Where to (legally) acquire content to play on RetroPie

thelostsoul

@mitu I'm just trying to understand what the difference between this archive page and a website who offers ROMs for download is. What if I create an archive website and offer the download links, just as the archive site, but do not allow them to download. Because the terms do not allow this. So, whats going on here that the DMCA allows this? And BTW its only for the US, so shouldn't this be only accessible from the US in that case? I am just confused about how this stuff works from legal perspective.

Clyde

@thelostsoul AFAIK, The Internet Archive was recognized as a public library and thus, got a exemption from copyright laws by the DMCA. So I would concur with @mitu that their hosting of retro software seems to be legal, but since a) this doesn't allow the use of that software by everyone, and b) even if so, it would only be legal in the US, and linking to it may cause problems for websites in other countries, e.g. retropie.org.uk.

Some links about the matter:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Archive#Software
https://archive.org/about/dmca.php
https://www.copyright.gov/1201/docs/librarian_statement_01.html (mainly #2 and #3 of the penultimate paragraph.)

Cognate subject: this year's lawsuit by some book publishers

https://www.vox.com/2020/6/23/21293875/internet-archive-website-lawsuit-open-library-wayback-machine-controversy-copyright

edit: I wonder if and how DMCA permissions may apply to foreign countries the US have copyright treaties with, like the WIPO Copyright Treaty, but here my motivations to dive deeper into the matter subside without further importance to my own activities.

thelostsoul

@clyde My issue with understanding the subject is that everyone can upload and distribute anything they want, like in YouTube. It is not a closed management like in a physical library or any controlled library environment.

and b) even if so, it would only be legal in the US, and linking to it may cause problems for websites in other countries, e.g. retropie.org.uk.

This is exactly one of the things I am referring to. Every website and community seem to tolerate the site, even though it contains illegal hosted ROMs for outside of the US. Note: I am not trying to make problems here. I feel like the need to say that. What if a game company (or anyone else) owning the trademark and copyright of a software that is sold outside of the US, such as other versions from Japan or Germany do not want its software distributed via archive site? These properties never came out in the US and do not fall under the copyrights of US.

Clyde

@mitu I saw that you removed the site's adress from the original post. My follow up also contains a link to it, if only to their statement about the DMCA status. Although I think that this link should cause no problems and is helpful in this discussion, I leave it to you to remove it if you think otherwise. 😇

Clyde

@thelostsoul (I think) I understand your point, and I sometimes wonder myself why none of the big players known for suing rom sites (looking at you, Nintendo) didn't take legal action against the Archive yet.

After all, a similar thing happened to Project Gutenberg, which started to block any access from German IPs after an order from a German court. Users with German IPs only see this:

Your IP address has been automatically blocked from accessing the Project Gutenberg website, www.gutenberg.org. This is because the geoIP database shows your address is in the country of Germany
[...]
A Court in Germany ordered that access to certain items in the Project Gutenberg collection are blocked from Germany. Project Gutenberg believes the Court has no jurisdiction over the matter, but until the issue is resolved, it will comply.

Mind the last sentence, though. They did it mainly as a precaution, maybe the Archive has just more ~~balls~~ confidence in their legal foothold.

Folly

@clyde said in Where to (legally) acquire content to play on RetroPie:

@thelostsoul (I think) I understand your point, and I sometimes wonder myself why none of the big players known for suing rom sites (looking at you, Nintendo) didn't take legal action against the Archive yet.

I think everyone will benefit.
That's why the big players are not suing.

I think, these are the reasons :

It will take a lot of commitment/money of the big player to archive everything they have.
In business it always about reducing costs so it's nice someone else does the archiving.
Keeping it safe for generations to come.
If you would like to earn money from your old games, you wouldn't earn the money you have to earn to make in profitable.
Nowadays more and more people are needed in the branche, this way people can look back and learn from it.
When they learned enough they will become the new developpers
It's good advertising : Oh WOW. The did that in the past, I want to have the new stuff from that brand. Or I want to work for them.
As a company you can make use of the open community (marketing, development, open source, programming, etc)
Suing does cost a lot of money and efford.
What will you gain after suing ?
Some "players" don't even exist anymore. If it wasn't archived, all the stuff was gone forever.

mitu

@thelostsoul said in Where to (legally) acquire content to play on RetroPie:

What if a game company (or anyone else) owning the trademark and copyright of a software that is sold outside of the US, such as other versions from Japan or Germany do not want its software distributed via archive site?

They can request the removal of the content. See:

Clyde

@folly said in Where to (legally) acquire content to play on RetroPie:

Some "players" don't even exist anymore. If it wasn't archived, all the stuff was gone forever.

That's a mistake many adherents of so-called "abandonware" often make. Normally, if a company "vanishes" by shutdown or takeover, any remotely valuable assets will be taken over by others. Of course, some assets may be preserved, others may be thrown away or buried so deeply that they'd never see daylight again, but as a matter of prudence, I would suspect the former by default in absence of evidence to the contrary.

That said, I understand and share the community's pursuit for preservation. I just don't think that it's shared by the copyright holders to an extent that would stop them from suing unauthorized external preservers. One difference I do see, however, between the Archive and other rom sites, is the Archive's popularity among the common internet users. Going against the Archive may be considered unnecessary bad press as long as there are less prestigious "pirate sites".

Dan1300

@mitu I swear according to the site its fine as long as it is for personal use but can't find it again. Will have to dig a bit more.

Sorry for the link.

Dan1300

@mitu For discussion purposes where is a place I can buy the rights to the ROMs?

I didn't find anything outside of the archive site that give an option to buy or use them (unlike other ROM sites). I am all about ensuring people get paid for their time and effort.

mitu

@dan1300 said in Where to (legally) acquire content to play on RetroPie:

@mitu For discussion purposes where is a place I can buy the rights to the ROMs?

What rights are you referring to ? Usage/distribution or re-distribution/modification/performance/etc. ?

I didn't find anything outside of the archive site that give an option to buy or use them (unlike other ROM sites). I am all about ensuring people get paid for their time and effort.

Other 'ROM' sites may be selling them illegally and archive.org doesn't give you any option to buy or use them.
This topic is specifically created so that users find legal avenues to acquire games/ROMS for their own personal use, so this is one place where you can look into.

dankcushions

@dan1300 some roms are available legally (eg, the links in this thread). but you can't 'buy rights' to whatever roms you locate online. even if you could somehow approach a publisher and purchase a license from them directly, most old games do not have active publishers, or may have transferred the rights to who-knows-what holdings company.

it would be nice to just have the 'spotify/netflix of games' where you could get access to vast amounts of legal content through one service, but even that is basically impossible to set up, since the games industry is not like the music/film industry, where there's a few major publishers and existing rights organisations with whom these major deals can be arranged.

i anticipate that nintendo (one of the few active publishers who retain the rights to a vast library of titles) will do this at some point - have a subscription 'virtual console' emulator service on tvs/phones/consoles/etc, permitting access to their entire catalogue. probably not until they've exhausted all other ways of reselling us that content, though ;)

Dan1300

@dankcushions I say 'buy rights' in relation to like when you buy a CD, MP3 or a game disc from lets say Game Stop ect. You are given a copy for personal use.

I wish they would have that service but you know as well as I do that they will drag their feet forever.

Nintendo had put up a few older games in the Store like Super Mario Bros or Resident Evil for example. Maybe they may expand that further and I think they could be working that.

I know for example that PS Store had or has all the Soul Caliburs for purchase and download. Why couldn't we do this for more systems or the Pi. I'd buy all the games for my Pi if offered the chance, even though it may not be console specific or having to go to a bunch of sites to get what you want. I am throwing alot of brain scratchers but then I think this is the biggest issue of this whole thing.

YFZdude

@dankcushions said in Where to (legally) acquire content to play on RetroPie:

i anticipate that nintendo (one of the few active publishers who retain the rights to a vast library of titles) will do this at some point - have a subscription 'virtual console' emulator service on tvs/phones/consoles/etc, permitting access to their entire catalogue. probably not until they've exhausted all other ways of reselling us that content, though ;)

I thought they did this concept with the Switch where you pay a fee for online services and get access to either a rotating selection of games or the entirety of whatever they choose to have in the library. Nonetheless, it definitely would not be the entire library for every system as we would all wish.

Also, I can't remember the details, but my impression of US copyright laws was that even if you own a game, you can't download the ROM from someone else. I thought there was a legal way of making your own backup copy but distribution or download is likely off the table. Probably similar situation in many countries.

I think this is why the used games market continued to thrive for so many years. Alas, the current trend of games being sold and consumed entirely in digital format makes it unlikely that will survive forever. Is there even an option for selling a console game you purchase from the digital storefront?

thelostsoul

@yfzdude Owning a copy of a game does not grant anyone a free copy of existing ROM files of this game. First off, when you buy a cartridge (or any other physical media), then you buy this one single particular item. And you get the right to play and do whatever you want with it, including selling and reading its ROMs. You never paid for a digital representation of this game (ROM files), but you are allowed to read the data for yourself. The ROM files for this game are also read/dumped from other cartridges you never paid for. So downloading someone else ROM files means you never get the same game as you paid for and therefore cannot be seen as a "backup".

That is at least the situation is for cartridges and cds and other physical medias for games, at least from my understanding.

themazingness

Due to the Steam sale, I've been able to confirm a few more Piko Interactive games.

Tunnel B1 comes with both Playstation (original) and DOS versions of the game. No renaming is necessary. The Playstation game's .cue and bin files are in the ...\TunnelB1\ps1\game folder.

Radical Rex and Tinhead are SNES games and Brave Battle Saga and Switchblade are Genesis/Mega Drive games. Just browse to the res folder, copy the "game" file, and rename them with the proper extensions (e.g. .smc for SNES and .bin for Mega Drive).

themazingness

Additionally (not by Piko Interactive), Lizard is a homebrew NES/DOS/Windows game for purchase on Steam. The NES and DOS versions must be added as DLC, but the DLC is free.

A Former User

I know I'm late for the party here, but I'd like to mention I agree that there's lots of ways to get ROM's legally, even cartridge dumping is a way to do it, copying cartridge ROM's of games you already have legal whether 2nd hand or kept them since they were factory condition, it doesn't matter, both won't violate the terms of the license, it's only when you give or sell them to other people it becomes a problem.

Virtual Console is a good way to do it but unfortunately those are encrypted, meaning they will not work on third party emulators. Sega beat them to the punch on this one and sold their retro games on Steam in DRM free fashion as you had mentioned in this thread, but it is still only for personal use because distributing them without Sega's consent is illegal.

themazingness

I haven't tried it (too many games to play), but I learned about this homebrew Genesis rom for sale that has a demo version to play before you buy it.

Arkagis Revolution: https://arkagis.itch.io/arkagis-revolution?fbclid=IwAR2yKUpMoFAUOxK-Xy7VaTMfZO2m6K6UDuSoaw9vwPWGGnwfRLkG_rDdOjU

Crush

So lately there's being allot of new games released on retro systems, some of them are available in rom format as well.
Ironically allot of Dreamcast devs do not sell them as digital download, even though most DC owners i know, have replaced disc reader with a disc emulator.

Sega:
Xeno Crisis: https://shop.bitmapbureau.com/products/xeno-crisis-sega-mega-drive-genesis-rom-download
Demons of Asteborg: (Not yet released but demo is available) https://demonsofasteborg.com/
VergeWorld: (Not yet released but demo is available) http://retrobones.com/

Dreamcast:
Xeno Crisis: https://shop.bitmapbureau.com/products/xeno-crisis-sega-dreamcast-rom-download
Hydra Castle Labyrinth: (Free): https://www.obscuregamers.com/threads/hydra-castle-labyrinth-new-port.1838/

Vectrex:
You are free to use any official released games, overlays and manuals for non-profit. this does not include third party titles. (more info in post below)