Borrowing ROMs

An anonymous reader writes "It looks like Console Classix is trying introduce a new old concept to the world of P2P file sharing, at least as it applies to NES and SNES ROM images. You download their client program, and then you can "borrow" one ROM image at a time from their site, play it, and then release it for someone else to use. There are a finite number of ROM images on the site, each one ostensibly dumped from a legitimate and unique cartridge. I wonder if this will allow an end-run around some of the questionable legality of file-sharing... and I wonder if this could work for MP3s, movies, and other forms of media?" I think its pretty reasonable, but I doubt that the industries will agree.

What nintendo etc needs to do to END illegal roms:

[anotherone]

If anyone from Nintendo, Sega, etc are listening, here is how you can either end or severly limit rom trading:

License a user-built emulator, re-rip every cart for your system, and offer them for sale. Make it cheap- maybe $1 per Rom, or maybe charge per megabyte, or release compilation CDs, or whatever. Don't make it too expensive. Then, advertise it a LOT. Make the emulator easy to use, maybe even have it integrated with the buying system so you can play a demo of the game before you buy it, then you can just enter your CC# into the program and you've got the whole thing.

I like my Roms, and I could get them free by lurking around a dozen shady P2P networks or download sites with gay porn banners for hours, or I could just pay a few dollars to get the same without any work on my part.

Sega actually does something close to this already, they've licensed the KGen emulator and sell a couple of the Sonic games for PCs in stores. I know this because I own them all.

They don't sell any carts anymore, so they've stopped making money from them. With this system, they'll start making money from them again, as well as get an ASSLOAD of publicity.

This is already there for Canadians

[pardasaniman]

www.iceradio.ca is the exact same thing for Canadians only though. (Unfortunately not netscape compatible)

Re:But who is going to stop the End user from...

[Hrothgar The Great]

Read their page - it doesn't work that way. You have to download a specially modified version of Nester (which fortunately happens to be a very good NES emulator) that connects to their site and downloads a ROM into the program's memory. No files touch your hard disk.

Someone would have to waste a lot of time writing a crack, but I guess someone probably will do just that, if only for the challenge.

Re:This sounds...

[macrom]

http://www.consoleclassix.com/legal.htm [consoleclassix.com]

It looks like NOA hasn't contacted them in over a year regarding the alleged violation. Perhaps that means NOA realized they don't have much of a case against ConsoleClassix.com [consoleclassix.com]. Either that or they've been brewing a legal case for the last 13 months, which doesn't sound all that likely to me.

Who knows, maybe someone has finally figured out a way to sling stones at the giants and defeat them.

Pretty reasonable? Pretty illegal

[anthony_dipierro]

Notwithstanding the provisions of subsection (a), unless authorized by the owners of copyright in the sound recording or the owner of copyright in a computer program (including any tape, disk, or other medium embodying such program), and in the case of a sound recording in the musical works embodied therein, neither the owner of a particular phonorecord nor any person in possession of a particular copy of a computer program (including any tape, disk, or other medium embodying such program), may, for the purposes of direct or indirect commercial advantage, dispose of, or authorize the disposal of, the possession of that phonorecord or computer program (including any tape, disk, or other medium embodying such program) by rental, lease, or lending, or by any other act or practice in the nature of rental, lease, or lending.

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/109.html [cornell.edu]

Re:What nintendo etc needs to do to END illegal ro

[macrom]

The only issue I can see with this : royalty compensation to the original authors. I've never seen an agreement that developers must sign with NOA (or any of the console manufacturers), so I'm not sure if NOA has the right to redistribute the ROMs for ALL of the carts for ALL of their systems. With the sheer number of carts out there, it would be hard to track down each and every developer (many of them are probably defunct) to send checks for the ROMs purchased.

But I do agree with the sentiment -- at the bare minimum NOA should do this for their own titles. I for one would pay a few bucks for each ROM, for each Nintendo first-party title.

Re:good idea

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

I suspect that industry would be more receptive to these online libraries if goverments extended such programs into this area.

Quite the opposite, actually. Publishers have hated the idea of public libraries for literally centuries. They have done everything they can to restrict, reduce, and eventually rub out libraries. Only the fact that the public library is so patently a public good -- that it engenders warm, fuzzy feelings in John Q. Voter -- has protected it so far.

In the DMCA hearings, who was just about the only group looking out for anything close to what we might call the average citizen? The librarians' group.

Doubt me? Ask a former Registrar of Copyright, Ralph Oman, who in a letter [washingtonpost.com] to The Washington Post bewhined that

"A long list of

special pleaders now gets free use of copyrighted works, including small businesses, veterans' groups, bars, scholars, restaurants, fraternal groups, marching bands, Boy Scout troops, nursing homes, libraries, radio broadcasters and home tapers" (emphasis added)

Mr. Olman was speaking in favor of the Sonny Bono Public Domain Pillage Act (also known as the "Copyright Term Extension Act" [chronicle.com]). He bewailed the loss of revenues such Communists and anarchists as the Boy Scouts cost the poor, abused Content Cartel every year. (Blatant plug: The Post published my reply [ubidubium.net]. Like a schlub, I've lost the actual WashPost link.)

The evidence is, the Content Cartel would prefer to see libraries go gently into that dark night of perpetual copyright extension, indefinite "access controls", and a denuded public domain.

Re:But who is going to stop the End user from...

[Chris Burke]

Waste a lot of time for a crack?

All you'd have to do is find where in memory the game keeps the ROM, and dump that to disk. Voila, no difficult crack needed. Run the thing through a debugger, and it won't take too long.

The only way to actually make this secure for more than a day is to have the kind of security called for by Palladium, and I'd rather do without the service, thanks.

Re:Is a cartridge an access control device

[Erasmus Darwin]

"But does a form factor and a pin assignment count as copy protection?"

All Nintendo has to do is say that it was intended as such. As an added bonus, the catridge format had the advantage of being a fairly effective form of copy protection, especially in a non-emulated context. Sure it was bypassable, but the mechanisms for bypassing cartridge-based protection tended to be fairly elaborate. In contrast, the Dreamcast protection was almost non-existent (with an unmodified Dreamcast being able to boot cracked, burned games) and the Playstation's protection was a bit better (requiring a mod chip).

What protection?

[yerricde]

All Nintendo has to do is say that it was intended as such.

The fact that Nintendo made most of the NES cartridge specs PUBLIC in Nintendo Power magazine during the third year of publication kind of blows "anybody who reverse engineers our NES cart edge bus is breaking trade secret law" out of the water.

As an added bonus, the catridge format had the advantage of being a fairly effective form of copy protection, especially in a non-emulated context.

Are you saying emulation is illegal? Try telling that to the developers of Wine [winehq.org] and Bochs [sourceforge.net]. If, on the other hand, you merely claim that Game Paks were physically hard to copy, then look at all the pirate multicarts you can pick up in HK.

Sure it was bypassable, but the mechanisms for bypassing cartridge-based protection tended to be fairly elaborate.

I understand that Nintendo 64 Game Paks and later Super NES Game Paks (the one with the SA-1 coprocessor) had a small amount of protection against homebuilt dumping machines, but there is NO protection on Famicom, Game Boy, or Game Boy Advance Game Paks: just write the address, read the data. Write the address, read the data. From there, you can construct a complete backup copy of the binary.

In contrast, the Dreamcast protection was almost non-existent (with an unmodified Dreamcast being able to boot cracked, burned games)

That's about how much protection there is on GB and GBA, and homebrew developers [gbadev.org] like it.