@JayJ Thank you. Over the past recent months I've been seeing comments bashing SOJ and glorifying Kalinske, just because they read one biography, "Console Wars", which is based on one side of this story. I'm not saying that "Console Wars" is a bad book or anything, but using it as an only source for an argument is pretty biased in my opinion and I'm glad someone spoke up about it.
@Kalmaro Yep, if no one owns the rights to it or the company could careless about it, then anyone could do with the ROM of it as they very well please. Well, at least we can agree on something. Thanks for the response.
@ShadJV @shaneoh After re-reading my analogy I realized that it was too extreme, since the analogy begins to erode when adding the previous ownership. And comparing cars to a piece of digital media is bit of a vague way of giving a point of similarity, since cars are physical property and digital media is intellectual property. Although both could be preserved, something like a car would be harder to preserve since it's physically there and giving the owner much more power on what he or she wants to do with it, but with something like a game ROM it could just be dumped into cyberspace no problem.
@Kalmaro You're correct that there is no official rule to preserve games, but it will not stop people from doing so. There are certain games that are inaccessible to most or had become lost over the years that do deserve to be released to a wider audience inadvertently preserving them, however the companies that own said games have either lost the rights release them or could just frankly care less about releasing it at all. I wouldn't say it's the best way for people play games, but for some games it's necessary for most people actually obtain said games.
Online emulation is definitely a double edge sword, on the one hand it's preserving games that are impossible to find for future generations, but in the other there's the likely possibility of someone playing a game illegally, even though he or she can easily obtain it. It's a distribution problem that's in no way of stopping and probably never will.
@ShadJV That's where the ideals of coherent and moral thought begin to conflict, my friend. Yes, it's a extreme moral question, but it is to test was is truly the right thing to do.
@Kalmaro The thing that I find interesting about preservation like this is that it's constant battle between someone's coherent and moral natures. If you can obtain the game with multiple legal accesses to obtain it, then there's no necessary need for a ROM of the game to be dumped for future preservation, since their is multiple ways of obtaining it. However there are still a large some of games that have yet to be given such a liberty, whether it's rarity, source code being unavailable, legal reasons, etc. And something like ROM dumping is beneficial for those types of games, since they have a slim chance of actually getting a true legal release and game preservation is needed to ensure future generation can be able enjoy or observe said games.
To put it in car terms, say there's this car, a very rare car, the only one of it's kind still in existence, but the old man that owns it refuses to sell it even though it's rotting in a field and will probably be dust in a decade or so. Would you steal the car and have it preserved for future generations to observe or accept the old man's wishes and have it rot to dust?
Comments 5
Re: Hardware Classics: Unpacking The 32X, Sega's Most Catastrophic Console Failure
@JayJ Thank you. Over the past recent months I've been seeing comments bashing SOJ and glorifying Kalinske, just because they read one biography, "Console Wars", which is based on one side of this story. I'm not saying that "Console Wars" is a bad book or anything, but using it as an only source for an argument is pretty biased in my opinion and I'm glad someone spoke up about it.
Re: Flash Carts Could Be Slowly Killing Your Retro Consoles
@Kalmaro Yep, if no one owns the rights to it or the company could careless about it, then anyone could do with the ROM of it as they very well please. Well, at least we can agree on something. Thanks for the response.
Re: Flash Carts Could Be Slowly Killing Your Retro Consoles
@ShadJV @shaneoh After re-reading my analogy I realized that it was too extreme, since the analogy begins to erode when adding the previous ownership. And comparing cars to a piece of digital media is bit of a vague way of giving a point of similarity, since cars are physical property and digital media is intellectual property. Although both could be preserved, something like a car would be harder to preserve since it's physically there and giving the owner much more power on what he or she wants to do with it, but with something like a game ROM it could just be dumped into cyberspace no problem.
@Kalmaro You're correct that there is no official rule to preserve games, but it will not stop people from doing so. There are certain games that are inaccessible to most or had become lost over the years that do deserve to be released to a wider audience inadvertently preserving them, however the companies that own said games have either lost the rights release them or could just frankly care less about releasing it at all. I wouldn't say it's the best way for people play games, but for some games it's necessary for most people actually obtain said games.
Online emulation is definitely a double edge sword, on the one hand it's preserving games that are impossible to find for future generations, but in the other there's the likely possibility of someone playing a game illegally, even though he or she can easily obtain it. It's a distribution problem that's in no way of stopping and probably never will.
Re: Flash Carts Could Be Slowly Killing Your Retro Consoles
@ShadJV That's where the ideals of coherent and moral thought begin to conflict, my friend. Yes, it's a extreme moral question, but it is to test was is truly the right thing to do.
Re: Flash Carts Could Be Slowly Killing Your Retro Consoles
@Kalmaro The thing that I find interesting about preservation like this is that it's constant battle between someone's coherent and moral natures. If you can obtain the game with multiple legal accesses to obtain it, then there's no necessary need for a ROM of the game to be dumped for future preservation, since their is multiple ways of obtaining it. However there are still a large some of games that have yet to be given such a liberty, whether it's rarity, source code being unavailable, legal reasons, etc. And something like ROM dumping is beneficial for those types of games, since they have a slim chance of actually getting a true legal release and game preservation is needed to ensure future generation can be able enjoy or observe said games.
To put it in car terms, say there's this car, a very rare car, the only one of it's kind still in existence, but the old man that owns it refuses to sell it even though it's rotting in a field and will probably be dust in a decade or so. Would you steal the car and have it preserved for future generations to observe or accept the old man's wishes and have it rot to dust?