Ethics And Morality Of Emulation

[Epicenter]

I downloaded and payed for Half Life 2 via Steam, wich worked like a charm, a good example of how things should work.

Haha, yeah, more companies need to learn about how to do effective online content delivery. Steam's a classic example of how NOT to do it. They mean well, but the system itself is mediocre and the client is a bloated obnoxious mess, the friends system has been broken for years, users have problems all the time like having to re-buy products or having their account mysteriously stop being recognized by the network. In CONCEPT Steam is nice though...

 

[DijiTao]

The laws surrounding Intellectual Property are utterly broken. No one, would stand for any of this if the laws where completely enforced, and thus the system only remains because trivial offenses are ignored. Case in point The Happy Birthday Song:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday

That’s right, somebody owns the “Happy Birthday to You” song, and legally every time somebody sings the happy birthday song Time Warner should be paid royalties for the performance. The melody written 112 years ago, the lyrics written debatably a ‘mere’ 70 years ago, and it is therefore scheduled to re-enter the public domain in the year 2030.

This is absolutely ridiculous.

Content creators need to be rewarded for there works. This is done by giving them a limited period of time where they have the sole rights to there work. However, after that limited period of the time the work enters the public domain and can be freely distributed by anyone. Under US law, this period is supposed to be 20 years. However through acts of congress extensions have been granted to certain individuals insuring that the rights to a certain loveable mouse or a rascally rabbit never have to be handed over to the public. What the happy Birthday song shows so clearly is that over time pieces of Intellectual Property can become so ingrained into society that they become a part of the culture. This level of cultural integration is the very basis for why works enter the public domain. So given the cultural concern, but yet the need reward content creators, the copyright system sought to strike a balance at by given the content creator a 20 year period to profit off their work. The lengthening of this period to over a century for certain privileged intellectually property owners (who also happen to be very generous campaign contributors) is ridiculous. So putting the happy birthday song aside, and getting back to why we’re all here emulation and gaming. Super Mario Bros. for the NES has hit its 20th anniversary, and I think we can all agree that the game has become an integral part of culture. Given Nintendo’s had plenty of time to collect money on this game, and even thou they could keep on making money with re-releasing the game for new systems, it’s time for this iconic work to enter the public domain. This always was the intent of the entire copyright system, to strike a balance.

We can debate if 20 years is to long a period of time, or maybe if it’s not long enough, but I think we all know that GBA emulation is just wrong, as is any other foolish talk about XBOX, PSP, PS2. N64 and PS1 are in the ‘gray area’ as these systems are certainly no longer commercially viable. However, I don’t see any reason why the games of these consoles should be rushed into the public domain and in the interest of the balance between copyright holders, and the public I think it’s perfectly acceptable if we wait a few more years.

 

[iignotus]

I did a short term paper on copyrights, patents, and the public domain, with a focus on computer software. Would anyone like to read it?

 

[Eolair]

I'm so glad I only to emulate games from dead hardware owned by dead companies. Colecovision, C64, Amiga...well maybe not so happy...I wish they were still alive and well, but we can't have everything, can we?

Someone probably owns the licences to some of those games I play but then the rights have probably been passed through at least 3 hands before that. So I have a hard time feeling guilty over me being nostalgic and playing the games I grew up with.

 

[junker]

go ahead and share that paper, iignotus

 

[iignotus]

Now I just have to find it ;P

 

[Minkoff]

I'm new here. After lurking for about a month (probably longer), here I am to add my input.

Well, to start off, I'll share a little anecdote. A couple of years back, I brought some GameBoy Advance games over to a friend's house. Foolishly, I left them there, and by the time I got around to taking them back, about half of them were lost (out of maybe 20, which makes 10, which costs $300). Had I not been broke, I would have run out and bought new copies, but I was, so instead, I downloaded ZSNES and Zelda: A Link to the Past, and played it on my computer, as that was the game I had been currently playing. If possible, I would love to be able to download them (I did buy them), and play them on my GP2X with the added bonus of (possibly) savestates, and at least being able to back up my save files. But percentage of people like me, who want a GBA emulator for (semi?) legit reasons, is probably close to nil, and while it's not fair that this is the reason I'm not getting one, it would be less fair to game developers for there to be one.

Where my moral battle comes in is with oldschool games. I own very few, but want to play so many, and though I would love to buy most of them, I can't. I don't think it's really fair for a company to not allow you to buy something, but get upset when you don't, but I do know that if they thought the same way, they couldn't make money on re-releases and remakes. It's not right to steal these games, but when they're not for sale, what am I supposed to do? Just sit here gameless while thousands of sites across the internet could give me what I want, free of charge, without hurting anybody?

 

[junker]

yeah, i would love to buy some of the classic games i play, but can't afford the usually high prices on ebay...

 

[psj3809]

What really gets me is when a little do-gooder turns up moaning about how evil we all are etc !

Back at school in my day back in the 80's things were much worse, computers had just arrived and kids were copying games every lunchtime left right and centre. Yeah 20 years later i feel bad when i saw that a lot of these companies went bankrupt, i think us kids copying the games at school didnt help but damn back in the 80's a 7.95 game took a while to save up for to a kid and the whole computer era back then was amazing, you wanted to get your hands on every single game out there as it was so new and brilliant.

So yeah copying brand new games is bad, do i feel bad 20 years later ? Partially for the people whos companies went under but i'm not going to lose sleep over it.

20 years later my morals and that have changed, i dont go onto a download site and download the latest PC games. Yes i have downloaded some films but they 99% tend to be ones i really want to see and which i buy after as i want to have the actual original.

My favourite band is Oasis, everytime a new album is leaked i download all the songs instantly, however i have every single/album they have done which i have bought so i dont feel bad there. If anything it brings back that old childhood feeling , eg want it now want it now, dont want to wait ! etc.

I like the series Lost, i hate waiting 5 months for the new series so i'm downloading the latest ones from America. I dont feel totally bad for doing that.

Back in the 80's kids sat at home at 6pm on a sunday to tape their favourite songs from the Top 40 on the radio. I dont remember record companies moaning about that despite the money they could possibly lose.

As for emulation (sorry to have gone on !) we've created a monster as i've said before. No one gave a monkeys about 25 year old roms until we started playing them again then suddenly mr greedy of company xxx thinks lets re-release them and make money from them ! I'm sure all the re-released games have made a fair bit of money but it works both ways.

I had many Spectrum games when i was a kid, a lot of them dont work now, do i get my money back ? When i bought the tape i dont remember being told that years later this wont work. So if i then play the game on an emulator from what i've read i'm breaking the law !

I've also heard crap about stuff you tape from TV on VHS you can only own for x number of years because of copyright etc. Crazy

On the new GPX2 i will be playing tons of games, SNES downwards, but i wont be playing hardly any GBA games as theyre stlil on sale now. But older systems i dont feel bad about at all.