Main > Main Forum
Donkey kong 2 artwork
Hoopz:
If anyone wants to wade through the original thread about this topic, here's the link:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=74719.0
Vigo:
--- Quote from: nitz on August 19, 2011, 04:52:53 pm ---Consider the following 2 situations:
1) I use this program to make an incredible hack of SMB that everyone loves, and wish to sell it. Is it ok for someone to take the rom and distribute it freely?
2) Same as situation 1, but the program does not exist and I had to do all the hard work myself. Is it ok for someone to take the rom and distribute it freely?
IMO if you answer yes to one question and no to the other, you're a hypocrite. If the end product is the same, the amount of work that went into it should have no bearing on whether it's ok for people to distribute it freely.
--- End quote ---
Nice use of the socratic method, BTW.
Here is how i see it all in a nutshell. The guy shouldn't expect to have any IP rights over this work, unless he was explicitly endorsed and approved by Nintendo (which he wasn't...lack of action does not equal approval), he shouldn't expect a dime for his work. I'm not gonna begrudge the guy for going for it and trying to charge for his work. If people want to pay him to support him, then that is good as well, it adds incentive for this kind of material to come out. He just shouldn't expect people to pay for a bootleg product. I just don't see his work as a sacred cow that deserves equal IP rights to an original work. I see it as a great project that people can voluntarily support like the frontend creators here that make something great for the community.
Of course, I have a beef with IP laws in general, and would love a world where people can take completely dead work and build on it and take ownership over it. Instead, we live in a world where the Happy Birthday song is somehow still under copyright protection, makes about 2 million dollars a year in usage fees and restaurants are not able to sing the song to guests without legal worries of doing so.
CheffoJeffo:
The thread that Hoopz links to takes me back -- nice to see that my position hasn't changed.
I really like Nitz's analysis, but it misses the main point -- which is that now Jeff won't do anything like D2K again. There are a number of similar examples of folks stopping doing cool stuff (or threatening to quit).
Kudos to the OP for supporting Rich! :applaud:
nitz:
--- Quote from: ChadTower on August 19, 2011, 05:00:00 pm ---
--- Quote from: nitz on August 19, 2011, 04:52:53 pm ---Who should decide what constitutes "too much work was done to get this for free"?
--- End quote ---
The market. The market appears to have decided that there is not enough incentive for talented software engineers to repeat what he did because people are just going to take what they want because they can. Yes, it was always grey area intellectual property wise, but so is nearly everything in this hobby. We're either going to support the people doing cool and innovative things or we're going to slap them in the face for their efforts. The market did a lot more slapping than rewarding here.
--- End quote ---
--- Quote from: CheffoJeffo on August 19, 2011, 06:39:29 pm ---I really like Nitz's analysis, but it misses the main point -- which is that now Jeff won't do anything like D2K again.
--- End quote ---
You guys make a valid point. It's a fair assessment, and I can see the logic in it. But...
--- Quote from: Vigo on August 19, 2011, 05:50:44 pm ---The guy shouldn't expect to have any IP rights over this work, unless he was explicitly endorsed and approved by Nintendo (which he wasn't...lack of action does not equal approval), he shouldn't expect a dime for his work. I'm not gonna begrudge the guy for going for it and trying to charge for his work. If people want to pay him to support him, then that is good as well, it adds incentive for this kind of material to come out. He just shouldn't expect people to pay for a bootleg product. I just don't see his work as a sacred cow that deserves equal IP rights to an original work. I see it as a great project that people can voluntarily support like the frontend creators here that make something great for the community.
--- End quote ---
I just agree with this 100%. No one should make derivative works of other people's IP and expect to get paid for it. I don't know Jeff and can't speak for him, but I seriously doubt making money was his main motivation, if that was even a motivation at all. (Obviously if he's making rom upgrade kits he's gotta charge people for that to at least cover his expenses.) People do stuff like this for the challenge and the fun. If someone decides they don't want to do something like this because Jeff may have missed out on some money, then they were doing it for the wrong reasons. We may lose out on something awesome, and that sucks, but in my mind I just can't justify the line of reasoning that goes, "We have a duty to pay people for IP they don't own so that we don't piss off other people who might have been thinking about making derivative products of IP they don't own." I can see the logic in it, I just can't justify it.
--- Quote from: CheffoJeffo on August 19, 2011, 06:39:29 pm ---There are a number of similar examples of folks stopping doing cool stuff (or threatening to quit).
--- End quote ---
Any links or stories? I'm really not looking for stuff to argue about btw. :lol ;) I just happen to find this subject quite interesting, and some other examples might help me gain some more perspecitve.
ChadTower:
--- Quote from: CheffoJeffo on August 19, 2011, 06:39:29 pm ---The thread that Hoopz links to takes me back -- nice to see that my position hasn't changed.
I really like Nitz's analysis, but it misses the main point -- which is that now Jeff won't do anything like D2K again. There are a number of similar examples of folks stopping doing cool stuff (or threatening to quit).
--- End quote ---
I don't have to drop $20 in the pot at the yearly Three Stooges Festival either but I do. Sometimes it is best to make a contribution in appreciation of someone else's hard work. That's what failed here. The amount of people who took it without any compensation at all, and actually taunted the author over it, seriously lowered my respect for the MAME userbase. Yeah, he had no legal right to the IP, but neither did any of the users who took it.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version