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[Jaeger]

CD games. Pretty sure repro HuCards aren't a thing.

People have been talking about labeled bootlegs of existing games, though. The PCE community seems to look the other way on bootlegs of released games as long as they're clearly labeled. It's kind of odd. I don't see people getting excited about labeled bootlegs of games like Hagane, MUSHA, or Little Samson or anything like that.

And I keep calling them "bootlegs" instead of "repros" because I feel like that term should only be reserved for games that either weren't officially released or weren't released in certain regions.

Like similar platforms of the time such as Sega CD, the PC Engine CD games don't have copy protection. You can use CD-Rs, or unlicensed pressed CDs.

That makes sense. I've never got a repro personally, although I was gonna when that SNES game was finished a year or two ago? The action/platformer with the dwarves. It looks so awesome. In that case, it was more like an unofficial release.

 

[foobarry81]

CD games. Pretty sure repro HuCards aren't a thing.

People have been talking about labeled bootlegs of existing games, though. The PCE community seems to look the other way on bootlegs of released games as long as they're clearly labeled. It's kind of odd. I don't see people getting excited about labeled bootlegs of games like Hagane, MUSHA, or Little Samson or anything like that.

And I keep calling them "bootlegs" instead of "repros" because I feel like that term should only be reserved for games that either weren't officially released or weren't released in certain regions.

I can see bootleg HuCards become a thing though.

There's this:
http://www.db-elec.com/home/products/debee-card

And there's the price of HuCard games like Coryoon. Someone's bound to see a profitable business in there at some point.

 

[Mzo]

There's an Everdrive for that.

 

[Khaz]

Not only are you condoning piracy, but you just threw the whole intellectual rights legislation under the bus here.

That's some big words you are using, I'm literally throwing everything away to make space for my new anarchist society. Right.

You obviously can't take this discussion seriously so I agree, we're done here.

 

[Mzo]

In any sane legal system the intellectual property of that abandoned format would have become public domain after a decade or so. That was how it used to work before giant corporations decided it wasn't profitable enough to have to keep making new things.

Also the law hardly = morality, but yeah I don't really want to get into this even though I kind of just did.

 

[foobarry81]

That's some big words you are using, I'm literally throwing everything away to make space for my new anarchist society. Right.

You obviously can't take this discussion seriously so I agree, we're done here.

In any sane legal system the intellectual property of that abandoned format would have become public domain after a decade or so. That was how it used to work before giant corporations decided it wasn't profitable enough to have to keep making new things.

Also the law hardly = morality, but yeah I don't really want to get into this even though I kind of just did.

@Khaz: You're doing it again. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_ridicule
Those really aren't "big words". You are condoning and even actively supporting piracy when you pay for something that you know was produced without the consent of the owner of the IP. That you didn't even try to respond to my Radiohead example with clear arguments is telling.

And the intellectual property system is what it is. I'm not saying it's perfect, or even close to being sane. In fact, I agree that it is sort of ridiculous in some cases and very prone to abuse. But it is there now and there are many, many far better ways to change and improve it than pirating or supporting pirates by buying bootleg games.

 

[Khaz]

@Khaz: You're doing it again. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_ridicule
Those really aren't "big words". You are condoning and even actively supporting piracy when you pay for something that you know was produced without the consent of the owner of the IP. That you didn't even try to respond to my Radiohead example with clear arguments is telling.

I didn't because you wanted the discussion to stop. Fine, here is your off-topic.

I'm not condoning piracy. I'm condoning the free exchange of something that was given for free. Yes, in your Radiohead example I would have no problem with other publishers to print their songs. Because they gave them for free initially. My stance is that a creator gives away his right of distribution control when he makes said distribution free. You know who has a problem with other publishers publishing Radiohead? It's not Radiohead, it's EMI. Because they see money opportunities going away.

The law doesn't agree with me. That's fine, we're talking ethics, not legislation. Unless you moved the goalpost already.

And, seriously, I wouldn't use an illegal translation as the basis of my argumentation for intellectual property rights.

 

[foobarry81]

I didn't because you wanted the discussion to stop. Fine, here is your off-topic.

I'm not condoning piracy. I'm condoning the free exchange of something that was given for free. Yes, in your Radiohead example I would have no problem with other publishers to print their songs. Because they gave them for free initially. My stance is that a creator gives away his right of distribution control when he makes said distribution free. You know who has a problem with other publishers publishing Radiohead? It's not Radiohead, it's EMI. Because they see money opportunities going away.

The law doesn't agree with me. That's fine, we're talking ethics, not legislation. Unless you moved the goalpost already.

I said the discussion was pointless if all you did was ridiculing my arguments. Which you did again before by not responding to Radiohead, but in stead declaring independence of your own private pirate state (or something).

No, no, no, no, no... EMI is not the only one having a problem with other publishers distributing Radiohead songs for free. Radiohead is the rights owner, and it's not because they decided to put their songs out for free download to the general public that they agreed with other actors "borrowing" their product for unlicensed reproduction. They agreed for the general public to use their music for personal use. If EMI puts out a CD, Radiohead gets a cut of the profit. If Sony downloads Radiohead songs and puts out a CD, Radiohead doesn't get a cut. It's a simple as that. Their intellectual rights are violated at that point. Radio stations cannot play Radiohead songs for free just because they put them up for free download. They'll still have to pay their country's association of authors and composers, who will then pay Radiohead back for the airtime.

Free stuff is not necessarily entirely for free. There are still conditions. Like open source software is also free, but for personal use. You can't use it for commercial purposes, unless it's specified otherwise.

If the law doesn't agree with you, then you have a number of options: either try to change the law, or else abide by the law, or finally (and this seems to be your pick?) skirt the law. Well, my friend, the latter is also what pirates do.

All of this applies to PC Engine games too ofcourse, and they weren't even made available for free at any point in time.

And, seriously, I wouldn't use an illegal translation as the basis of my argumentation for intellectual property rights.

You're putting words in my mouth here. I used that illegal translation as the basis of an ethical argument, not a legal one. But wait... didn't you just say we were talking ethics?

 

[A Black Falcon]

For those who haven't seen it, I just wrote up a review of Doraemon: Nobita no Dorabian Nights, because I finished the game recently: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1051404

I also finished Splash Lake (Turbo CD) earlier this month. I might review it, not sure.

 

[ZealousD]

In any sane legal system the intellectual property of that abandoned format would have become public domain after a decade or so. That was how it used to work before giant corporations decided it wasn't profitable enough to have to keep making new things.

Fuck Disney.
Fuck Mickey Mouse.

 

[foobarry81]

For those who haven't seen it, I just wrote up a review of Doraemon: Nobita no Dorabian Nights, because I finished the game recently: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1051404

I also finished Splash Lake (Turbo CD) earlier this month. I might review it, not sure.

ABF: "I played and finished this game recently, and wrote up a short-ish review of my thoughts."

* looks at wall of text *

Nope. Thanks for the review though. Might add this to my list.

 

[Jamix012]

In any sane legal system the intellectual property of that abandoned format would have become public domain after a decade or so. That was how it used to work before giant corporations decided it wasn't profitable enough to have to keep making new things.

Also the law hardly = morality, but yeah I don't really want to get into this even though I kind of just did.

But the Sapphire IP, as an example, hasn't been abandoned for a decade. It was on a PSP collection in Japan.

 

[ZealousD]

Just because a product is available by the creator without the exchange of money does not necessarily mean that the creator made it available for "free".

A creator can make a product available for zero dollars with the expectation that this distribution is only done in a limited fashion and the creator does not lose their IP rights upon doing it. That is the "payment" in this case. Just because a creator chooses to distribute their work in a certain fashion does not mean that they waive away their own rights to the work, nor should it. A creator should only lose the rights to their work either after some time has passed or they expressively waive their rights. There should not be an ethical line on authorship drawn between zero pennies and a single penny. People don't always make things just to make money, and we should not reduce creative works simply to their monetary value.

 

[Khaz]

You're putting words in my mouth here. I used that illegal translation as the basis of an ethical argument, not a legal one. But wait... didn't you just say we were talking ethics?

No, we started as an ethical argument, then you argued about the legality of it for no reason, to which I tried to reply. Now you're trying to be snarky about it yet keep talking about legality. Stop moving the goalpost around and stop talking about the legality if you don't want to have that argument.

You are right about everything the law gives Radiohead. I never argued what the law was. Yes they have the right to control who distributes the art they gave away. I'm saying it shouldn't be. That's all my point is. You can discuss legalities all you want and what people can and can't do, I don't really care.

Just because a product is available by the creator without the exchange of money does not necessarily mean that the creator made it available for "free".

But when it's given away, the author can't expect his audience to stay cool and do nothing with it.

I'm a big partisan of moral rights, it should be clear who the author of a work is at all times. But economic rights are something else entirely. If something is given away for free, in my view that's it, poof, it should become public domain. The GNU actually makes a point about it. You can distribute, modify, sell GNU code freely, without asking for permission. But you need to state who the author is and present their original, unadulterated art (the source code).

 

[Mercutio]

But the Sapphire IP, as an example, hasn't been abandoned for a decade. It was on a PSP collection in Japan.

Heh, we're closing in on 10 years for that though. It's been 7 so far. Given that Konami technically owns all of Hudson's stuff, we'd better hope it stays buried. Sapphire as an iOS game would break my heart.

Man, it's so hateful that we didn't get it over here. And even more hateful that we never got the Tengai Makyou collection on PSP that they put out. I hate that those were never translated.

 

[ZealousD]

I'm a big partisan of moral rights, it should be clear who the author of a work is at all times. But economic rights are something else entirely. If something is given away for free, in my view that's it, poof, it should become public domain. The GNU actually makes a point about it. You can distribute, modify, sell GNU code freely, without asking for permission. But you need to state who the author is and present their original, unadulterated art (the source code).

GNU is not in the public domain. It's distributed under a GPL.

 

[D.Lo]

The only practical difference between the Sahpire repos and any other repros (Recca NES carts etc, the entire Rose Coloured Gaming catalogue) is that it disrupts a completely fucked up rich-man's second hand market. Boo hoo.

All of them are the same level of piracy and the same level of unethical. In no cases are the original authors being paid, and in many cases fan translation/coding work is also stolen.

If it's about the game still being available for sale by the original creators or not, all Nintendo game piracy should be a much higher level crime, since pretty much all their catalogue is currently available to purchase on VC. Heck the people that designed them are still working at Nintendo in many cases so that gem of an argument goes out the window too.

We draw some weird lines in the sand as a retro community.

 

[Bar81]

The only practical difference between the Sahpire repos and any other repros (Recca NES carts etc, the entire Rose Coloured Gaming catalogue) is that it disrupts a completely fucked up rich-man's second hand market. Boo hoo.

All of them are the same level of piracy and the same level of unethical. In no cases are the original authors being paid, and in many cases fan translation/coding work is also stolen.

If it's about the game still being available for sale by the original creators or not, all Nintendo game piracy should be a much higher level crime, since pretty much all their catalogue is currently available to purchase on VC. Heck the people that designed them are still working at Nintendo in many cases so that gem of an argument goes out the window too.

We draw some weird lines in the sand as a retro community.

Pretty much. A repro is a bootleg is thievery. How anyone tries, with a straight face, to argue otherwise is beyond me.

 

[A Black Falcon]

The only practical difference between the Sahpire repos and any other repros (Recca NES carts etc, the entire Rose Coloured Gaming catalogue) is that it disrupts a completely fucked up rich-man's second hand market. Boo hoo.

All of them are the same level of piracy and the same level of unethical. In no cases are the original authors being paid, and in many cases fan translation/coding work is also stolen.

If it's about the game still being available for sale by the original creators or not, all Nintendo game piracy should be a much higher level crime, since pretty much all their catalogue is currently available to purchase on VC. Heck the people that designed them are still working at Nintendo in many cases so that gem of an argument goes out the window too.

We draw some weird lines in the sand as a retro community.

No, there is a difference between those first Sapphire bootlegs and the later ones. Yeah, both are equally illegal, but the first is an exact copy of the original -- it is designed to fool. The later ones are clearly different. The latter may be just as illegal as the former, but it's a VERY different thing ethically. For example, a modern but somewhat old-style piece of furniture or some other antique that's clearly not actually old is fine, but a fake-old one that someone is trying to get more money for by passing it off as old is a problem (using this example because it's the kind of thing you see sometimes on Antiques Roadshow). That's wrong by any definition. But just making a reproduction that is clearly distinguished from the original? That's illegal yeah, but much less unethical. It IS still unethical, because of selling someone elses' game and because the people who made the translation patches for, say, the Xak III and Startling Odyssey 2 repros are not being compensated, but nowhere near as much as a game designed to fool people into thinking it is the real thing.

 

[foobarry81]

No, we started as an ethical argument, then you argued about the legality of it for no reason, to which I tried to reply. Now you're trying to be snarky about it yet keep talking about legality. Stop moving the goalpost around and stop talking about the legality if you don't want to have that argument.

You are right about everything the law gives Radiohead. I never argued what the law was. Yes they have the right to control who distributes the art they gave away. I'm saying it shouldn't be. That's all my point is. You can discuss legalities all you want and what people can and can't do, I don't really care.

Now you're just being desingenuous. The ethical and the legal are closely interwoven, and I think you are well aware of that.

In post 2790 you said the following: "What's the difference between making a disc myself and asking for someone else to make a disc for me? Is it the exchange of money that troubles you? I pay him for the object, not the data in it. If I just wanted the translation, I know where to find it and I don't need to ask permission to download it and burn it myself. "

When you actually buy pirated software, there's nothing ethical about it anymore. No matter how you think things SHOULD be. It's not a thought experiment anymore at that point. You are threading legal grounds there and are knowingly crossing a legal line. And more so, you are also crossing an ethical line, because you know you are stealing from other people, since legally it is considered stealing. And the law is really only an agreement, a convention if you will, among people in society, that can be changed if outdated. So you're stealing from a moral point of view too.

From an ethical standpoint I can follow parts of your reasoning about why the law should be different. I do agree that the intellectual rights legislation could use an update. I already stated as much. But as I said many posts ago: the law is what it is at this point. You can disagree with it. You can try to change it, and maybe it will be changed. But skirting it is not the answer. You can't hide behind you being "ethically correct", and then just condone and/or support piracy.

But when it's given away, the author can't expect his audience to stay cool and do nothing with it.

It's not "given away". It's "given away under conditions". If I borrow you something, I expect you to not wreck it. Same applies here: you are given some product by an author, and they expect you to just enjoy the product, not commercialize it. I get that you think it's just human nature to commercialize everything and that it's naive if an author thinks people will simply enjoy a gift rather than try to make money out of it. The thing is though: most people actually do just enjoy it. Only a few actually try abusing the situation and try to make money out of it. The people who pirate those free products are always a minority. So you could ask yourself why the law should be changed if a large majority of the population just follows it, and only a few don't. What's so ethically wrong about the law, when most people don't mind following it, and not try to profiteer from a free product?

 

[Khaz]

And more so, you are also crossing an ethical line, because you know you are stealing from other people,

You really need to stop doing that. The discussion is clearly over.

 

[foobarry81]

You really need to stop doing that. The discussion is clearly over.

I apologize if I made you uncomfortable by calling piracy theft. But even if you don't like me calling it that way, it kind of is, regardless of ethics or the legal side of things. It's probably never going to morally right in any human society to take other people's work and profiteer of it, without the other people at least have a share in it. That is simply against the very thought of being a society.

 

[ZealousD]

Copyright infringement is not stealing. It is a different crime with different ethical considerations because there are different consequences and different motivations.

 

[Mercutio]

Guys. This is completely derailed. Nobody at this point is going to convince anyone else of anything. And the accusations. Seriously. Nobody in this thread is going to derail the retro industry, nor is anyone going to single handedly save it.

Drop it.

Let it go.

 

[Celine]

I also finished Splash Lake (Turbo CD) earlier this month. I might review it, not sure.

It's a nice puzzle game, worthy to be part of a PCE collection.

 

[D.Lo]

Let it go.

 

[Bar81]

 

[Ban Puncher]

 

[Mercutio]

Now is that Super CD or hucard? Best not be Arcade Card only.

 

[Ban Puncher]

Now is that Super CD or hucard? Best not be Arcade Card only.

SuperGrafx exclusive.

 

[Mercutio]

SuperGrafx exclusive.

GOD DAMN IT DISNEY
YOU JUST HAD TO HAVE MORE PARALLAX SCROLLING DIDN'T YOU

 

[IrishNinja]

as a shenmue fan, i let nothing go

But the Sapphire IP, as an example, hasn't been abandoned for a decade. It was on a PSP collection in Japan.

isnt it in konami's vaults now, though? that's like permadeath man

The only practical difference between the Sahpire repos and any other repros (Recca NES carts etc, the entire Rose Coloured Gaming catalogue) is that it disrupts a completely fucked up rich-man's second hand market. Boo hoo.

these are my thoughts on the matter, right here
selling repros of software long gone? i can't imagine caring, as long as it's labeled
selling fan translations, without permission/etc? i can totally see the shadiness here, no doubt..it also works to spoil an otherwise great scene

pas that there's a lotta high-horsery in here that i don't follow. "skirting" decades-old IP law is so low on my list of moral concerns it may as well not even exist, with few exceptions:

If it's about the game still being available for sale by the original creators or not, all Nintendo game piracy should be a much higher level crime, since pretty much all their catalogue is currently available to purchase on VC. Heck the people that designed them are still working at Nintendo in many cases so that gem of an argument goes out the window too.

i think this is a great (and bolded the nuanced bit) point being made.
honestly, if someone wants to get into the Saturn library tomorrow, i'd tell them it's stupid pricey right now and to just get a modded system to play CD-R's...however, a tragically small amount of those games did see PSN/XBLA releases (NiGHTS, Fighting Vipers etc) and you absolutely should support those digitally

Pretty much. A repro is a bootleg is thievery. How anyone tries, with a straight face, to argue otherwise is beyond me.

see this is what a categorical imperative looks like...no nuance or anything worth discussing here, sadly

Copyright infringement is not stealing. It is a different crime with different ethical considerations because there are different consequences and different motivations.

also fair

 

[foobarry81]

see this is what a categorical imperative looks like...no nuance or anything worth discussing here, sadly

But there really is no need for nuance here. It's quite clear what a bootleg is. It's an unlicensed reproduction that eats away legitimate income of an author.

There can be nuance in how the seller and/or buyer of a bootleg product are perceived as. E.g. selling or producing a bootleg is worse than buying one. Or making a bootleg for personal use is less bad that producing them on an industrial level. Or an obvious bootleg is not as bad as a product that is designed to look like an original copy. Loads of room for nuance there.

But, as I said, it's really quite clear what a bootleg is:
Wikipedia: "The word "bootleg" originates from the practice of smuggling illicit items in the legs of tall boots, particularly the smuggling of alcohol during the American Prohibition era. The word, over time, has come to refer to any illegal or illicit product."

 

[IrishNinja]

let me stop you right there, before you bring out the big dictionary.com guns

But there really is no need for nuance here. It's quite clear what a bootleg is. It's an unlicensed reproduction that eats away legitimate income of an author.

hey bruh, gimme $30 and ill give you a repro of the Genesis Punisher game. it's a classic beat-em-up that isn't on Virtual Console or any other collection, because licensing etc etc.

or, you could go buy it for a few hundred bucks off someone on ebay. both of these actions give nothing to the respective creative parties, and are equally "eating away at the legitimate income of an author", mind.

i agree with the rest of your points on nuance, for what it's worth. also, ill throw in a label.

 

[foobarry81]

let me stop you right there, before you bring out the big dictionary.com guns

hey bruh, gimme $30 and ill give you a repro of the Genesis Punisher game. it's a classic beat-em-up that isn't on Virtual Console or any other collection, because licensing etc etc.

or, you could go buy it for a few hundred bucks off someone on ebay. both of these actions give nothing to the respective creative parties, and are equally "eating away at the legitimate income of an author", mind.

i agree with the rest of your points on nuance, for what it's worth. also, ill throw in a label.

I'm a bit tired of piracy apologists, really.

"Yeah, but 2nd hand sales also don't contribute to an author's income."

Sure... But how does any of that make a bootleg more legal? It really absolutely doesn't.

"Yeah, but 2nd hand copies cost too much."

Pirating a game is not ok all of a sudden, because the license holder doesn't want to produce more copies for whatever reason and prices go up. It is simply never ok. Pirates are leeching off of other people's work, purely for profit. That is legally wrong at this point in time (laws can change, and maybe they even should in this particular case), and it will probably always be morally wrong in a human society.

As I said above: there's loads of room for nuance in the perception of the different actors, and there are different levels of bad. But it'll always be a level of bad.

 

[ZealousD]

I'm a bit tired of piracy apologists, really.

"Yeah, but 2nd hand sales also don't contribute to an author's income."

Sure... But how does any of that make a bootleg more legal? It really absolutely doesn't.

So you're going with the "everything illegal is unethical" argument?

 

[foobarry81]

So you're going with the "everything illegal is unethical" argument?

No, I think I was quite clear about that.

A bootleg is illegal at the moment because of copyright legislations. This is something that is open for debate, and as I said laws can change, and maybe they won't be illegal anymore in some distant future, who knows.

But producing a bootleg is also unethical because, as I said, you're leeching off of other people's work, purely for monetary gain. In broad terms, a human society is essentially based on cooperation, and bootlegging is a bit like freeloading really.

So in this case the illegal and the unethical come together. But obviously there are likely other cases and domains where you can be perfectly ethical whilst doing something illegal, or the other way round. That's just not the case here though.

 

[IrishNinja]

I'm a bit tired of piracy apologists, really.

"Yeah, but 2nd hand sales also don't contribute to an author's income."

Sure... But how does any of that make a bootleg more legal? It really absolutely doesn't.

that's fair; i'm more than tired of the sanctimonious lawful good alignment & IP law apologists who think other people's metrics for "bad" should follow such

 

[foobarry81]

that's fair; i'm more than tired of the sanctimonious lawful good alignment & IP law apologists who think other people's metrics for "bad" should follow such

I hope you're not referring to me here. I said multiple times now that I believe IP law could maybe use an update.

... but that still doesn't make bootlegging ok.

 

[IrishNinja]

that also doesnt in & of itself make it a net evil or whatever moral argument you're kinda shooting here for, either

 

[ZealousD]

But producing a bootleg is also unethical because, as I said, you're leeching off of other people's work, purely for monetary gain.

Let's build a scenario.

I want to play The Legend of Zelda: Ancient Stone Tablets. This is a game that does not exist as a physical product in any legitimate form. It was only available through the Japanese SNES Satellaview product. It has never been officially translated and is not being sold by Nintendo at all anymore. In all likelihood, it never will. However, downloading the necessary ROMs or creating a bootleg of some form would absolutely be considered copyright infringement. Thus, the only way to play this game today is to do something illegal. You can't even buy a second-hand cartridge.

1.) If I create a reproduction of this game myself, using my own materials and equipment, for personal use, is that unethical?
2.) If I later sell that reproduction for money, is that unethical?
3.) If I purchase a reproduction of Zelda:AST from somebody else, is that unethical?

 

[foobarry81]

Let's build a scenario.

1.) If I create a reproduction of this game myself, using my own materials and equipment, for personal use, is that unethical?
2.) If I later sell that reproduction for money, is that unethical?

First of all, this is probably the most extreme case you could've possible come up with, and I think you are well aware of it. Let me remind you that this discussion started off with Sapphire on PC Engine, and its bootlegs. Which was just a very obvious attempt to make a profit of someone else's work.

But fair enough, let's look at your scenario: in both cases you go against the desire of the author regarding his or her work. It's the author's prerogative to share his work with more people. He chose not to. Which is a shame probably, but that's just how things went. So yeah, you're already in ethically dodgy territory there, because you act quite selfishly.

If you then choose to create a reproduction of the game for personal use, not a whole lot more harm is done on the ethical side of things.

Should you however market your reproduction, then obviously all I said above applies.

However, in this particular case (The Legend of Zelda: Ancient Stone Tablets) how many people would you think have the access to and the necessary knowledge to produce a copy of this game for personal use only? That's really not how it works. How it works in reality, is that pirates rip a game and either sell it, or else upload it. Other people then download it and burn a copy for themselves. This is clearly not your "ideal scenario" of just producing a copy for personal use. So, while nice, your thought experiment is mostly a fictional one. And still kind of dodgy ethically.

Edit: third case. You're buying, and thus supporting the pirate in his ways. Quite obviously unethical.

 

[IrishNinja]

First of all, this is probably the most extreme case you could've possible come up with, and I think you are well aware of it. Let me remind you that this discussion started off with Sapphire on PC Engine, and its bootlegs.

But there really is no need for nuance here.

.
also, "the author's desire" is kind've an absurd angle to grab, given how few of them are still employed at said place, work-for-hire'etc conditions. an easy example: Hardcore Gaming 101 once interviewed Ryuichi Nishizawa, who reacted quite positively to the existence of fan-translations and more people trying to experience his work (Monster World IV) which never saw western release for reasons beyond his control.

thankfully, it finally did a little while back (and id again say anyone who has a repro/ROM etc should feel compelled to support it), but condemning "selfish" gamers for going against what you project to be the author's wishes is silly.

 

[speedlolita]

Can you take this crap to another thread or something please? Seriously.

 

[Mercutio]

I'm so god damned sick of this. Can people stop talking to foobarry81 unless he talks about something else?

 

[ZealousD]

First of all, this is probably the most extreme case you could've possible come up with, and I think you are well aware of it.

Absolutely I was. I was not necessarily trying to put forth any sort of point on that last post, or make any particular form of argument. My last post was more of an effort to get clarity on your positions than anything else. I needed to remove as many other ethical concerns as possible in order to figure out what your position was on three points in particular.

Let me remind you that this discussion started off with Sapphire on PC Engine, and its bootlegs. Which was just a very obvious attempt to make a profit of someone else's work.

Sure, but it extended into repros and bootlegs in general.

But fair enough, let's look at your scenario: in both cases you go against the desire of the author regarding his or her work. It's the author's prerogative to share his work with more people. He chose not to. Which is a shame probably, but that's just how things went. So yeah, you're already in ethically dodgy territory there, because you act quite selfishly.

Zelda is a work of corporate authorship. Nintendo consists of many people and there many be different views on whether or not AST should be publically available at this point. And perhaps there are those within Nintendo who would prefer that AST be distributed officially. Or maybe a majority does. But maybe they feel that they don't have the time or resources to do the official translation and code rework that would make something like that possible. Perhaps Nintendo is just fine with the available Reproductions. I don't think they've made any effort to stop reproduction efforts on their Sattlaview games, at least. You presume too much.

But even if Nintendo did want to stamp down on this sort of thing, there is the notion that creators should only have exclusive rights for so long. You should probably recognize that there are those who might believe that those rights have passed, either because a certain amount of time has, the title has essentially become abandonware, or it has gained enough cultural capital that the title has value being in the public domain, or any combination of these. This is why there may be those who do not share your particular ethical values here.

This is clearly not your "ideal scenario" of just producing a copy for personal use. So, while nice, your thought experiment is mostly a fictional one. And still kind of dodgy ethically.

As I noted, there was no way that playing AST was possible without copyright infringement. I was merely laying down a scenario in which a reproduction was produced but not sold. To see, if in fact, it was the case that the exchange of money was the issue here. And based on your response, it wasn't, at least not in totality.

 

[Mercutio]

You're throwing fuel on the god damned fire! You know that ruining the PC Engine thread is a mortal sin, right?

Nobody is going to get anywhere. Let's just all enjoy our bootlegs or total lack of bootlegs from the backs of our very tall horses and move on.

 

[IrishNinja]

history wants me to experience the majesty that must be Space Fantasy Zone

Spoiler

as a huge fan of both franchises i can only expect it to be magical, shut up youse naysayers

 

[Mercutio]

history wants me to experience the majesty that must be Space Fantasy Zone

Spoiler

as a huge fan of both franchises i can only expect it to be magical, shut up youse naysayers

I will send you my bootleg copy to borrow or burn a copy and sell it to you with fancy packaging and a certificate of fake authenticity.

Whatever pisses off people more.

Spoiler

It's like they fucked up chocolate and peanut butter. Should have stayed dead like Star Fox 2.

 

[IrishNinja]

how can this be bad? it looks neat!

also if you're really going for the angry dollar, i'd like it in a clamshell with the tab cut off diagonally, and maybe a GREATEST HITS banner up top pls