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Comment by RealityCzech | Hacker News Reader

Information wants to be free.

Almost everyone leaves out the full quote. It is:

> On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.

--Stewart Brand at the first Hackers Conference in 1984

Perhaps, but the details could put certain people in life-altering danger. The safety of these people has very rightly taken precedence over publishing information which could be quite literally incriminating (although they almost certainly wouldn't be prosecuted for it, just sued for all they're worth).

Konami has contacted some insiders and some arcades with stern legal warnings and they are taken very seriously. There's a joke in the community - "konmai will sue" - but it's not just a joke.

Not sure how releasing this information benefits anyone. The games are sold and distributed by Konami directly, and only to licensed arcades.

Well, the process itself regardless of the data is interesting. Likewise, surely for archival purposes once the games are decommissioned and people want to preserve them it will be useful to have, no?

I find your response just a bit weird; it's a nice break down of niche and likely easily lost technology once Konami et. al. are done with it. It's a nice read, well written, serves those looking to archive these games in the future, and also is a great high level overview of the reverse engineering process.

Is the issue that it has no immediate benefit to you?

Sure, when the service and games are decommissioned it would make sense. But Konami is still churning these games out every 9 months to a year.

There's a lot of politics in this particular scene regarding game and network services cracking.

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