Archive.org Hosts Massive Collection of MAME ROMs 193
An anonymous reader writes to point out a giant gift to the world
from the Internet Archive: a massive collection of MAME ROMs, playable in your browser using Javascript Mess. From the blog post announcing this extension of the already mind-blowing Internet Archive: "Like the Historical Software collection, the Console Living Room is in beta – the ability to interact with software in near-instantaneous real-time comes with the occasional bumps and bruises. An army of volunteer elves are updating information about each of the hundreds of game cartridges now available, and will be improving them across the next few days. Sound is still not enabled, but is coming soon. Faster, more modern machines and up-to-date browsers work best with the JSMESS emulator."
42.8GB ZIP (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, the only format they released the ROMs in is one huge ZIP file. Even the torrent, where torrent software might have allowed picking-and-choosing individual ROM files, is only the ridiculous 42.8GB ZIP.
I'm still looking for a list of files, but for that size, it might be EVERY MAME ROM in the MAME database of over 7000 ROMS.
Re:ROMs have always been a gray area... (Score:5, Informative)
http://archive.org/about/dmca.php
They seem to have an exemption.
Re:MAME for Linux? (Score:5, Informative)
WTF? Baseline MAME will compile on Linux or OSX now, using SDL bindings and a Qt or Cocoa debugger UI. It's even in the repos for some popular Linux distros.
Re:42.8GB ZIP (Score:5, Informative)
Seem you can download indivual zips from the big zip file from https://archive.org/download/MAME_0.151_ROMs/MAME_0.151_ROMs.zip/ and then clicking on an individual file. Seems they forgot to include a link in the description.
Re:ROMs have always been a gray area... (Score:5, Informative)
That only exempts them from the anti-circumvention provisions. Plain old copyright law still applies.
A lot of the old games will have effectively lapsed now simply because their owning legal entities ceased to exist, but confirming that poses quite a challenge itsself. Just because the publisher is out of business doesn't mean the game is in the public domain - there may well have been a selling-off of rights during bankruptcy, or another company may have aquired the defunct publisher.
How hard? Well, let us say you have a game called The Lords of Midnight, published by Beyond Software. You look it up, and Beyond Software is long defunct. Game good for the taking, right? Well, no: Beyond Software was aquired by Telecomsoft, so you need to look them up too. Also defunct. Good? No, because Telecomsoft (Better known as 'Firebird') was actually owned by BT, the British telephone company, who (AFAIK) still retain the copyright. That was an easy case, it was all documented on wikipedia and the companies involved are very well-known. Identifying the true owner of something more obscure is a much more difficult prospect.
LoadScout (Score:3, Informative)
This little freeware program allows you to not only see what's in an archive shortly after you begin to D/L it, you can prioritize individual files inside it or pick and choose any number of them to D/L or not. Also to get bits and pieces of the archive in truncated form, still retaining the format container. I haven't used it but maybe 3 times, but these situations are perfect for it: this huge-ass, inconvenient HTTP grab of over 40 damn gigs. There's a portable version available somewhere but I can't locate it ATM.
http://www.loadscout.com/index.html [loadscout.com]
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
smf (Score:2, Informative)
As has previously been explained, a DMCA exemption allows you to bypass the DRM on something you legally own. You still have to abide by copyright law.
Also the exemptions are re-assessed annually and they decided not to keep the DMCA exemption in place for old computer games.