My hero / man crush and founder of GameHistory.org Frank Cifaldi sings it from the heart in response:
Google is presenting me with Phil's vids heaps lately when doing random retro related searches - even some not-retro stuff. Most excellent to see a good guy winning.
Bumping this old thread because it's had some good discussion to date about the ethics of ROM downloads versus buying second (or more) hand "legitimate games" at insane prices that don't actually give money to developers and publishers. Kotaku had this article up today: https://www.kotaku.com.au/2019/09/some-of-akihabaras-most-expensive-games/ $8000 games. $0 of which go to the developers or publishers responsible for them. I would normally argue that the games should be for sale legally, but in this case some are (many Neo Geo games you can extract ROMs from via their Steam versions that are very cheap to buy). But there's also a heck of a lot of these 8 and 16 bit games that never saw re-releases, and have little excuse to not be included in retro re-releases.
the majority of people buying this stuff aren't even buying the game, they are buying the collectable.
good god, then you have these idiots. https://www.polygon.com/2019/9/11/20860039/nintendo-copyright-trademark-infringement-rom-lawsuit
That's the word for it. I'm all for preservation and "public museum" ideals. But if you're not the rights owner and try to profit illegally from ROMs, that's pain stupid. Which I also think is stupid for binary encoded data that serves no purpose sitting on a shelf.
I sometimes wonder what goes through the minds of such people, surely they knew eventually they'd get screwed by the rightful copyright owner and screw the rest of the retro community in the process by making it harder to preserve roms.
they set everything back and re-inforce the thinking that Nintendo have going after them. Same with all the china piracy boxen like Pandora and shit like that.
Perhaps going in circles a bit, but pirates like that wouldn't exist if Nintendo offered better services. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114391-Valves-Gabe-Newell-Says-Piracy-Is-a-Service-Problem "We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem," he said. "If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable."
i don't have a huge issue with piracy at all, what i do have issue with is people looking to profit from it. ie, Pandora boxes, muppets that run that website, repro douches, etc.
The point is that if the people who owned the copyright did a good enough job of making their stuff available, the pirates wouldn't be able to profit from it. People don't buy from pirates to make a political point. They just want to play the games. As much as there's a legal issue there, the whole thing could be avoided by the IP owners. Instead, they're SPENDING money on lawyers to fight pirates, rather than MAKING money selling their games and pulling the rug out from under the pirates in the same breath. The whole thing is backwards.
sometimes (ok lots of times), but you also have to look at a Pandora box and think no-one can make this legitimately and make money off it and it doesn't matter how cheap some things are. there's always some tight arse out there that thinks free is better than $1.
This is my thinking 100%. Everyone pirates something at some point in time, but profiting from it, especially by making a full blown website promoting your illegal activities is plain stupid. I also agree Elvis that Nintendo and many other copyright holders are partially to blame.
