It's possible he could have forgotten. It sounds like he designed the game but then it got passed off to another developer to get finished.Originally Posted by Edmond Dantes
It's possible he could have forgotten. It sounds like he designed the game but then it got passed off to another developer to get finished.
I've actually said at my website to not buy those goddamn repro carts, just buy a flash cart instead. It's cheaper, safer, and no carts have to die. Or just use an emulator! But nope. Repro creators who create carts out of translations even when we ask people to not do it are scum and deserve everything bad that comes their way.
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You know if I recall right Piko and I were talking when he ran retro quest games for repro bootlegs and we talked about the translation stuff, and he was actively trying to track down the owners of various translations to offer them a cut if he made the titles as he felt it dirty to just steal the work. I wish they all thought that way and actively did it.
This is where I saw something that other people blow out of proportion and start flaming me because of something they misunderstand and can't be bothered to ask me to explain what I mean. But after being on IRC in emulation channels since nes emulator icons had testicals on them, being a huge Ys fan and PCE fan in general, and being in the PC-Engine Dev scene for a while, I've ran into a lot of translators. And while I love the work they do, helping people play games they might never be able to, a lot of them sure are over protective of "their work", and seem to ignore "their work" is breaking other people's rights and copyrights. They have no actual rights to the translations, it's a derivatives work, and so would be owned by the original copyright owners in most cases, depending on what country and judge you got. Everyone who translates a game should know they're breaking copyright law and do not own the final product; you can't translate harry potter to pig latin and claim it's your work. Sure you did work making it, but you have no legal rights to the final product.
That said, THANK GOD (aka aeon genesis) I CAN NOW PLAY Ys 5 IN ENGLISH! I've been thinking about getting a repo of it, but I can't make my own snes repo so I'd need someone to do it and would have to make sure they desolder the roms, not clip the pins like a lazy bastard.
Good argument and that is true, it is a derivative work and they don't own it just because they translated it and some really are very uptight about ownership of something they really don't. I mean I get the attachment given the hours involved but you really need to have a certain expectation going into it too.
By the way which network (irc) were you on and what channel in the 90s? I was in the efnet/#emu for a time, part of it as an op too. Those were fun days when all that development was going on.
By your reasoning, if you liked a fan produced star wars painting you would feel morally justified to distribute prints for profit without the artist's consent simply because it's a derivative work? Translators don't owe you shit dude; they may not have legal rights to sell their work but that doesn't mean it's a-ok for everyone else to do it in their stead. Stop being a self entitled ass-hat and buy a damn flashcart.
Dalnet in #roms mostly. I show up in #roms-isos on efnet from time to time. #roms broke around 2002-2003 I think, we all split up, many of us moving to roms-isos after wondering around.
Umm, no, that would be idiotic, and that is not my reasoning at all. You made way too many leaps of logic between what I said, and what you think I said. I never even said anything about selling carts. If you remember where I started my post with the part that said "This is where I saw something that other people blow out of proportion and start flaming me because of something they misunderstand and can't be bothered to ask me to explain what I mean" (Saw? Nice typo). That's where normal, nice people would stop and re-read what I said, and maybe ask questions before calling me a self entitled ass-hat. I never, EVER, mentioned anything about selling repos. Stop putting words in my mouth, and if you can't spend the whole 30 seconds it takes to ask someone to explain their stance rather than call them an ass-hat, we're really not going to get along very well.
Why would you think I think translators owe me anything? And where did you get where I said it's ok for people to sell their work, it's not. And I said I was into emulation for ages, I don't need a flash cart, I'd just use emulators like I always have for years. All I meant was, people who make translations and want them used only certain ways need to keep in mind they're doing the EXACT same thing to the copyright owners they do not want done to themselves. Most have tact about it though and don't cross lines, others charge for beta releases of Ys 4 and make websites talking about the evil of xseed while they have nervous breakdowns talking about how bad Ys fans are.
btw, I'm betting if you wrote more, you would call me a kid or some crap too, right? Trust me, I'm not what you think, and I didn't write what you think I did. So please, like I said in the post, if you think I said something you dislike, before calling me an ass-hat, why not ask me to clarify like a decent person.
And yes, I rambled on just cause I like typing ass-hat over and over.
All "intellectual property" is a legal fiction. There is no ethical or moral harm in copying anything. IP law exists to encourage the production of innovations in the arts and sciences to flow into the public domain.
Actually, this is completely wrong. A derivative work can in fact be considered the property of the person who made it, not just the property it's derived from.
Just for some examples:
There were recent re-translations of The Three Musketeers and Count of Monte Cristo. You'll never find these on Project Gutenberg because, surprise, these particular translations are indeed under copyright, even though the original works aren't. Likewise, modern translations of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, The Water Margin, Journey to the West and Dream of the Red Mansions are also copyrighted despite the originals being public domain.
In fact there have been cases of authors being sued because something in their books was too much like a fanfic (Mercedes Lackey was a huge victim of this), and this is why most writers are cautioned to never read fanfiction anymore. Likewise, you ever wonder why Square made their own translation for FF5 on Playstation when fans had already translated the SNES ROM? Because, yes, they could indeed be sued for simply using someone else's translation.
So yes, these fan translators do indeed own the translation.
In the US, only the changes to a derivative work are copyrightable 1, and translations would not apply. So if FFIV was a fan made translation, they would have protection on "You spoony bard" but not too much else. Per copyright.gov's paper I just posted:
So if you make a derivative work, you MUST have legal right to do so. If you do not have permission, you need fair use. Fan fiction almost never falls into fair use, and translations would never ever fall into fair use. So it would have to pass the 4 pronged test2, and translations would always fail on #3.In any case where a copyrighted work is used without
the permission of the copyright owner, copyright protection
will not extend to any part of the work in which such material
has been used unlawfully.
The re-translations you mentioned fall into a completely different category. There's no current copyright holder of the original text, so it's public domain. So the translations are wholly owned by their current translators, but only the changes. The copyright does not extend to the whole text, just what the translators did. So anyone can retranslate and enjoy slight copyright protections. The only way their copyright can mean squat though is if they can somehow prove someone used their text, and not the originals, in work. You can't say "They used 'the count of Monte Cristo' in their book, I have copyright to it!" because Le Comte de Monte-Cristo has a 1:1 translation to English. Also, aren't you in that book?
So let's just say some people translated a game, I'd say hypothetically it's Ys IV. Say there's two people working on it, I'll make completely made up names, darkwolve and truce. Say darkwolve was the one who did the code work, he dumped the script, changed fonts, moved code as needed, and inserted the new script. The only things he could have copyright protections on is any code he added, and maybe the font if he made his own. Truce, on the other hand, would have copyright ownership of his version of the script, but it would be unenforceable. Meaning he can sue people, but would lose. They still have to go to court. And while he would always lose, there's not always a win\loss situation. If say a completely made up company, yseed, wanted to use this translation, they could base theirs off of truce's copy, but would have to make 100% sure they don't reuse anything he has copyright for, so wording and any mistranslations. And in the cases where a line can be translated more than one way, you can't use truces lines. If they just dumped it in, what would likely happen is depending on the judge, truce may or may not get a small amount of funds, or most likely, the game would have it's publication stopped. duce, I mean truce, would also be open for a copyright lawsuit. He would completely fail the fair use test on point 4, and would lose his copyrights. To get around all this legal issue, yseed decides it's best just to buy the rights to the derivative, and everyone but darkwolve is happy. darkwolve instead suffers a mental breakdown3
As for fan fiction, if someone wrote a fan fiction where Captn. Picard took a flying carpet and saved the US from terrorists, I'd have some major legal issues trying to publish a book about that. But if I owned the rights to Picard, and had him on a magic carpet, and the fan fiction writer tried to sue me, their work would most likely, depending on the judge, not have enough transformative value for protection on it's own. And while you say authors have been sued over fan fiction, I've not actually been able to find any. Marion Zimmer Bradley had some involvement, but there were never any actual suits in her case.
1. http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ14.pdf
2 http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107
3 http://www.ysutopia.net/
Edit: Missed where you said a name, Mercedes Lackey, was sued over fanfiction, but I can find no proof of that. Or even rumors of it.
Last edited by Ozzy_98; 07-11-2014 at 08:16 AM.
Actually, translations would be protectable under US copyright law even if the underlying work is not. It's something I run into all the time in my work in television and film as often we distribute product around the world and regional distributors do their own dubbing or subtitling and even though we hold the rights to the copyright on the underlying work, we can't simply reuse that additional work without engaging in a licensing agreement. I've certainly seen my share of litigation around copyright infringement based on unauthorized use of subtitles and dubbing.
You might have misread what I was saying, it wasn't really all that clear, but we're agreeing. The translations, if done with copyright holders permission, or if done from public domain work, are 100% copyright protected. If the base work is not protected by copyright, the translation has some copyright protections, but someone could make their own translations. In the case of TV, the regional people own the rights to the dubbing and the actually performance. If they made the dubbing without permission, they have no real copyright on it, however, if another company used this pirate dub, it would be one hell of a legal nightmare, and would depend on what mood the judge was in.
It's like classical music, people seem to think if a piece of music if public domain, they can use any classical music they find free. But while the music itself is public domain, the performance is not.
I'm not up to date with all the legal mumbo jumbo, but how would just buying a flash cart be any better than buying a repro cart? Both are used to play the translated ROM on actual hardware, and by purchasing a flash cart, I'm giving someone money in exchange for that ability. If the translator doesn't want people to monetize his translation, shouldn't he be against flash carts too? The seller of the flash cart is making money off my ability to play the translated ROM on actual hardware, just like the repro maker does. The only difference is that I only have to pay for the privilege once with a flash cart versus once for each game with repros. The general principle of paying for the ability to play the translation on actual hardware is still identical.
Repo's normally kill carts. They have to remove the roms, some people cut them off and may or may not desolder the legs because it's quicker than desoldering the chip and pulling it out. And if they do desolder, most of them toss the poor rom chips. and heck, nes carts have room, you could just tape them inside the case, done. A reversible reproduction (If you're so anal that you think oh noes, non-original solder, seek help).
Also, if someone sells your translation, you may get pulled into legal issues. So saying "Don't sell this" protects you, even if you do not care about repoductions.
Edit: Also, nice name. It is a simple name, as good as any. (See if you get the reference and if I'm right on my guess)
Last edited by Ozzy_98; 07-11-2014 at 10:33 AM.
If I sell you a flashcart, I'm not banking on the fact that you're going to play Star Ocean in english. You can play any game you want to load on the hardware, maybe they're not even copyrighted products, prehaps you're buying the product to play games you've personally developed. I don't know. But if I produce a Star Ocean cart in english I'm directly selling someone else's work. That cart never would have sold in Japanese, what would be the point of buying it over an SFC original? The only thing that makes my cart valuable in the eyes of a buyer is that it's playable in english. A fact that ultimately I had nothing to do with. That's the difference.
Also, since at least one person completely misunderstood my post, I should say this: I am, in no way, shape, or form, saying it's fine to take someone else's translation patch and sell it in a repo.
I'm just saying it's not right to take someone else's script, and translate it to another language without permission and think of it as something you have legal rights to own. You need permission first.
And I also would have issue with people who make repo's giving money to the translators, but not the programmers and artists who made the original game. But they were also paid to do it, since that was their job, so I'm kinda torn on that issue, it's a gray issue. Grey. One of them. I also have issue with repo makers having money to give away. It should just cover their time and materials. And if they did give money to patch makers, then that kicks any argument of fair use the patch makers held right in it's nuts.
I don't think anyone actually does that. That's why reproductions are such a problem; translators don't have legal recourse to protest them.
Yes, they very much do. Look at some of the amazing rants from Nightwolve on his Ys translations with Deuce. And saying "Do not sell this in a cart" implies they have control over it; if they add a please in front of 'do not' it helps a lot. But many translators I've ran into over the years think they own the script and all rights to it, when it's just not that clear cut.
And WHY do they not want their patchs in carts so badly? The only reason I can think of that's valid is the whole destroying other carts is bad (Plus the liability I mentioned before on the off chance a parent company decides to try legal action). Only other reasons I can think of are selfish control reasons, unless I'm missing something.
Edit: I think you may be overestimating repo carts too. WHY should patch translators have the right to sue repo makers? It's not like there's large companies cranking out repos. Sure, some people sell English repos much higher than they should, but good repos are $20-30ish+donor. If I send someone my FF3j famicom cart and they send it back to me with an English cart + return the roms, why does the person who re-wrote someone elses text to English have a say on what type of media I use it on, be it rom\emulator, flash cart, or real board? That's like me saying you're not allowed to read this post on any apple products, or in chrome. You must read it in IE or Firefox. And only on Tuesdays. Now someone selling FF II carts for $75 with no fancy extras is a bit of a different matter, but that's not what I'm talking about.
Last edited by Ozzy_98; 07-11-2014 at 01:01 PM.
Selfish control issues? Really? If I spent months working on a project, I don't even care what that project is. I don't think it's selfish to expect that someone else not come along behind me, throw my work on a new format and turn around and sell it for profit. Like I said in my PM, translators do this work for free because they love doing it, and they love seeing other people appreciate the work they do. It's insulting to have someone come along behind you and turn your work into a business for themselves. Fuck niceties, they don't owe you or anyone else a "please", just don't fucking do it because it's a dick thing to do.
Edit: Well I guess I do expect apple not to specifically bundle my post with distributed copies of Safari and advertise the disk as "Read Daria's latest Digitpress posts today!"
Edit: And this comes back around to my point "Don't be an entitled ass-hat". If you want to play FFJ3 on an NES, no translators don't actually care how you get there. But if you want a dedicated cart, make it yourself, get a friend to do it, whatever. But don't support another guy's for profit repro-making service. To suggest that you have a right to play someone else's work in the format you prefer just because you want it that way IS entitlement.
Last edited by Daria; 07-11-2014 at 01:12 PM.
Also, if a translation group/individual took money from a repro maker, I don't believe they could longer legally claim their patch was made for non-profit use only to improve their enjoyment of a game they may have already legally purchased (buy an original, dump it, and as long as its still on your shelf you could use th ROM).
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