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ROMhacking.net shuts down after 20 years; database has been moved to the Internet Archive
(alternativeto.net)
this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2024
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Hi there.
I'm a bit hesitant about allowing or not linking to the website archives.
For the time being, and while we discuss about it among the mods, I'd like to ask you to refrain from posting any link to said archive.
If we decide to allow it, I'll restore the comments containing said links I've removed.
Thank you for your understanding.
Final Edit :
After carefully considering both sides arguments, and talking about it with LM admins and the mod team, we decided to keep the direct links removed.
LM allows meta-discussions around piracy, but not linking to possible pirated content. As we do not have the means and resources to check the whole 12Go dump to make sure no there is no copyrighted content in one of those Rom Hacks. More information here.
Rom Hacking is a gray area which is, depending on your location and/or interpretation of your local law, allowed or not. LW is under EU Jurisdiction (see that part of the TOS), and has to abide with rather restrictive law on that matter. There is unfortunately no broad "fair use" exception in that jurisdiction, only specific exceptions listed here. None of them seem to be applicable to Rom Hacks, which mean that they are to be considered potentially illegal under LW jurisdiction.
From what I see in the archive link I posted, it only contains patches, not playable games, neither original nor patched. You need a copy of the game already to make any use of it.
That's correct. The entire archive is only about 12GB; it couldn't possibly contain the full games.
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
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 😅.
First, please take into consideration that lemmy.world website and organisation is bound to EU laws (as stated in the TOS). As such, in the current case the EU copyright laws, that are as previously stated, far more restrictive than the US ones.
As you stated, the objective of ROM patches is to modify copyrighted material. One of the right protected by copyright in the EU is the right to modify a software.
By default, if no licence is given, software is considered as being under the most restrictive licence available (even if the source code is freely available), which means, in this case, an "all rights reserved" licence, which prohibit software modification.
In the EU, third party patches are considered as derivative works, and requires an explicit authorisation from the copyright holder to be published and used on copyrighted material. Some exceptions exists, as previously stated, but applying them here would be quite far fetched.
For now, and while I keep researching on the application of EU copyright laws to try to find a flaw that would allow me to authorize those links, I'll have to keep those links removed.
The comments would be restored if the link are removed by the comment authors.