Regarding the recent surge of post about repros

Banshaku · Post by **Banshaku** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 8:08 pm

I think we will need to take a stance on the subject. It's not about not being nice to people or not being fair but more for a legal reason. This is one of my concern.

For example, if you talk about the powerpak, it is still "gray" since it can be used for development use. If you want, you can use illegal game but the main re-seller (retrousb) have no control over this. Retrousb doesn't provide any pirated game too so it is still gray.

If you help on how to convert a game to a dev cart then you're not targeting a specific game and still seems gray to me.

But when you start to help on how to make repro on a community site, this can be interpreted as bootlegging and the lawyers could be heading your way, or are they?. We should not forget that some of those game are becoming again available on the wii and other platform.

Should we be concerned from a legal point of view? In the past there was not that much request and we could almost ignore that fact but now the request are becoming more frequent for the nes and snes. It would be a shame to receive some legal threats just because someone was "nice" to help make a bootlegged game.

Who can confirm that it's not an issue?

Post by **Memblers** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 8:44 pm

I don't think it's too big of an issue. Considering that the answer commonly is telling them to buy a flash cart, and they already have the ROM to begin with, I don't see anything that anyone else could get in trouble for. Since we're specifically talking about how it works, which isn't subject to copyright.

Also on the retrousb site you can buy a reproduction of the Nintendo World Championships cart. While I don't have a problem with that and think it's kind of cool, I don't think it sets the best example, either.

But yeah I have noticed the increasing amount of posts by people wanting to build reproduction/bootleg carts. It pretty much could have it's own forum section to keep the hardware section more interesting. But it seems like there's a lot of sections as it is.

Banshaku · Post by **Banshaku** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 9:06 pm

As long you're fine with it, I cannot say anything then.

Memblers wrote:Also on the retrousb site you can buy a reproduction of the Nintendo World Championships cart. While I don't have a problem with that and think it's kind of cool, I don't think it sets the best example, either.

I was aware of this one. The Mike Tyson power punch II is not very gray either. but the comment for the powerpak was that no game is given with it.

RetroRalph · Post by **RetroRalph** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 11:51 pm

If something is encrypted it comes under the DMCA doesn't it? Such that if you break any encryption it is a DMCA offense, even talking about it is considered an "offense". If so it pretty much allows them to abuse you in a few ways that could be annoying. However I think Nintendo won't have much issue with a site like this which is more developer orientated than pirate kingdom.

Why did the americans sign the patriot act anyhow, seems pretty much against the whole spirit of the constitution.

peppers · Post by **peppers** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 4:20 am

It breaks no laws to explain how to do something. Even if this was not the case the government is controlled by corporations, the corporations who own these do not care if you make your own cartridge of a game that ether was never released and/or never made it to your market 20 years ago. People aren't making counterfeit NES games and selling them on the streets, the titles being reproduced are not ones Nintendo or whoever are going to sell in there respective online stores so no one is going to care.

Its good to help these people, some of them may decide to take it a step farther and start learning about development. Personally even though I do not generally post in the programming related forums I do read do them and occasionally make some attempts of NES programming and I first came here to get help making me a dev cart

btw:Don't take this the wrong way but lets not pretend at least 90% of the people on these forums do not have a full romset, so no need for a holier than thou attitude.

Post by **tepples** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 7:45 am

RetroRalph wrote:Why did the americans sign the patriot act anyhow, seems pretty much against the whole spirit of the constitution.

Because Congress is captured.

peppers wrote:People aren't making counterfeit NES games and selling them on the streets

I still see Power Player Super Joy famiclones with included pirate multicart at the occasional liquidation sale.

UncleSporky · Post by **UncleSporky** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 7:55 am

This doesn't have anything to do with whether it's a problem to make repros or not, but regarding the recent surge of posts...

I wanted to make sure Memblers saw my post here, what we found when one of the new posters let slip where he came from. Another site is linking to this forum as if it were their own. Tepples made a sticky but who knows if they will read it.

Can anything be done about this? Does anything need to be done? I don't know that nesdev should be associated with such a site.

Banshaku · Post by **Banshaku** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 6:09 pm

There is maybe a way to refuse some referer but it will only work when you click from that site.

edit:

peppers wrote:btw:Don't take this the wrong way but lets not pretend at least 90% of the people on these forums do not have a full romset, so no need for a holier than thou attitude.

I never said anything about wrong or right since we can all perceive it differently but you can guess my stance about repro. I was just concerned by the recent surge of mail about it, if it could have been an issue for the forum. It would be sad to lose it just for explaining how to make your own (not legit) games for yourself.

As for rom, the forum doesn't distribute/share any and like you said, most people may have it on their computer anyway. That doesn't mean they make bootlegs out of it thought. I own many of the game I tried in the past in rom format and I would have never knew about them if it wasn't for that. The one I liked, when I could find them cheap, I bought them, period.

Now that I live in japan, some of the game I had in the pass (american ones) are not available here. I could make a bootleg for kick master, Low g man, contra force etc but I don't agree with it. I will figure out someday a way to get them back. It will cost me money but that's the way it is.

Drag · Post by **Drag** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 10:16 pm

If the referrer is from that site, you just take them to a page that says something to the effect of "This is not the official forum for romlab, this is a forum for nes development, blah blah burp" with an "OK" button at the bottom that takes you to the main forum.

tokumaru · Post by **tokumaru** » Tue Oct 27, 2009 2:38 am

Drag wrote:If the referrer is from that site, you just take them to a page that says something to the effect of "This is not the official forum for romlab, this is a forum for nes development, blah blah burp" with an "OK" button at the bottom that takes you to the main forum.

Sound good, because we wouldn't be denying access to any visitors, but would make it clear that this is a place of it's own and has nothing to do with that site.

IMO, that site should have this intermediary page in the first place, explaining what this forum actually is. However, they seem to have a "minimum text" policy for some reason.

Post by **tepples** » Tue Oct 27, 2009 4:53 am

Drag wrote:If the referrer is from that site, you just take them to a page that says something to the effect of "This is not the official forum for romlab, this is a forum for nes development, blah blah burp"

We have that page, namely the sticky. How hard would it be to hack something like this into index.php and viewforum.php?

Code: Select all

if (strpos(strtolower($referer), "nintendoallstars") !== FALSE
    && !logged_in) {
  header("Location: http://nesdev.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=5675");
  return?
}

Bregalad · Post by **Bregalad** » Tue Oct 27, 2009 9:42 am

Drag wrote:If the referrer is from that site, you just take them to a page that says something to the effect of "This is not the official forum for romlab, this is a forum for nes development, blah blah burp" with an "OK" button at the bottom that takes you to the main forum.

It sounds like it would be annoying to us too.

UncleSporky · Post by **UncleSporky** » Tue Oct 27, 2009 10:32 am

Bregalad wrote:
Drag wrote:If the referrer is from that site, you just take them to a page that says something to the effect of "This is not the official forum for romlab, this is a forum for nes development, blah blah burp" with an "OK" button at the bottom that takes you to the main forum.
It sounds like it would be annoying to us too.

That's why it would only apply to people entering this site from romlab.

bunnyboy · Post by **bunnyboy** » Wed Oct 28, 2009 10:00 am

Just to note, the PowerPak is 100% completely legal. There is no copyright or patent infringement, no anti copy protection, no gray area. However other carts I sell like the NWC/NCC are 100% completely illegal.

Overall I doubt its an issue. Repro makers haven't been shut down in their 10 years, so complaints about instructions aren't likely a problem either. Once the questions/instructions are answered clearly people can just be told to use search and remove the new posts.

Post by **tepples** » Wed Oct 28, 2009 10:38 am

bunnyboy wrote:Just to note, the PowerPak is 100% completely legal. There is no copyright or patent infringement, no anti copy protection

Nintendo could try suit against distributors of products that use a CIClone chip. CIClone is a copy of Rabbit, which had already been declared contraband due to Tengen defrauding the Copyright Office (Atari Games v. Nintendo). It'd be a long shot given Chamberlain in the Federal Circuit and Lexmark in the Sixth, but it would have at least enough grounds to make the defendant spend $$$$ on counsel.

Repro makers haven't been shut down in their 10 years

Flash card sellers have. Look at what happened to Visoly and Lik Sang.

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Regarding the recent surge of post about repros

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