribution in favor of benefits from Mamedev's work in reducing time to market of their own arcade packs,  which likely sell to a much larger market.

What I mean is,  theoretically,  Microsoft could use Mame's codebase to rapidly build a library of arcade games on Live,  and sell people the roms.  I doubt Microsoft cares about a couple thousand Mamers in contrast to the millions of X-boxers they can sell to,  and they know they'll do better releasing more classics faster.

So I strongly suspect that any niche distribution will go overlooked as long as Mame remains a product that isn't accessible to the average user.  Especially since I'd imagine that all of the companies in question have some significant percentage of employees who themselves are fans of emulation of old systems.

Lets be honest,  all of the companies in question know about Mame,  and it's distribution methods.  They are software companies,  they have computer scientists and software engineers everywhere,  who generally are well aware of emulation.  If they were going to make any major push,  they already would have.

The development team aren't selling Hard Drives full of ROMs, which is what this thread was about.

It's probably only a matter of time before somebody decides to care about it.  Some of the other operations have taken more than a year to shut down AFAIK.  If they're using the MAME name / trademark to sell the ROMs then Aaron would be interested tho, people trying to take advantage of the project for their own personal profit like this annoys the developers, and if they're using the MAME logo etc. to try and look like an official service then it's even worse, others have been had c&ds from the development team over this in the past.

The actual development team emulate PCBs, they don't sell ROMs, they don't profit from piracy, or try and profit from the work of others.

shateredsoul

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Re: Why are rom selling sites not closed down?
« Reply #14 on: March 08, 2010, 02:26:27 pm »
Yeah.. i'm pretty sure they sell them as "mame" sets and use the mame logo