Legality of Game Reproductions

[wingzrow]

So gamereproductions.com has been up for quite awhile now, and if you had asked me a year or two ago, I would have said the site (and similar sites mind you) would have been shut down long ago for copyright problems.

So really, how do they do it? There's sites out there selling literally hundreds of licensed SNES repros made out of shaq fu every day, and yet if I throw a single copy of terranigma's NTSC version on eBay it gets taken down.

Anyone else confused about the entire lagality of repro selling? Obviously stuff like Bio-Force APE which is public domain should be fine, but for everything else...

So, thoughts?

[Duke.Togo]

It is completely illegal, at least in the US. It's just not worth the money/bad will for the copyright owners to pursue this in most cases.

[SparTonberry]

There is no legality.

Most likely the copyright owners just aren't concerned enough to go after the owner, or don't feel it is worth the money and effort to track them down and bring them to court.
(I know Nightcrawler of Transcorp tried to get one site shut down by reporting to his ISP, but the guy moved his site to server in Hong Kong or somewhere where the feds are less likely to cooperate.)

By putting an unlicensed repro (I think Super Fighter is the only site that actually licenses theirs repros?) on ebay, you're in clear violation of their terms so if ebay wants they can simply pull your listing.

And being unreleased does not make a game public domain. Someone owns the copyrights to Bio Force Ape, we just don't know who.

[Greg2600]

Most of the games offered on the site were never released in the US or anywhere. Some are hacks. Obviously it's not legal, but they're not likely to bother coming after you. Also wonder if they even know? My only issue with a site like that is that they will do a custom repro of a game that WAS released in the USA. To me that is blasphemy.

[wingzrow]

Has anyone ever sold a reproduction cart on eBay? I have a main account but don't want strikes against it just for selling a copy of mother/earthbound for the NES I made out of a broken Tecmo Super Bowl.

Could I just make a new account linked to my one paypal account and then not worry about anything happening to my main one?

[MASTERWEEDO]

I see repros on eBay sometimes.

[Duke.Togo]

I see repros on eBay from time to time, but also know of people whose listings have been pulled for the same. Enforcement seems inconsistent, and probably just based on people reporting the auction.

[Kitsune Sniper]

They're just as legal as my game hacks. Which is to say, they're not.

[Graham Mitchell]

What's funny about the eBay policy is that bootleg arcade pcbs are a dime a dozen on there. They even say its a bootleg in the listing sometimes. Heck, any phoenixed Capcom cps2 board is technically an EPROM conversion, and there are tons if them listed right now.

I've also bought several bootleg neo geo mvs carts off eBay without a problem. They list them as "not original" most of the time, and they go for super cheap.

If all this is okay in eBay, then why are they so strict about repro carts?

[BlastProcessing402]

What's funny about the eBay policy is that bootleg arcade pcbs are a dime a dozen on there. They even say its a bootleg in the listing sometimes. Heck, any phoenixed Capcom cps2 board is technically an EPROM conversion, and there are tons if them listed right now.

I've also bought several bootleg neo geo mvs carts off eBay without a problem. They list them as "not original" most of the time, and they go for super cheap.

If all this is okay in eBay, then why are they so strict about repro carts?

Back before Castlevania Double Pack was announced for the GBA, I was trying to track down a copy of one of the games on it for a reasonable price, and it was sickening how many of the GBA games on eBay were obviously bootleg. BRAND NEW WE JUST TOOK IT OUT OF THE BOX TO SAVE SHIPPING COSTS Yeah right, because GBA boxes are so bulky they'd be really hard to ship cheaply...

I finally just gave up. If I'm gonna play something like that, I'll just download the rom for free, I'm not paying some a-hole for a fake cart where the sram dies a year or less later. Thankfully, Konami did put out the double pack, though, so I did finally have a decent option.

I don't mean to demean repro carts as fake carts, they're a different thing and while still not strictly legal, they're not trying to scam people either, so while I don't buy them, I don't have the anger toward them the way I do the sort of thing that was going on with GBA fakes.

[Melf]

By putting an unlicensed repro (I think Super Fighter is the only site that actually licenses theirs repros?) on ebay, you're in clear violation of their terms so if ebay wants they can simply pull your listing.

SFT's games aren't repros; they're fully licensed localizations.

[Greg2600]

There's that one guy (stlouisrams2007 or whatever) who buys the Atari/Coleco fan made repros and homebrews and immediately puts them up on ebay for double what he paid or more. Been doing it for years, ebay has yet to kick him off.

[Kitsune Sniper]

Atari and most arcade companies aren't around to complain to eBay about bootleg PCBs and carts. Not so with Nintendo, Sega and Sony. I guess.

[SparTonberry]

Not too familiar with the CPS issue, but aren't those more like a restoration to fix boards that would suicide on their own anyways, if they hadn't already?

[kedawa]

If the board is dead already, then the key is lost and the easiest way to fix it is to use copies of ROMs with a known key.
Technically, that might be piracy.

[Graham Mitchell]

Many of the boards people phoenix haven't died yet. People are preemptively clipping the battery to prevent an issue down the road.

The thing about phoenixing is that when the battery dies, the board can no longer de-encrypt a certain lockout Rom. Somebody deencrypted thus rom and either distributes it for free or charges for it in the case of certain, more sought after games.

If you replace what I assume is the "lockout" rom with the new, deencrypted one, it no longer needs the battery to power the chip for eencryption. The loading screen is now hacked, and the capon logo says "phoenixed edition" underneath it.

Usually, unless it's a conversion, all the game EPROMs on phoenixed boards could technically be original, as long as they didn't accidentally erase or corrupt.

Now, since somebody reverse engineered capcom's encryption and hacked the title screen, and charges to distribute it, I'd say this technically constitutes some level of piracy, as capcom still owns the copyrights for most of these games, and many of them are available on comps for ps2 and psp. However, I don't have a personal issue with phoenixing or conversions (unless you turn a giga wing into marvel super heroes, then you should be tarred and feathered) because it's not like capcom is gonna send me a shiny new mars matrix board to play in my candy cab.

[kedawa]

Hopefully all of the hacked ROMs find their way onto the 'net.

[Graham Mitchell]

Hopefully all of the hacked ROMs find their way onto the 'net.

Most of them are. I know mighty pang and sf zero 3(Asian board) haven't been.

[Trebuken]

Some interesting reading.

http://lawofthegame.blogspot.com/2007/06/copyright-what-every-gamer-developer.html

It seems that video games would likely be protected similiarly to written works, but because of any actual trials the law is not clearly defined; it is not certain if the copyrights would be identical to written works. It is possible a ruling unfavorable to software publishers could arise. I think reproductions and such do not pose a significant enough risk of lost revenues as of yet to warrant any lawsuit.