Legal Arcade ROM Vendor Talks Business 127
jvm writes "Remember StarROMs, the company selling legal Atari ROM downloads for a few bucks a piece? They're still around and Curmudgeon Gamer posted an interview with StarROMs co-founder Frank Leibly. Have they been successful so far? How can they possibly expect to compete with free downloads? Are they giving money to MAME as promised? And why has their listing of games dropped from about 60 games to just over 50? It's all here. (Slashdot covered their initial launch late last year, and Slashdot Games recently also recounted a different discussion with Leibly.)"
Increase in liability (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd imagine so, and I don't like it.
p.s. all STFU Pirate!!!!! replies will be ignored as missing the point.
Re:Increase in liability (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Increase in liability (Score:4, Interesting)
There's also a little exemption in copyright if its not commonly attainable (some 70's song you heard long ago and nobody carries it. You get it off of kazaa)
Re:Increase in liability (Score:5, Insightful)
No there isn't an "exemption". If you have any references saying otherwise, please share them. You may notice in some books notes to the effect that "every attempt was made to contact copyright owners, but some could not be found" and asking them to get in touch. If they did, they'd have to negotiate; showing good intentions in this way makes claiming damages by the owner unlikely, but it doesn't revoke their copyright at all.
Re:Increase in liability (Score:5, Interesting)
From what I have read, StarROM is just a distribution outlet. It does not hold any copyrights to the ROMs so it's existence changes nothing to do with copyright infringements. The only thing StarROMs could do is sue some site owner, who is illegally distributing ROMs, for damages but I doubt they would have the capital to try that.
Oh and if you're feeling a little more threatened with your pirated ROMs then try buying them legally.
Re:Increase in liability (Score:5, Insightful)
You're quite correct that StarROM is "just a distribution outlet" that "does not hold any copyrights to the ROMs".
What you seem to be missing is that the courts have shown a tendency to protect secondary markets- meaning, if this business model succeeds *there is a secondary market to be legally protected*.
Implying, of course, that the abandonware defence will no longer be as valid, and the original creator of the ROM will get basically squat (the middleman gets all the money in this). I'm all for encouraging and rewarding creators, but **This does not do that**.
Yes, I think this is bad. Yes, I buy things I think deserve buying and No, I don't buy things I use but don't think are worth my money. This also has nothing to do with this argument- thanks for nothing for your STFU PIRATE! ending remark.
Re:Increase in liability (Score:3, Informative)
Abandonware was never a legally defensable position.
It was a concept invented by some BBS owners in the 1980's to try to project the image that distribution of ROMS and such like was actually legal. This has always been Bullshit. I have no more rights to copy and distribute Wordstar than i have to distribute MS office.
A *morally* defensable position to on the other hand is different, although i would say that it is only
Re:Increase in liability (Score:2)
So the law be damned then? If YOU think something is useful, but not so useful to pay the asking price then you think it is ok to use it illegally? Do you only pay as much tax as you think the government deserves as well?
Re:Increase in liability (Score:2)
I'm not going to apologize for my morality. Perhaps you like to take whatever options corporate america (or where ever you're from) gives you, but I don't.
I suppose if you were a slave, you'd still think 'Oh, well, I guess this might suck but I don't want to break the law- anything but that!'? I'm not in that situation, but I feel my fair-use rights, which are important to me, are being stepped on in some contexts. So I will do something about it, law be damned, until it's better.
Maybe i
Re:Increase in liability (Score:2)
How are your 'fair-use' rights being stepped on? And aren't you just trampling all over someone else's copyrights? But I guess it is ok to step on someone else's rights as long as your are spared.
No, I beleive the world would be better if people obeyed the law but proactively lobbeyed for change. Disobedience is not the right way.
I'm not trying to push my morality onto you. And it's not narrow-mindedness, we are just both being stubborn in our beliefs, no compromis
Re:Increase in liability (Score:2)
I'm guessing you aren't from America and hence my example of disobedience being the only meaningful option (slavery) wasn't meaningful to you. You say people should "obey the law but proactively lobby for change"- civil disobedience *is* lobbying for change.
Re:Increase in liability (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If Disney can do it, why can't Sierra? (Score:5, Insightful)
From City University of New York's [cuny.edu] discussion on fair use:
"The fact that a work is out of print or unavailable, or that there is no ready market for permissions weighs toward favorable to fair use."
Not exactly a guarantee, but the fact that, for most abandonware, no legit source exists weighs positively in favor of otherwise-illegally obtaining it falling under fair use.
Of course, considering the four points that determine whether or not a given activity falls under fair use, I'd say the idea of abandonware scores at best a 50:50 shot. For the "purpose and character", noncommercial preservation of culturally relevant materials weighs as a positive. For "nature of the copyrighted word", a game purely for entertainment scores a negative. For the "substantiality of the portion used", I'd call 100% a definite strike against abandonware. And for the "potential market", that could go either way... Currently unavailable would count as a positive, but by infringing copyrights to get the ROMs, one could argue that downloading them would tend to reduce the potential market (though, I would personally say it increases the market, when a friend comes over and plays Pac-Man via MAME and then goes out and blows $1500 on a vintage machine...).
PS - IANAL, as if it needs saying.
Re:If Disney can do it, why can't Sierra? (Score:3, Interesting)
A copy of the entire work is hard to justify as "fair use" in any situation. For written work, the general rule is no more than 50% of an article, or a chapter or two of a book, may be quoted as "fair use" without requiring permission. These limits are rubbery, and are rarely tested in court. If you can show you made some attempt to
Re:If Disney can do it, why can't Sierra? (Score:5, Interesting)
I tend to agree, though as someone who understands why software differs from something like a book or a movie, I could also argue the opposite point...
With a book, a one-chapter excerpt can make quite a lot of sense, and give an idea of the feel of the work as a whole. With movies, the actual advertisements just take a set of very short clips and string them together. But with a program? How do you meaningfully use only part of a program? Sure, if you have the source code, you can chop out, say, eight of ten levels in a game. But from just a binary? You just can't do it.
So, although the entire work wouldn't normally count as fair use, with a ROM, you have no choice but to use 100% of it.
If you can show you made some attempt to find the owner, and have an open offer to make an arrangement with them should they contact you, you would probably be reasonably safe.
The very idea of abandonware (at least as defined by the more reputable sites) makes that rather easy - 99% of the games publishers from before the mid 1990's simply don't exist anymore. Tracking down who currently owns the "rights" to the games produced by such companies amounts to a snark hunt, as even if a legal chain of ownership does exist, in many cases, the current owner doesn't even realize it... "Yeah, I worked at Spiffware in 1987 - I designed 8x12 animated blobs that supposedly looked like aliens. What??? As the last surviving programmer who, under a bizarre contract clause, didn't go work for Nintendo, I own their entire catalog, including ZappoBlast 9000? Cool! Uhh... So what do I do with it? I don't even have a single copy of any of those games, though I do have a moldy ZB9k promo poster..."
Now, does that excuse blatant copyright infringement? IMO, as long as the original author/publisher no longer exists, I'd say yes - With the condition, though (as you suggest) that such use include an open offer to the current owner to either stop using it, or to make an arrangement to use it legally. Though, of course, my personal opinion does not carry the weight of law, and various anti-piracy groups regularly crack down on abandonware, despite having no idea themselves as to who can currently claim ownership of such material.
Re:If Disney can do it, why can't Sierra? (Score:2)
I wasn't saying that you could; only that in most media that "fair use" never allows a complete copy to be published, and as in software it generally isn't possible to use anything less that it isn't relevant. Though it probably would enable screenshots and such. Lots of ROM and warez sites have claimed that it's all right
Re:If Disney can do it, why can't Sierra? (Score:2)
Kind of like 2 years ago when there was no StarRoms, only we didn't know there was going to be a StarRoms.
Re:If Disney can do it, why can't Sierra? (Score:3, Insightful)
Your analogy is flawed.
Re:If Disney can do it, why can't Sierra? (Score:2)
Your correction to the analogy is flawed too...
Cars can't be copyrighted. If you copy, say, a 1982 Ferrari part-for-part, the Ferrari company has no legal recourse. Your attempt to debunk his correction is flawed. The original attempt to cast copyright infringement in the same light as theft was lame to begin with; let it go.
Re:If Disney can do it, why can't Sierra? (Score:1)
Does this mean that you should steal Ferarri's since they are unavailable for immediate purchase and you cannot buy them immediately?
If you paint your car red and put a horse sticker on it, you are "copying" a ferrari without steal someones else car. Is it wrong? Must i go to jail for a sticker?
I would gladly pay to go to a arcade. But some times is difficult to find the game you want...
Re:Increase in liability (Score:1)
Re:Increase in liability (Score:1)
Distribution - bad. Acquisition - good!
Just my 2 cents.
Re:Increase in liability (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd imagine so, and I don't like it.
Nope. Copyright infingement is still copyright infingement. It's just now there's going to be an easier reference point for how much value you've been taking instead of the court having to throw darts to pick a number.
Re:Increase in liability (Score:2)
I have absolutely no qualms about downloading ROMs for games that are no longer sold/available legally. I'm not harming anyone. They couldn't have got my money anyway (OK, I could have sent an unsolicited cheque off to the company, but you get the point). However, if I could easily buy the ROM cheaply off someone who was giving money back to the original producer, then I'm depriving them of money.
Re:Increase in liability (Score:2)
Depends.... Mostly on the jury.
You can build yourself a better case though if you can tell the court: "I was unable to find a legal source for X, so I was forced to download it illegally. I am perfectly willing to pay for legal rights, as proof I have bought several games from StarRoms. If copyright holder would sell rights for a reasonable price I would pay it."
The judge/jury is likely to find that you only owe a small amount. Of course if it gets to court you are in contact with the copyright owne
Re:Increase in liability (Score:1)
I'd imagine so, and I don't like it.
It would make any fair use claims even more laughable.
The fourth criterion of fair use is:
Title 17 USC, Section 107 [findlaw.com]
Claiming that the ROMs no longer have monetary value becomes tougher when people are making money selling them.
mame cabinets (Score:5, Informative)
The ultimate geek builds his own, see CmdrTaco's [cmdrtaco.net] for an example, but in the future, there might be a market for people who want mame cabinets for sheer nostalgia reasons, as more and more, the computer seems to be in the right position to trump the arcade soon.
And of course, you're not going to put illegal roms on a commercial product. Enter StarROMs...
Re:mame cabinets (Score:1)
The only people who seem to think they will be hurt are people who want the hobby to remain elite and underground. They can remain underground with their 'illegal' rom images. It won't be as 'leet as it is now, of course, when there are mail order cabinet kits commonly available.
Re:mame cabinets (Score:3, Funny)
Are you expecting extra moderation points for that link ;-)
Simple (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a couple of ways:
1.) If they advertise, then people who haven't heard of ROMs before know where to go.
2.) Service. I mucked around with ROMs a while back. It was a pain in the ass finding them. Even bigger pain in the ass downloading them. If I wasn't entering pop-up hell (not so rough these days given modern browsers, etc...), I was being asked to vote for places in order to proceed.
If I ever get the itch to play with ROMs again, they'll be the first place I try. Why would I do that instead of trying to find free downloads? Because free isn't so free when you're hugely inconvenienced along the way.
Re:Simple (Score:2, Interesting)
Best emulators these days? (Score:3, Interesting)
What is the go these days? Can anyone suggest what emulators are good, stable and above all have correct timing for modern processors running under Windows XP? I tried a DOS version of MAME the other day and it seemed to be waaay t
Re:Best emulators these days? (Score:3, Informative)
Anyway, you can get the latest version(.81) at www.mame.net, although I haven't found aany rom sites with the updated roms yet, so it might be worth sticking with
I've not used many other emulation
Re:Best emulators these days? (Score:2)
mame32 is the windows with gui build.
as for other emus, zsnes is pretty snappy snes emulator.
Re:Best emulators these days? (Score:1)
http://www.emuunlim.com
between these two sites I can almost always find a viable alternative to any platform that I've been interested in.
Re:Simple (Score:1)
Re:Simple (Score:2)
Well, that's your mistake... you were looking for contraband on the WEB.
ROMs are plentiful and easy to acquire on most IRC systems, P2P networks, Usenet, etc... There are in fact parts of the internet that Google does not index for you.
Legitimization (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Legitimization (Score:5, Insightful)
Play Animal Crossing on the Gamecube, and you'll be able to play old NES-games both on the cube - and on your GBA if you have one.
Nintendo has shipped bonusdiscs with both NES and N64 games (Zelda CE)
I do agree with the point that ROMs should be available for legal purchase though. I use a GB Player connected to my Gamecube to play GBA-games, but I'd just as well like to buy a few NES and SNES ROMs from Nintendo and play on my Xbox.
Atari still for sale - $18 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Atari still for sale - $18 (Score:3, Informative)
Thinkgeek [thinkgeek.com] stock them
Re:Atari still for sale - $18 (Score:1)
I have the Namco model. Be aware that the games are ports, not emulations. The machine might be a NES clone, since there are all-in-one units that contain a collection of NES games, and the games look like NES games. Also, the Bosconian port is deeply flawed; the joystick only goes in 4 directions instead of eight, and the fire button has to be pressed for each shot, instead of firing continuously when held down. I was hoping that the game would actually contain hardware similar to the original machine
Re:Atari still for sale - $18 (Score:1)
*sigh*
Back to the drawing board then
Re:Atari still for sale - $18 (Score:1)
Abandonware grey areas (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Abandonware grey areas (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Abandonware grey areas (Score:1, Insightful)
It also makes it harder for competitors to sell new games. Under things the way they stand now, 'abandonware' should cease to exist, because if the software exists, there is an interested body who will want to buy it, and either distribute it or bury it so they can sell their game to you instead.
And
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Abandonware grey areas (Score:2)
1. Old games competing with new games?
Tough cookies. Sorry, but he way i see it is if an old game is free, then I still have money left over for the new game. This is similar to why filesharing increases profits rather than aroding profits. And of course, maybe the real problem is the new team working on the new game have too many $'s in their eys and not enough love for the the project to make it worth the purchas.
2. It makes it harder fo
Re:Abandonware grey areas (Score:2, Interesting)
With that argument, Metallica can criticize me for listening to baroque music and 19th century opera.
Re:Abandonware grey areas (Score:5, Informative)
2. Leisure Suit Larry was was created and published by Sierra [sierra.com], which obviously still exists. They are even quite fond of releasing old games at low prices or entirely free (the excellent Betrayal at Krondor, for instance).
Re:Abandonware grey areas (Score:1)
>
>Fuck them, I have no love lost for Sierra.
More likely your local retailer is milking it. I got my copy (GotY edition) + Opposing Force + Counterstrike + Blue Shift for 14.95 euros. Pretty sweet, even if the game is indeed a few years old now.
I suggest you look around a bit for a shop that has more reasonable prices. If you happen to be in the Netherl
Great reason to support HR2601. (Score:5, Informative)
ROMs are a great reason to support HR2601 -- the Public Domain Enhancement Act [loc.gov]. Copyrighted works that aren't commercially viable stand a chance to enter the public domain after 50 years. If you live in the US, I think you should write you Congressional representatives to co-sponsor this bill.
Re:Great reason to support HR2601. (Score:2)
I still think 50 years is too long.
Re:Great reason to support HR2601. (Score:5, Interesting)
During the time between a book starting to be written to the point where sales are enough to live off of, an author needs somewhere to live and eat. There wasn't much of a middle class at the start of the US, so generally that shifts virtually all writers into the comfortably rich. I think all this amounts to most authors of the time having a natural life span around 60 years (ignoring the revolutionary war that shrank writers lives).
However, I don't think that copyright as it was was 14 (+14) years because of the average lifespan of the author. US doctrine doesn't believe the author has any innate right to copyrighted works. In reality, the likelyhood is the 14 (up to 28) year span was more a result of communication lag which could mean it'd take several years before even a popular book to go from one major city to every rich person in even the more rural settings.
Today, it takes literally seconds for most works to go from a major city to a rural setting. While I don't believe a copyright the length of a few days would be sufficient incentive for an author (though it covers news stories well enough), if anything the increase in rate of information transfer should be *decreasing* the length of copyright, not increasing it. The US's adoption of the Berne Convention is to me, an ignorant surrender of a basic ideological difference between given and natural born rights. I truly wish that at some point the US takes measures to reaffirm the basics of what copyright is.
Re:Great reason to support HR2601. (Score:2)
I checked on the EFF Action Center [eff.org] and found this issue listed... a quick and easy way to send a fax to my congressman. I'd encourage everyone in the US to do the same!
Mod parent down - idiot (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Mod parent down - idiot (Score:1)
Are they really getting licences in all cases, or with some are they offering them and sort of looking for the owner (and hoping they don't find them)--meanwhile driving people away from picking them up as abandonware?
Aggh! /.'ed (Score:1)
Cannnot connect to DB server
Shameless Plug (Score:1)
Reason They Have Less Games (Score:5, Informative)
A LOT of these games are 20-25 years old. In the intervening years the original licensor may have gone out of business and determining who has the licensing rights after the business was dissolved requires a lot of legwork... or there may still be pending disputes between former owners of the businesses that tie up doing anything with the game until the dispute is resolved.
Tracking down the person with rights or waiting for a rights dispute to be settled are both reasons I've heard for some classic films languishing in the vault without seeing the light of DVD.
Games disappearing from StaROMs may be ones that were licensed to them in good faith, but were later found out to have a murky provenance where determining, finding contact information for, and coming to an agreement with the party that has licensing rights became difficult.
I'm not going to comment on other aspects, but I wouldn't use the drop from 60 to 51 games as an indicator of imminent failure of the site.
Open up a MAME Arcade cheap? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Open up a MAME Arcade cheap? (Score:3, Informative)
This License allows you
to use the Software on a single personal
computer for non-commercial
entertainment purposes only,
Re:Open up a MAME Arcade cheap? (Score:4, Insightful)
Legal and not-so-legal emulator cabinets (Score:5, Interesting)
And then there is the venreable ArcadeControls.Com [arcadecontrols.com] with a hundred or so examples of home-built MAME machines.
Mirror (Score:5, Informative)
Wednesday, March 31 2004 @ 08:01 AM CST
Contributed by: jvm
Last Fall I interviewed Jeff Vavasour (parts one, two, three) and asked whether we'd ever see any game companies offering game ROMs in a pay-per-download service. Within a matter of days, StarROMs appeared in the public eye and caused a stir by offering several dozen classic Atari arcade ROMs for download, apparently legally, for a couple of dollars each. Shortly thereafter, I purchased several ROMs and enjoyed playing them in MAME, leading to one of the more curmudgeonly, controversial posts to ever grace this site.
Having already poked the ROM pirates with my sawed-off pointy stick, it seemed appropriate to needle the StarROMs people themselves. In the period shortly after their launch, however, StarROMs disappointingly declined my request for an interview. Being the patient type, I asked again recently and this time StarROMs co-founder Frank Leibly agreed to answer my questions.
Here, at last are answers to the big questions: How can StarROMs, a pay-to-download business, really expect to compete with the free, pirated ROMs people are already downloading? Have they been successful? And, are they really going to donate some of their earnings back to emulation projects like MAME?
jvm: Let's get right to the big questions. You've had your business open for nearly five months. Is StarROMs successful so far?
Frank Leibly: I think we're doing pretty good so far. Longer term, we aren't going to be happy until we get every copyright owner on board. And that's going to take some time. But I think we've made a lot of people very happy with what we have to offer now.
jvm: You're charging a couple dollars per game. How can you possibly compete with the "free" downloads of ROMs that any modestly skilled net surfer can track down?
FL: This is really the same issue every copyright owner and media company has been dealing with for years. As a kid I bought blank tapes and copied records and tapes from my friends but when I got to the point when I could afford it I bought the CD's. And I still do. If you look at the demographic of who we're selling to, it's people in their 20's, 30's and 40's for the most part. Spending a few bucks is pocket change and it's worth it to know you're dealing with someone legitimate. I like to think the service we provide is worth something too.
I also think the illegal sites are going to continue to experience pressure and when you get right down to it I'm not sure I see the point of putting up illegal roms if there is a legal source available.
We're also starting to work with some folks who are selling MAME cabinets who want to provide their customers roms legally. These customers are spending big money and they deserve to get something that's fully legitimate rather than pirated.
jvm: There has been some contraction in the catalog of games at StarROMs. I purchased Gauntlet II from you, and it's not listed any more. Could you explain this?
FL: We had a rights issue emerge with respect to ten of the titles we were initially offering, where a third party came along and said that they had rights to these games and that we couldn't sell them without their approval. We hope to offer these games again in the future, but for the time being we agreed to settle this issue amicably by pulling the titles from our offering.
jvm: So, is my license to use Gauntlet II a valid license, even though the game has been removed from your catalog?
FL: Yes, the license is still valid. Likewise, we will continue to provide support for customers who have purchased these games through us, including providing update ROM versions if necessary.
jvm: StarROMs says they'll give a portion of the annual profits to projects that support the emulation of classic games. Some are skeptical about how, or perhaps even whether, this will be done. What does StarROMS have in mind, specifically and when can
Old-school games? Check out scummvm! (Score:4, Interesting)
Pirate to Sell? (Score:3, Interesting)
When I first heard about StarRoms I naturally assumed that the rom images they provide would be obtained directly from Atari. After an email exchange with StarRoms, I was very dissapointed to find out that the roms they are selling were originally downloaded from the internet (i.e. the same images from the same illegal dumping activity that most of us have already). It seems StarRoms are missing the most important point to emulation fans and missing a real benefit that only a legitimate source can provide: we'd like to be sure that the rom images are 100% accurate by having them provided by, or at least authenticated by the manufacturer. Atari should naturally be required to provide them if they are also making money by selling/licencing them.
The interview does not answer the though question (Score:2)
I wish they are.
Why pay? Free roms, no hassle. (Score:1)
Re:They're not ROMs you imbeciles! (Score:2)
Re:They're not ROMs you imbeciles! (Score:1, Funny)
Re:They're not ROMs you imbeciles! (Score:1)
And no, these aren't actually "Read Only Memory." But they are dumps from arcade machines, so it's not such an imbelicic "fad word."
Re:They're not ROMs you imbeciles! (Score:3, Informative)
Seems perfectly reasonable usage. Most of these files are copies (or derived from) the code that was in a physical ROM. Do you also get annoyed if someone refers to a CD "ISO"? That is somewhat sillier if you recall what the letters mean. Extending usage of a term is fine as long as there is no confusion created.
Re:They're not ROMs you imbeciles! (Score:1)
But "ISO" in that context is short for ISO9660, the data format used on the CD. It's equally valid.
Re:They're not ROMs you imbeciles! (Score:2)
I understand it, I use it myself, but it's more of an abuse. "ISO" = "International Standards Organisation", and there are God knows how many ISO standards.
Reminds me of a musican I knew who got annoyed at plebians who'd say their favorite classical piece was 'The Ninth'. She said: `Whose ninth? Mahler's, Bruckner's, Williams's, Dvorak's?'
Re:They're not ROMs you imbeciles! (Score:3, Interesting)
I do think it is right to call arcade machine ROM dumps as ROM's though.
Re:They're not ROMs you imbeciles! (Score:1)
I hate it when people call C64 or Amiga games ROMS. Those are not from a cartridge (except for a couple here and there), but are disk images or tape files etc.
My point exactly! And yes, my post was intended to elicit responses.
I want people to be aware that not all emulator files are ROM dumps. To group them all in one term means they don't even know what they have.
Re:Scroodge the past for cents (Score:1, Insightful)
"THEY?"
They can have practically any laws they want, but it means working in the framework of the political process, which means being involved, not just reactionary. The laws that do get passed, do so because people are involved in the process. People vote, people attend political meetings, people run for office, and people make careers out of bing political consultants and lobbyists.
Then you have people who DON'T participate in the process at