Joined: 4/21/2004
Posts: 3517
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Where in the rules does it say its forbidden to distribute rom hacks? All I can see is this: "Discussion board rules are enforced where applicable (for example, asking for ROM links or providing them is not allowed)" That does not say anything about hacks. I have seen a hundreds of times where authors have linked to the patch and other various stuff for their submissions. Is there anyway we can get rid off this gigantic moronic site manager? I haven't been this angry in ages every since I went at it with Fabian. I honestly have no faith in you Nach, I have never despised an admin like you before. Banning Kennyman666 and I for distribution of a rom hack is sheer stupidity, but at the same time I didn't expect more from you. Thank you for taking a bit my enthusiasm awaywhen Kenny and I were discussing my 9 tas run. You sicken me.
Nitrogenesis wrote:
Guys I come from the DidyKnogRacist communite, and you are all wrong, tihs is the run of the mileniun and everyone who says otherwise dosnt know any bater! I found this run vary ease to masturbate too!!!! Don't fuck with me, I know this game so that mean I'm always right!StupedfackincommunityTASVideoz!!!!!!
Arc wrote:
I enjoyed this movie in which hands firmly gripping a shaft lead to balls deep in multiple holes.
natt wrote:
I don't want to get involved in this discussion, but as a point of fact C# is literally the first goddamn thing on that fucking page you linked did you even fucking read it
Cooljay wrote:
Mayor Haggar and Cody are such nice people for the community. Metro City's hospitals reached an all time new record of incoming patients due to their great efforts :P
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4089
Location: The Netherlands
Romhacks still have copyrighted content on them, so distributing romhack ROMs is equally illegal as distributing regular, unmodified ROMs.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Joined: 4/21/2004
Posts: 3517
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Then someone should definitely rewrite the rules as it says nothing about hacks!
Nitrogenesis wrote:
Guys I come from the DidyKnogRacist communite, and you are all wrong, tihs is the run of the mileniun and everyone who says otherwise dosnt know any bater! I found this run vary ease to masturbate too!!!! Don't fuck with me, I know this game so that mean I'm always right!StupedfackincommunityTASVideoz!!!!!!
Arc wrote:
I enjoyed this movie in which hands firmly gripping a shaft lead to balls deep in multiple holes.
natt wrote:
I don't want to get involved in this discussion, but as a point of fact C# is literally the first goddamn thing on that fucking page you linked did you even fucking read it
Cooljay wrote:
Mayor Haggar and Cody are such nice people for the community. Metro City's hospitals reached an all time new record of incoming patients due to their great efforts :P
I'm going to largely stay out of this debate, and due to being a very passive member of this community, I can't say I've ever had anything against Nach. But banning me because I uploaded and linked to a prepatched ROM of a Rockman 5 hack after having linked to the patch a minute earlier, and banning AngerFist because he asked for it? Come on, now.
If I had uploaded it and linked AngerFist to it in private, would he still have gotten banned for asking me about it? Would I have gotten banned if I had said in the channel that I had linked it to him in a private query?
What I'm really seeing here is a problem with the IRC channel rules. While I fully understand the "don't link to ROMs, don't ask for ROMs" policy on the forum, there is no reason for this to extend to IRC. No other community I've ever been to that has both a forum and an IRC channel has these kinds of rules apply to both places. For instance, in a community I'm in that's dedicated to a non-freeware gaming series, on the forum, there's information on how you can buy these games, download links are prohibited, and at most there's hints on that you can find them for free if you look around on the internet (or as we call it, "love the internet"). In the IRC channel, whenever a new game in the series is released, there's a link to a torrent or direct download in the channel topic.
IRC and forums are two entirely different animals - the key point being that an IRC channel isn't public the way a forum is, even if it's "anyone can join".
Det man inte har i begåvning får man ta ut i energi.
"I think I need to get to Snoop Dogg's level of high to be able to research this post." -Samsara
Read my fanfic, One Piece: Pure Corruption
"Discussion board rules are enforced where applicable (for example, asking for ROM links or providing them is not allowed)" That does not say anything about hacks.
I know, I'm just some random guy, so feel free to ignore this, but hacks are roms. Distributing patches is fine though, as they don't contain any copyrighted material.
Kennyman666 wrote:
linked to a prepatched ROM of a Rockman 5 hack after having linked to the patch a minute earlier
Distributing the patch and the prepatched rom should be even worse, as it's easily possible to get 100% of the original rom from that.
I loathe the utterly hypocritical state communities like this all end up in in order to save themselves from legal persecution. We all know what this is about, no matter what we are pretending to do or not to do in order to make and watch TASes and engage in related activities. Every party involved in any way does.
But I loathe it even more when the rules, whose sole reason to be there is to ensure non-liability in case major corporations decide to shut us down for piracy, get extended somewhere where it's not by any means warranted. These companies we may have problems with — Nintendo, Sony, Sega, Capcom, etc. — are older than most of us here, and I can assure you they are not living in a cave under a rock. After all we are more or less their audience. There is not a single doubt that by this point — after six years of the TASing phenomenon's boost to mainstream popularity, consistent growth, and coverage on every major gaming site — they are all aware of the concept in general and our community in particular, and have either already took actions they deem required, or don't care whatsoever, because they won't win anything by doing so anyway. They are not waiting for us to slip once with some kind of personal vendetta, because they can enforce compliance with the law, but they can't and won't control the direction the concept is going in, the related communities, or singular users. These companies are not stupid, low, or obsessed enough to bother spying on us on the IRC just to jump from behind the corner with a victorious "A-HA!".
I should also point out that, before Nach decided to enforce the forum rules in the channel, nobody ever abused them. We had something slip through the cracks from time to time (and during the 4.5 years I spent visiting it I've seen nearly everybody — including admins — do something that isn't allowed and is potentially or actually illegal), and it was rare, and it was fine because it was civil, it was for a better purpose, and nobody made a fuss of it because nobody liked hypocrisy. This paranoia is definitely untimely and I don't support it in any way.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Distributing patches is fine though, as they don't contain any copyrighted material.
It's not fine; most of them contain copyrighted material (characters, music, story, whatever.)
Also, I doubt that distributing videos of complete games like we do is very legal... We're not even allowed to use the original soundtracks of many games in YouTube.
You're just fucking stupid, everyone hates you, sorry to tell you the truth. no one likes you, you're someone pretentious and TASes only to be on speed game, but don't have any hope, you won't get there.
Distributing patches is fine though, as they don't contain any copyrighted material.
It's not fine; most of them contain copyrighted material (characters, music, story, whatever.)
I don't think you quite understand how a rom hack patch works. Only the data which is changed is contained within the patch, no unchanged data (eg. music/graphics/etc) is actually stored within.
If it weren't this way, why would someone even bother releasing a patch in the first place?
I guess the point of why these forums are so strict about the rom issue is to prevent lots of people from coming here for roms, telling their friends to come here too, basically turning the irc into a warez channel. The line has to be drawn somewhere! I don't think any of the admins would care if members exchanged roms secretely and in private because that's entirely their own thing. But at the point where there was a tolerated open request or an open "thanks", other people would realize that they could come here to obtain roms and they would come in hordes. And that's not the point of this community at all.
I don't think you quite understand how a rom hack patch works. Only the data which is changed is contained within the patch, no unchanged data (eg. music/graphics/etc) is actually stored within.
I understand it very well.
My point was that most (probably all) patches still contain copyrighted material. If you add a character, music, code, graphics, etc. from other games (or modified from the same game), like most hacks do, those patches are illegal. And if you use shitty patching formats (ex: IPS), where it can't detect correctly data moving within the file, those patches will also contain a lot of the original ROM too.
Atma wrote:
If it weren't this way, why would someone even bother releasing a patch in the first place?
Because they think it's legal.
For example, translation patches contain the full translation of a game's plot. But people think that if you release a story by X author, but in another language, the rights to this translated story belong to no one. I would be rich if I could sell all the books we've translated from other languages to Spanish if they didn't have a copyright...
You're just fucking stupid, everyone hates you, sorry to tell you the truth. no one likes you, you're someone pretentious and TASes only to be on speed game, but don't have any hope, you won't get there.
I loathe the utterly hypocritical state communities like this all end up in in order to save themselves from legal persecution.
Well, it is extremely easy to take the moral high ground when you are not the one taking the risk. Each copyright violation could cost up to 250,000 dollars per user that downloaded the ROM from this site. Sure, you can wax on poetically about the reality of the situation, and how little game publishers care, but you AREN'T THE ONE PUTTING YOUR ASS ON THE LINE.
Given that the ramifications can be in the MILLIONS OF DOLLARS, legal liability isn't something to trust to 'everyone knowing and understanding the situation.' So, get off your high horse of superiority, and realize that in the real world, people have to cover their own asses.
Is it hypocritical? Sure. Does that matter out here in the real world? Hell no.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
Well, it is extremely easy to take the moral high ground when you are not the one taking the risk. Each copyright violation could cost up to 250,000 dollars per user that downloaded the ROM from this site. Sure, you can wax on poetically about the reality of the situation, and how little game publishers care, but you AREN'T THE ONE PUTTING YOUR ASS ON THE LINE.
Given that the ramifications can be in the MILLIONS OF DOLLARS, legal liability isn't something to trust to 'everyone knowing and understanding the situation.' So, get off your high horse of superiority, and realize that in the real world, people have to cover their own asses.
I'm not sure you understand what I'm suggesting, because this argument seems to completely miss the point.
What the point was: not enforcing rules in the channel.
List of things the point wasn't:
— not enforcing rules on the forum;
— openly distributing ROMs and other copyrighted content;
— announcing any kind of illegal activities;
— anything else.
Your noble attempt at exaggerating the issue failed here because TASVideos administration doesn't own or otherwise legally tied to the IRC channel, the userbase, and whatever is said there. Exactly as the police (as a bunch of guys or as a social institution) can not be held responsible for crimes they didn't prevent, even though they are the main law enforcing/upkeeping institution. As long as nothing illegal takes place on things the administration does own, they can never be held responsible.
And yes, in situations when I'm linking to copyrighted content anywhere on IRC you can bet I'm the one putting my ass on the line right there. Because neither you nor adelikat nor anybody else is liable, they are not responsible for my actions; I am, and it's something that's not going to change on a whim. Otherwise no end-user would ever get sued for this — they would put the blame on their ISPs, the sites that hosted the material or links to it, Google for helping them find it, and so on, spreading it indefinitely because at least somebody out there was involved in making or serving the infrastructure that helped them obtain illegal content, and surely they need to take part of the guilt upon they shoulders. Which, as you know, is not the case.
As you now see (I hope!), my suggestion, rephrased, was to allow those who are willing to take the risk take it in a place where it makes sense to.
Also, for the record, my loathing wasn't centered on TASVideos or its administration, but at a general state of things. I do think Nach was an ass for the bans, though, but that's beside the point. :D
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
"Discussion board rules are enforced where applicable (for example, asking for ROM links or providing them is not allowed)" That does not say anything about hacks.
I know, I'm just some random guy, so feel free to ignore this, but hacks are roms. Distributing patches is fine though, as they don't contain any copyrighted material.
It's not that simple. Even if a patch contained 100% purely original material by the patch creators, it would still be a legally fuzzy area because it could be argued as being a derivative work. In most jurisdictions copyright law also covers derivative works (which is what makes most fanfiction technically illegal, even though they don't necessarily contain any significant portion of the original work verbatim). Game copyrights are also often strengthened with trademarks, which makes it even more difficult for patch-makers to not to break any such law (at least technically).
Of course many game companies turn a blind eye to such patches, but that's certainly not true with all of them. For example Square/Enix is a rather infamous example of a company which did not turn a blind eye on a very anticipated fan-made patch of Chrono Trigger (Crimson Echoes). Even though the patch didn't technically speaking contain any copyrighted material in itself, Square/Enix could have still made a case on the grounds of it being a derivative work, so the patch makers resigned.
Distributing the patch and the prepatched rom should be even worse, as it's easily possible to get 100% of the original rom from that.
As someone already commented, just because you know which bytes were changed doesn't mean that you know what the original bytes were.
moozooh wrote:
I loathe the utterly hypocritical state communities like this all end up in in order to save themselves from legal persecution. We all know what this is about, no matter what we are pretending to do or not to do in order to make and watch TASes and engage in related activities. Every party involved in any way does.
Well, creating an emulator keypress record file is not illegal. You can suspect that an illegal copy of the game was used in the making of that record file, but such a suspicion is not enough to file a lawsuit. You can't sue people because they might have used an illegal copy of the game, if you don't have any kind of proof.
So it doesn't matter how "hypocritical" you think this attitude is. It's legally safe, and that's what matters.
(Of course a completely different matter is that distributing the videos themselves is, technically speaking, illegal because they contain copyrighted music and graphics.)
Well, creating an emulator keypress record file is not illegal. You can suspect that an illegal copy of the game was used in the making of that record file, but such a suspicion is not enough to file a lawsuit. You can't sue people because they might have used an illegal copy of the game, if you don't have any kind of proof.
It's exactly why nobody has bothered to do something about it. Proving something concrete in this case is close to impossible, trying to suppress making videos/screenshots is as pointless as using a fishing rod to exterminate all fish in the ocean, and suing singular people for money doesn't make sense because they don't have enough money for it to matter nor make enough resonance for others to become afraid (if anything, the opposite is more often the case).
There are sites and torrent trackers that are dedicated solely to distributing ROMs, and even those don't receive any pursuit nowadays because it finally seems like the attention focus has shifted towards making legally offered things more attractive than piracy by means of value-added services rather than trying to fight in a war that is impossible to win. Which is, in fact, a perfect solution that should have been put in place since day one.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
@moozooh: If the irc-channel associated (not on legal grounds, but still) with this site would be extensively used to illegally distribute roms, I bet that after a few years game developers/publishers would start to care more about the main site.
@moozooh: If the irc-channel associated (not on legal grounds, but still) with this site would be extensively used to illegally distribute roms, I bet that after a few years game developers would start to care more about the main site.
I don't think so. There are many sites that distribute ROMs and have been around for years.
On topic: I hate Nach.
AzumaK wrote: I swear my 1 year old daughter's favorite TASVideo is your R4MI run :3
xxNKxx wrote: ok thanks handsome feos :D
Help improving TASVideos!
@moozooh: If the irc-channel associated (not on legal grounds, but still) with this site would be extensively used to illegally distribute roms, I bet that after a few years game developers/publishers would start to care more about the main site.
Et tu, Brute? –_–
Did you ever see the channel "extensively used to illegally distribute ROMs" before the whole banning thing? Right, you didn't. Why? Because, surprisingly, its users were mature enough to moderate themselves and stay out of trouble. These doomsday scenarios are bollocks, because they never happen yet continue to come up all the time as if companies didn't know better than sending agents in every major gaming IRC channel out there to find some anonymous dude requesting a ROM link once in a blue moon. Doing so alone costs a lot more resources than they could ever hope of getting out of the whole situation. They don't care, because if they did, they would never have waited this long.
But now, with so much attention drawn to it, the situation won't go back either way, so discussing it further is pointless I'm afraid. If anybody else is willing to challenge my point, which adelikat has already accepted as fair (although disagreed to comply, which I also already accepted), do not do it in this thread. It shouldn't have been used for the purpose of discussing the bans anyway.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I wasn't talking about "doomsday scenarios". I realize the risk that anything at all would happen is very, very minimal, but why take it if there are lots of other places to share roms at on the net?
*leaves this thread*
http://tasvideos.org/1598S.htmlhttp://tasvideos.org/2317S.htmlhttp://tasvideos.org/1828S.html
Better quickly delete the links in these threads. They link to patches to games and might bring the wrath of the big companies to sue the site!!!
Oh also, this link has been on the site since 2006
http://tasvideos.org/901S.html
Hope they don't find that one too.
p.s. you can't get in trouble for distributing roms if you aren't distributing roms!
That'd be as if someone asked you if you knew where to buy some heroine and you got arrested for pointing out the guy on the street corner.
I'm sciencing as fast as I can !
______________________________________
<adelikat> once more balls enter the picture, everything gets a lot more entertraining
<adelikat> mmmmm yummy penises
Now you're just causing trouble, Deign! You're posting links to pages linking to pages containing links to illegal content, you must be doing this on purpose!
On a more serious note, since Nach is still judging — for some reason I still don't understand — and the current discussion has nothing to deal with it anyway and shouldn't even be conducted in public (don't forget that we don't use ROMs even though we have ROM names as a required field in submission forms), nothing fruitful is going to come out of this. I'm locking this thread for the time being.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
