You don’t need to have the full game to be considered as piracy. Anything allowing to break a DRM could be considered as such.
Edit :
I understand that most of you do not agree with that, and I do too, but as a mod I have to put my feelings on the matter aside and put the community and lemmy.world interest first. If we get DMCA (or the EU equivalent), consequences could be quite significant for this community or the server itself.
You can find a more specific explanation of my stance here :
The site hosts files in the IPS format which only contain 100% original code and don’t in any circumstances I’m aware of break DRM. These old games are comparatively small and written in assembly language so these are small files that get merged with a text editor that add additional code to otherwise existing ROM files, which may or may not be illegally obtained.
Warning US only: They are often said to be covered under fair use but I am not certain that is true, I would assert they would be fully copyright to the author of the IPS file and whatever license they released their code under. The fact that their code isn’t complete isn’t relevant and it wouldn’t even be considered a commentary or derivative (both types of either fair use or granted license) as none of the original content is present. An example I can think of related to this in market would be “Riff Trax” which are audio tracks released by several comedians who used to perform on Mystery Science Theater 3000. They give a full commentary on a movie but contain none of the original material, it is on you to press play at a specific time during the movie so the commentary track aligns with the film. There are no references I can find in the case law to anything like “rom hacks” for what its worth so I would say this is extremely low risk in my professional opinion, but I do not want to dox myself and present credentials so ymmv.
Thank you for taking the time to share your expertise.
In the EU, things are a bit different. US Fair Use is quite open ended, with a lot of room for interpretation. In the case of EU copyright laws, the list of exclusions is explicitly listed in Information Society Directive Article 5.
In my opinion this could fall into either art. 5.3(d), art. 5.3(i), or art. 5.3(k), but I’m no copyright law specialist. I do have one among my friends, but she kinda got a child last week, I’m not gonna bother her for that 😅.
You don’t need to have the full game to be considered as piracy. Anything allowing to break a DRM could be considered as such.
Edit :
I understand that most of you do not agree with that, and I do too, but as a mod I have to put my feelings on the matter aside and put the community and lemmy.world interest first. If we get DMCA (or the EU equivalent), consequences could be quite significant for this community or the server itself.
You can find a more specific explanation of my stance here :
https://lemmy.world/comment/11587381
The site hosts files in the IPS format which only contain 100% original code and don’t in any circumstances I’m aware of break DRM. These old games are comparatively small and written in assembly language so these are small files that get merged with a text editor that add additional code to otherwise existing ROM files, which may or may not be illegally obtained.
Warning US only: They are often said to be covered under fair use but I am not certain that is true, I would assert they would be fully copyright to the author of the IPS file and whatever license they released their code under. The fact that their code isn’t complete isn’t relevant and it wouldn’t even be considered a commentary or derivative (both types of either fair use or granted license) as none of the original content is present. An example I can think of related to this in market would be “Riff Trax” which are audio tracks released by several comedians who used to perform on Mystery Science Theater 3000. They give a full commentary on a movie but contain none of the original material, it is on you to press play at a specific time during the movie so the commentary track aligns with the film. There are no references I can find in the case law to anything like “rom hacks” for what its worth so I would say this is extremely low risk in my professional opinion, but I do not want to dox myself and present credentials so ymmv.
Thank you for taking the time to share your expertise.
In the EU, things are a bit different. US Fair Use is quite open ended, with a lot of room for interpretation. In the case of EU copyright laws, the list of exclusions is explicitly listed in Information Society Directive Article 5.
In my opinion this could fall into either art. 5.3(d), art. 5.3(i), or art. 5.3(k), but I’m no copyright law specialist. I do have one among my friends, but she kinda got a child last week, I’m not gonna bother her for that 😅.