5 ms·

So, speaking of jailtime, where are the ROMs coming from? I see that the games simply work, and you can pick any you want. I've been trying to make this concep

by shawn 8y ago

So, speaking of jailtime, where are the ROMs coming from? I see that the games simply work, and you can pick any you want. I've been trying to make this concept, but distributed, so it can't be taken down. Curious if this will get kicked offline soon. Nintendo is possibly the most litigious game company in history, and aggressively shuts down anything remotely associated with their brand. I wouldn't be surprised if this is already forwarded to their legal department. Which, IMO, is a tragedy. There's no reason that projects like this should get shut down. Society is losing out. EDIT: It's kind of interesting to think about how far we've progressed in terms of video game flexibility. And I mean socially, not technically. Look how easy it was to get fired for some harmless pranks just a couple decades ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaqdaVKP904 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaqdaVKP904 Nowadays no one would bat an eye at most of those. (The one attacking a coworker is admittedly a bit much.) This is relevant because it seems like companies are way, way too attached to their IP, in precisely the same way that people were a bit too formal in the old days of gaming. By not letting people remix others' ideas, you're losing out on everything that could have been made.

bdowling 8y ago
The site would work exactly the same with legally-licensed ROMs. If it wouldn't be as much fun to use that way, then that just shows how much of the value comes from someone else's work. It's not a tragedy that it's harder to make something great than it is to misapproriate someone else's great thing.
- shawn 8y ago
  It is easy to imagine a world where all game content, no matter how derivative, was not allowed to be used without the explicit permission of companies. Do you think that you'd be better off in that world? One where Let's Plays are banned, and that storytelling through videogames is not allowed? It's easy to scoff and say that's ridiculous, but from my point of view, that's exactly the world we live in right now. We could be making so much more than we are. People just aren't allowed to. I bring up this example a lot, but Disney built their empire partly by taking Alice in Wonderland and copying it wholesale. And what was lost? Nothing. Society gained by letting Disney do that. This same freedom should be extended to all of us.
  - bdowling 8y ago
    You seem concerned about two issues: fair use and copyright term. Fair use is complicated and open to a lot of disagreement. Copyright term is more straightforward. I'll consider both in light of your examples. Fair use is complicated because there's no hard and fast rule, just a set of factors that a court would consider and a few important court decisions to compare your facts to. Let's Plays are further complicated because some are probably fair use, but others probably aren't. An entertaining live commentary of part of a game would probably be fair use because it's like an excerpt included in a scholarly critique or literary review that is traditionally considered fair use. However, where the entire story of the game is included with all the dialogue and cutscenes, basically eliminating the need for someone to actually play the game, it starts to look more like an unlicensed copy of a movie, which isn't considered fair use. Copyright term has a simple rule, it is finite. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was published in 1865. When Disney released its animated film in 1951, 86 years later and 53 years after Lewis Carroll's death, the copyright term was over and Disney could make its movie without paying his estate anything. Today, the term in the U.S. is usually the life of the author plus 70 years, which wouldn't increase the term for Alice by very much. Also, Disney isn't special. The same freedom is extended to all of us. Any of us can make an Alice in Wonderland movie. We can use everything that came from Lewis Carroll in 1865, we just can't take what Disney added in 1951.
    - jsgo 8y ago
      Disney has lobbied for increased copyright durations. In fact, by what you are saying (life, remaining I assume, plus 70 years), Disney couldn’t do anything with Alice until 1968 which would be 2 years after his own death. I’m all for company’s right to protect copyright under the terms in which copyright was originally extended, but Disney is a big fan of moving the goal posts further out.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
    I think there's a big difference between hosting someone's ROMs making them publicly available and recording yourself playing a game and providing commentary. Copyright law recognises this difference, too.
  - 8y ago
n-gauge 8y ago
This is a great concept and very well implemented. Regardng ROMS: Keep the page clean of adverts with no direct download link of the roms, and you should be ok (for a while at least)
hauxir 8y ago
The roms are not hosted on the site, it's linking to outside sources and proxied through cors-anywhere.
nudpiedo 8y ago
That's just piracy in the name of a technically interesting project. And just because everyone has ripped of nintendo it doesn't make this one a legit use of it. That could be a perfect additional business for nintendo using their IP... in fact you can buy still some nintendo classics on the modern Nintendo Switch and I am not sure whether they work online or not but that's their choice. A different debate would be whether the biggest icons in the popular culture should become public domain in shorter time (e.g. 30 years) so that the whole society would benefit of it, including people who believes that these characters are part of an era or a symbol more than just private intelectual property.
- PostOnce 8y ago
  Have you really ripped them off if you already bought the game in the 80s? Should you have to buy it on a new platform to play it again, if your computer is perfectly capable? Should you have to buy ROM dumping equipment? What's the difference? I'd bet most people just want to play their long-lost favorites, which they already bought once, long ago.
  - nudpiedo 8y ago
    You are mixing pears with rocks. I never bought a NES or these ROMs and I can still play them in this webpage. Also that just because you bought the original product it doesn't give you a livetime access to other future products or a license to rebrand and refurbish them. I believe this kind conversation is soon full of hypocrites who would be the first defensors of IP concept if the object of debate was their own IP... in case they could produce something profitable/valuable which is a major key point (it is easy to give for free the work from others).
    - derefr 8y ago
      > I never bought a NES or these ROMs and I can still play them in this webpage. That is no argument. This website would be entirely above-board with one simple change: it buys N copies of each game, and ensures that only N people are playing at a time. That makes it, legally, a library. Libraries already make "digital loans"; and libraries already loan out game discs. This would just combine the two. If you're disputing the legality of any part of that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine > it doesn't give you ... a license to ... refurbish them. Yeah, maybe not in the US, yet. But it's really a thing people believe should be there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronics_right_to_repair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronics_right_to_repair > hypocrites who would be the first defensors of IP concept if the object of debate was their own IP No, this debate comes from people like 4am, who has de-protected 40-year-old abandonware games by defunct companies (https://archive.org/details/apple_ii_library_4am&tab=about https://archive.org/details/apple_ii_library_4am&tab=about) for the sake of allowing people to play them at all in the future, because if nothing is done, the disks will soon rot and no copies will be left in existence. The developers and publishers of these games frequently come to 4am and thank him for de-protecting these games. Because they never thought they'd see them again. That is not the stance of someone who resents having "their IP" shared with the world.
crankylinuxuser 8y ago
Then I kindly submit this app: https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmacAqRVhJX9eS7YJX1vY3ifFKF9CduDqPEgaCUSa4x5xb/ https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmacAqRVhJX9eS7YJX1vY3ifFKF9CduDqPEgaCU... This is an Atari 2600 emulator and every game, hosted on IPFS. Getting Netplay wouldn't work directly with IPFS.. But I can imagine that you could use the message queue built in experimentally to do announce messages?
- StavrosK 8y ago
  You can load the ROMs from IPFS... Is it piracy if you don't host them yourself?
  - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
    Considering that there are no ships, swashbucklers, hand cannons, and captains named Hook, its probably not piracy! /s But in reality, it is a copyright violation for those entities who have assets that are claimable today. Super-small company that died in '84 and took their assets to the grave probably don't matter. But I can guarantee that games like Pitfall sure have a legit claim. How would someone make a claim against IP ownership on IPFS? You would have to legally deal with each machine that is hosting said hash of the copyrighted content. It is trivial to determine what machines have X hash content. The ugly/funny fact here is, that when this link gets shared, if you're running ipfs locally, you cache it as well. That means that things that end up going viral scale up. It also means that attacks against a hash, like a Streisand attack, just don't work.
bluetidepro 8y ago
> Nintendo is possibly the most litigious game company in history,... Genuinely curious if there is a way to know who actually is the most litigious? I was thinking it was someone more like Disney.
- legohead 8y ago
  or Games Workshop I'm afraid of just typing out their name without permission.

by shawn 8y ago

bdowling 8y ago

The site would work exactly the same with legally-licensed ROMs. If it wouldn't be as much fun to use that way, then that just shows how much of the value comes from someone else's work. It's not a tragedy that it's harder to make something great than it is to misapproriate someone else's great thing.

shawn 8y ago
It is easy to imagine a world where all game content, no matter how derivative, was not allowed to be used without the explicit permission of companies. Do you think that you'd be better off in that world? One where Let's Plays are banned, and that storytelling through videogames is not allowed? It's easy to scoff and say that's ridiculous, but from my point of view, that's exactly the world we live in right now. We could be making so much more than we are. People just aren't allowed to. I bring up this example a lot, but Disney built their empire partly by taking Alice in Wonderland and copying it wholesale. And what was lost? Nothing. Society gained by letting Disney do that. This same freedom should be extended to all of us.
- bdowling 8y ago
  You seem concerned about two issues: fair use and copyright term. Fair use is complicated and open to a lot of disagreement. Copyright term is more straightforward. I'll consider both in light of your examples. Fair use is complicated because there's no hard and fast rule, just a set of factors that a court would consider and a few important court decisions to compare your facts to. Let's Plays are further complicated because some are probably fair use, but others probably aren't. An entertaining live commentary of part of a game would probably be fair use because it's like an excerpt included in a scholarly critique or literary review that is traditionally considered fair use. However, where the entire story of the game is included with all the dialogue and cutscenes, basically eliminating the need for someone to actually play the game, it starts to look more like an unlicensed copy of a movie, which isn't considered fair use. Copyright term has a simple rule, it is finite. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was published in 1865. When Disney released its animated film in 1951, 86 years later and 53 years after Lewis Carroll's death, the copyright term was over and Disney could make its movie without paying his estate anything. Today, the term in the U.S. is usually the life of the author plus 70 years, which wouldn't increase the term for Alice by very much. Also, Disney isn't special. The same freedom is extended to all of us. Any of us can make an Alice in Wonderland movie. We can use everything that came from Lewis Carroll in 1865, we just can't take what Disney added in 1951.
  - jsgo 8y ago
    Disney has lobbied for increased copyright durations. In fact, by what you are saying (life, remaining I assume, plus 70 years), Disney couldn’t do anything with Alice until 1968 which would be 2 years after his own death. I’m all for company’s right to protect copyright under the terms in which copyright was originally extended, but Disney is a big fan of moving the goal posts further out.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  I think there's a big difference between hosting someone's ROMs making them publicly available and recording yourself playing a game and providing commentary. Copyright law recognises this difference, too.
- 8y ago

n-gauge 8y ago

This is a great concept and very well implemented. Regardng ROMS: Keep the page clean of adverts with no direct download link of the roms, and you should be ok (for a while at least)

hauxir 8y ago

The roms are not hosted on the site, it's linking to outside sources and proxied through cors-anywhere.

nudpiedo 8y ago

That's just piracy in the name of a technically interesting project. And just because everyone has ripped of nintendo it doesn't make this one a legit use of it. That could be a perfect additional business for nintendo using their IP... in fact you can buy still some nintendo classics on the modern Nintendo Switch and I am not sure whether they work online or not but that's their choice. A different debate would be whether the biggest icons in the popular culture should become public domain in shorter time (e.g. 30 years) so that the whole society would benefit of it, including people who believes that these characters are part of an era or a symbol more than just private intelectual property.

PostOnce 8y ago
Have you really ripped them off if you already bought the game in the 80s? Should you have to buy it on a new platform to play it again, if your computer is perfectly capable? Should you have to buy ROM dumping equipment? What's the difference? I'd bet most people just want to play their long-lost favorites, which they already bought once, long ago.
- nudpiedo 8y ago
  You are mixing pears with rocks. I never bought a NES or these ROMs and I can still play them in this webpage. Also that just because you bought the original product it doesn't give you a livetime access to other future products or a license to rebrand and refurbish them. I believe this kind conversation is soon full of hypocrites who would be the first defensors of IP concept if the object of debate was their own IP... in case they could produce something profitable/valuable which is a major key point (it is easy to give for free the work from others).
  - derefr 8y ago
    > I never bought a NES or these ROMs and I can still play them in this webpage. That is no argument. This website would be entirely above-board with one simple change: it buys N copies of each game, and ensures that only N people are playing at a time. That makes it, legally, a library. Libraries already make "digital loans"; and libraries already loan out game discs. This would just combine the two. If you're disputing the legality of any part of that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine > it doesn't give you ... a license to ... refurbish them. Yeah, maybe not in the US, yet. But it's really a thing people believe should be there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronics_right_to_repair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronics_right_to_repair > hypocrites who would be the first defensors of IP concept if the object of debate was their own IP No, this debate comes from people like 4am, who has de-protected 40-year-old abandonware games by defunct companies (https://archive.org/details/apple_ii_library_4am&tab=about https://archive.org/details/apple_ii_library_4am&tab=about) for the sake of allowing people to play them at all in the future, because if nothing is done, the disks will soon rot and no copies will be left in existence. The developers and publishers of these games frequently come to 4am and thank him for de-protecting these games. Because they never thought they'd see them again. That is not the stance of someone who resents having "their IP" shared with the world.

crankylinuxuser 8y ago

Then I kindly submit this app: https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmacAqRVhJX9eS7YJX1vY3ifFKF9CduDqPEgaCUSa4x5xb/ https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmacAqRVhJX9eS7YJX1vY3ifFKF9CduDqPEgaCU... This is an Atari 2600 emulator and every game, hosted on IPFS. Getting Netplay wouldn't work directly with IPFS.. But I can imagine that you could use the message queue built in experimentally to do announce messages?

StavrosK 8y ago
You can load the ROMs from IPFS... Is it piracy if you don't host them yourself?
- crankylinuxuser 8y ago
  Considering that there are no ships, swashbucklers, hand cannons, and captains named Hook, its probably not piracy! /s But in reality, it is a copyright violation for those entities who have assets that are claimable today. Super-small company that died in '84 and took their assets to the grave probably don't matter. But I can guarantee that games like Pitfall sure have a legit claim. How would someone make a claim against IP ownership on IPFS? You would have to legally deal with each machine that is hosting said hash of the copyrighted content. It is trivial to determine what machines have X hash content. The ugly/funny fact here is, that when this link gets shared, if you're running ipfs locally, you cache it as well. That means that things that end up going viral scale up. It also means that attacks against a hash, like a Streisand attack, just don't work.

bluetidepro 8y ago

> Nintendo is possibly the most litigious game company in history,... Genuinely curious if there is a way to know who actually is the most litigious? I was thinking it was someone more like Disney.

legohead 8y ago
or Games Workshop I'm afraid of just typing out their name without permission.