Community Dump! 3 Famicom Prototypes!

[famiac]

Well, if im gone, or my computer's gone, the code's gone forever. Whether you agree or disagree is your personal opinion. But i need money right now and this is one way to do it. Donate if you want, don't if you don't.

[Bramsworth]

Actually, if you're "truly" for preservation, you'd want to insure it spreads to the masses and doesn't just stay with one person only, where you never know what might happen. Your house could go on fire, faulty electric wiring...you could die and that one copy would be lost forever(and FYI there is one known case of this, a guy with a Conker's Bad Fur Day debug cartridge for N64 passed away and his family ended up trashing all his stuff). People have their own ideas of preservation of course, but in my mind it's making sure something isn't lost in history forever and can be appreciated by the whole world. Keeping a one of a kind thing locked away for yourself and calling it preservation doesn't make much sense to me, but again, different definitions I guess..

As for the morals behind it all, I hate to say it but law isn't the be all and end all of the world. We weren't born with it, it's not nature, it's just there to keep things in check. And it's great for lots of things, but In the case of prototypes....really, how many protos out there have gotten attention from companies and caused all sorts of issues because they were dumped? In a world where there's ROMs freely on the internet and no one cares(even game companies apparently download ROMs of their own games for compilation packs because they lost the original data for their own products!), some stranger putting out an early version of a 20 year old game isn't going to hurt anybody. Hell, lots of companies are pretty irresponsible or uncaring for their own history and the importance of prototypes, even Sega apparently destroyed their whole archives going back from the time of Sonic Xtreme(something drx found out from a Sega employee).

Clearly if there's anyone that cares about the history behind these things and wants to do anything about it, it's us internet nerds, not the companies themselves =p


(BTW Sorry for cluttering the topic more famiac, but healthy proto debate never hurt anybody unless it gets to name calling, which I doubt will happen )

[L___E___T]

Many companies didn't even bother keeping source code because they don't place the same inherent value on these things as we do.

[famiac]

No problem. Im enjoying this discussion.

[Epic_Lotus]

Well, if im gone, or my computer's gone, the code's gone forever. Whether you agree or disagree is your personal opinion. But i need money right now and this is one way to do it. Donate if you want, don't if you don't.

It wasn't an opinion, it was a proposition.  To say it a different way, one of my points was that a person shouldn't claim that they want to benefit posterity by releasing a ROM while trying to make money on the deal, but more importantly, neither option was really right (or legal) when it came to the moral implications of giving away someone else's work without their permission.  You might be able to make a defensible moral argument of some kind if you were just giving away the ROM (i.e. no such thing as owning an idea, freedom for the dissemination of information, etc.), but when you couple that with money, it complicates the argument and takes the power out of your position.  Your need for money, while legitimate, doesn't automatically make right the way you want to get it.  You could also knock an old lady over and swipe her purse, but that wouldn't be right.  You probably wouldn't get caught for either infraction, too, but a lack of direct consequences isn't a morally justifiable position, either.

Now, if you were to say, "Hey, I know it's illegal and immoral, but who wants to pay me for this ROM", I think you'd hear less argument out of me since at least you're being open about your own goals and the ramifications of what you're doing.  At that point, the only assertions I'd be making would be about how it'd be a bad idea for our community to get behind supporting illegal endeavors, and the slippery slope it starts toward sanctioning other kinds of activity (reproductions, etc.).

Also, on a bit of a tangential note, posterity might be overrated.  I think there's something to be said for allowing time and obscurity to run their course.  It allows for old ideas to be legitimately created as new ideas, without all the hassles of IP.  I think we're coming to an age where history mostly benefits the historian (and IP benefits no one but the man at the top).  I really do wish that there was more freedom in the exchange of ideas and information, but sadly that isn't the way our societies are set up.

[famiac]

I still don't see how that's a proposition to literally tell me: "hey you! No, bad. That's bad."
I don't believe it to be immoral because there is literally no person being hurt by my actions. Making your "old lady" example obsolete.
I fully accept that this is illegal. But oh well. Sucks for me i guess? I honestly don't care.

[Epic_Lotus]

Except it does hurt someone.  Passing around someone's code deprives them of their copyright to the code.  Whether or not they choose to currently pursue monetary compensation for their work is their business, not yours, and doesn't change the fact that you're passing off copies of their work for your own gain.  That's the immoral part of it, not just the illegal part of it.  Just because they aren't currently aware of your violation of their rights doesn't change the moral harm done. 

For example, prior to the launch of the Virtual Console, few would have believed that there was a viable market for classic games in today's generation of consoles outside of an occasional "collection" release.  How much more successful do you think the market for VC games would have been if ROM's and emulators weren't so widely available through illegal means on the internet?  It's highly probably that many more people would have turned on their Wii's to get a fix of classic gaming than currently happens because of the ROM's openly and illegally distributed on the net. 

[ericj]

I think if this is where the argument's going, we should draw the distinction between a prototype and a final release.

A prototype was never released so no one ever bought it. The final version is what was sold to the consumer. In this regard, a rom for a prototype never directly generated money from the consumer, the final version rom did. So, releasing a rom that never generated income would not financially harm the developer/company, only releasing a final version rom would.

It'd be hard to argue that a proto is the same thing as the final version. In the case of famiac's prototypes, they may be fairly similar to the final release. However, a prototype could be vastly different from the released game, and where would threshold be as to when they're similar enough to be considered the same thing? 


By the way, I don't feel strongly either way on the matter...

[Epic_Lotus]

Hmm, that's a unique argument there!  I still think that the violation of someone's copyright is indefensible, morally/legally, because that exists outside a person's choice to monetize that copyright.  However, you do make an interesting point regarding the mitigation of potential monetary loss, and that's certainly something worth thinking about.  I'm just trying to think of analogous situations here, but this might be like taking a chapter from an author's manuscript and putting it out on the internet.  It doesn't necessarily tell the whole story, but still does damage to the author?  I'll have to work this one out some more on my own, I think.

Honestly, I think the best places for these things is in a proper library or archive.  There are already some institutions that are setting up video game sections, and libraries are granted legal privileges not available to regular people.  The broad internet isn't itself a real place to "store" data, but merely to access it.  I think that's why the whole "distribute it to preserve it" is a really weak argument because websites go down, people change computers, and information is just as easily lost online as off.