Is the Game Industry Going to Come After You and Your Roms?
- Scribbled on April 17th, 2007 by Nathan Vig
- Filed in Legal Brief, Platformer, WTF
Aaron Stanton, over at about.com has a article suggesting just that. The game industry has kept a blind eye for many years, but now that all three major consoles have some sort of virtual console on their systems, you can now download, and pay for old game that, once, were just not available. So now that the defense, “but I’d buy them if I could.” is gone, are lawsuits on the way?
Being that Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft have the ability to make money off their old games. They have a monetary value that can be attached to them. Once we have that, is it too much to say the lawyers will be coming, shouting about the millions in lost revenue, due to these Rom pirates? Are people going to be sue for thousands of dollars because you have Paper Mario on your PC? Probably not, but it is something to think about, with Sony’s not pleasant history with lawsuits are we next?
April 17th, 2007 at 9:02 am
It’s within their right to sue people for this action, but I don’t have to like it
I’ve not used ROMS for years but I did when I was in college. In my humble opinion, I think those that shouldn’t “steal” or “borrow indefinitely” ROMS and games are those that can afford to purchase them.
College kids are known to be poor souls, many putting themselves through college hoping to get a good degree and help our economy grow. I think they deserve a break - leave them out of it.
Once you graduate and hold a good job where you can afford to spend some money on entertainment, you should be held liable (or at least more so) for stealing games.
Of course, there is that gray area… games you want to play from your childhood that aren’t on the Virtual Console (wii) or XBLA (360) or PSN (PS3) and you really want to play them. What do you do?