Hmmmm
Time for me to chime in I feel.
Firstly, I purposely left your PM to me unanswered because I wanted to discuss the matter with the other mods. This would have been on the mods forum that not many of you know exists, but is there for us when we need it. To be honest, I actually found something way more interesting to do, and thought I'd get around to it tonight. However, it seems you've stripped me of that joy by making it more of a public issue. Looking at the debate it's caused, I gotta say that it's probably better that way anyway.
An interesting argument that I saw recently somewhere or another (cant remember where) highlighted the difference between the different types of 'rom' site that we are talking about here. It's something that I thought was a perfectly legitimate point. There is one MAJOR difference between the hosting of roms created from cartridges and roms created from floppy disks. The fact is one of lifespan. A floppy disk is generally designed to last 8 years, tops. Some last longer, but many dont (as I found when raiding my old Amiga disk collection not too long ago). Storage of these is looked upon more as archiving for the future rather than distributing for no-good reasons. The fact is that most of whats available on joe's FTP is no longer available, even second hand, due to the degredation of the oxide on the surface of floppies. Now dont bother pointing out that you can get X game or Y game on ebay, cos thats not my argument here. Even if you can, they arn't going to last much longer (unless you keep them permanently in the fridge - I know - My degree is Archaeological Conservation, part of which is the study of how objects degrade over time).
Cartridges, on the other hand, have a massively extended lifespan - near enough indefinite. You can easily pick up cartriges second had - there are many second-hand gamestores that make a killing on them!
Lets look at the cases in point.
There are c64, Spectrum and ST archives that arnt really getting touched because they actually perform more of a 'service' to the retro community by preserving games for us and future generations. In fact, the oxide on tapes is even more prode to degradation than floppies. Its something that most companies now turn a blind eye to, as they know that it's actually a good thing to have their entire collection of games archived. Also, the way in which the game industry was structured back then in regard to companies, was way different. Lots of smaller companies (about 99% of whom are no longer around) published games and then dissapeared from the face of the earth.
The 'cartridge' based games tend to be different. The licenses for those are often owned by a single, all-unifying company, such as Nintendo or Sega, or Microsoft for the X-box (to quote a more recent issue). This means that the companies in question, apart from still being a going concern, also still own the entire games back-catalogue for that machine. There IS no over-riding force where the older floppy and tape-based games are concerned, and indeed many companies are actively encouraging the spread of their games (such as Gremlin Graphics - see this month's Retro Gamer in the UK for details!).
Another point is this. You look at the majority of illegal rom (cartridge) sites out there. What? You cant? You know why that is? - cos they're swamped in banners, popups and various filth. You think these people do it out of the goodness of their hearts? Not quite. They get a cent or two for every accidental click to the lastest fool to be flogging something - be it [*I AM STUPID SPAMMER*] or naked women. With all the people hunting for roms out there, that equates to a LOT of clicks, which in turn equates to a lot of money.
Look at the archive sites - for example the c64 archive, or somewhere like worldofspectrum.org. See many (indeed ANY) popups or ads? Ok, so the c64 unlimited archive has one banner, but that's not exactly raking in the money. And of course, the case that we are talking about in this particular thread is Joe's FTP. Now how many revenue-producing ads can we see there? I'll tell you how many - zippo, zilch, not a sausage.
See where I'm coming from here? In my humble opinion, the above points demonstrate why the reasoning behind an archive is sound, whereas the reasoning behind a 'ROMZ' site is, to say the least, slightly less 'in the public interest'.
I dont argue at all that it is, in the eyes of the law, any more legal. I do however argue for you to take a look at it all with a little more of a objective eye. We still cant condone the posting of rom sites - sorry, but that's how it is. I cant condone copyright infringement of any kind. I can, however, see the difference between what some people on this board condone, and what these sites are trying to preserve.
Longest post I've ever done? Dunno - but I hope it gets a point across.
