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Comment by PostOnce | Hacker News Reader

Have you really ripped them off if you already bought the game in the 80s? Should you have to buy it on a new platform to play it again, if your computer is perfectly capable? Should you have to buy ROM dumping equipment? What's the difference?

I'd bet most people just want to play their long-lost favorites, which they already bought once, long ago.

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You are mixing pears with rocks. I never bought a NES or these ROMs and I can still play them in this webpage. Also that just because you bought the original product it doesn't give you a livetime access to other future products or a license to rebrand and refurbish them.

I believe this kind conversation is soon full of hypocrites who would be the first defensors of IP concept if the object of debate was their own IP... in case they could produce something profitable/valuable which is a major key point (it is easy to give for free the work from others).

> I never bought a NES or these ROMs and I can still play them in this webpage.

That is no argument. This website would be entirely above-board with one simple change: it buys N copies of each game, and ensures that only N people are playing at a time. That makes it, legally, a library. Libraries already make "digital loans"; and libraries already loan out game discs. This would just combine the two.

If you're disputing the legality of any part of that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

> it doesn't give you ... a license to ... refurbish them.

Yeah, maybe not in the US, yet. But it's really a thing people believe should be there:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronics_right_to_repair

> hypocrites who would be the first defensors of IP concept if the object of debate was their own IP

No, this debate comes from people like 4am, who has de-protected 40-year-old abandonware games by defunct companies (https://archive.org/details/apple_ii_library_4am&tab=about) for the sake of allowing people to play them at all in the future, because if nothing is done, the disks will soon rot and no copies will be left in existence.

The developers and publishers of these games frequently come to 4am and thank him for de-protecting these games. Because they never thought they'd see them again. That is not the stance of someone who resents having "their IP" shared with the world.

I know it's not directly translatable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aereo

An antenna for everyone wasn't enough. How could "buying a copy for x" be enough.

That's a moot argument. You may have a right to own a ROM because you own the original hardware the ROM was extracted from. But that's an entirely different matter than whether they have the right to distribute a copy of it to you.

It's a valid argument, but I personally never had a NES and don't legally own any of these games. How do developers of these projects make sure Nintendo get what's due from people like me?

I'm quite happy to pay as long as the money is going to the right place. I wouldn't buy one of those Raspberry Pi arcade things on ebay that just profit from shamelessly ripping off others' work.

Do games (or any software) ever go into public domain?

Feels like something on the order of 25 years could be reasonable for NES.

Same as other copyrighted works: in the US 95 years after publication (or 120 years after creation if shorter), when it is work for hire without clear authors attached, otherwise 70 years after the death of the last author. So expect copyright on NES games to expire late in the 21th century or early 22th.

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