Saturn Homebrew Drama

[TrekkiesUnite118]

There is this idea that there is no copyright for creators of anything that would generally be subject to copyright if the creation is an unauthorized derivative work. Anderson v. Stallone, No. 87–0592 WDKGX, U.S. District Court, C.D. California. (1989). In that case, a screenwriter wrote a script using the Rocky characters that he said Stallone stole and used for Rocky IV. But the plaintiff had no copyright in the original parts of the work in the first place because it was unauthorized regarding its use of the Rocky characters created by Stallone. Hate to say it, but this is a murky and gray situation regarding these translations and ROM patches. You've done a ton of work into a copyrighted work that a company who doesn't seem interested in enforcing its own copyright is doing, but generally that means you don't own the work, the copyright holder can. They can use your work and market it as their own, or go for injunctions. And the other guys are ultra scummy and also violating copyright in selling them. Doubtful that there is recourse by the ROM hacker. Might as well tell SEGA what is going on.

Selling to me is over the pale. But I think it's way too much of a tu quoque argument to say one rom hacker is stealing work because they are using another rom hack as a base. Any rom hacker can be called a thief by changing the base work without permission of the owner. It's like touching up a Da Vinci painting and saying it's annoying Da Vinci gets all of the credit for the original. Of course he does, you just enhanced the underlying original work.

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.

Right, I'm well aware of that view of the situation which is another reason I'm not sure reporting for copyright violation of a Translation patch is viable. While the Translation patches are annoying, my irritation is more focused on the homebrew games/applications, and the blatant not caring about what kind of damage it can do to the actual projects. For example if id Software were to get wind of them selling the Wolfenstein 3D port with the retail WAD, that could result in the port project itself getting caught in the crossfire and getting shut down.

[roce]

Some of it, but it uses SBL which is owned by Sega.

Yes, but it is enough for FB, no?

[Barone]

Yes, but it is enough for FB, no?

To be honest, Facebook doesn't really give you the tools to report small copyright or mishandling of content and that's why a lot of people moved their stuff to such groups in the first place.

This "Nicholas John Joseph Taylor" guy is allowed to act like a dictator in that group being its admin. It's how it actually works.
Unless he posts pedo stuff, death threats or crazy ass COVID nonsense, probably nothing will happen to him.
16k members... yikes!

The bottom line is always the same: nobody cares, you're dealing with gray area stuff, so quit the drama and enjoy being ripped off, bad mouthed, etc.

[HyperSnugz]

It's a shame people are exploiting the trend of convenience and the fact traditional forums seem to be extremely scary for most people in 2022, so of course most "ordinary" people will turn to thieving bastards like these to satisfy what they need instead of bothering to poke around and find the necessary information themselves properly.

Reminds me of how XBMC became synonymous with piracy for "ordinary" people, despite it being a perfectly legitimate open-source project.

Either way, what Barone summed up with at the end of his post is probably the best way to put it: idiots will be idiots, the only thing you can really do in a legal grey scenario is to gatekeep them from receiving official support and educate them if possible.

[Black_Tiger]

Selling to me is over the pale. But I think it's way too much of a tu quoque argument to say one rom hacker is stealing work because they are using another rom hack as a base. Any rom hacker can be called a thief by changing the base work without permission of the owner. It's like touching up a Da Vinci painting and saying it's annoying Da Vinci gets all of the credit for the original. Of course he does, you just enhanced the underlying original work.

In the case of the Saturn patching and Barone's work, we're talking about people giving no credit to the people whose work they're advertising as their own and using misleading descriptions of the end products.

Most of the patches involved are the equivalent of someone knitting a hat to place on a cabbage patch doll. That is not remotely piracy.

[Baloo]

Barone with all due respect, you are flat out wrong. You dont buy computer software and the right to change it when you have a physical copy, you buy a restricted license to use it. See ProCD v. Zeidenberg, a seminal case on this issue. All those EULAs that we scroll through have terms. Video games have terms.

You can however, reverse engineer video games and video game systems to run unproven code on them. Just look at Sega v. Accolade (9th Cir) (1992) and Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. v. Connectix Corporation. But that does not mean you have the right to then change discs and redistribute them with other copyrighted material. It is a very gray area of the law with many fine distinctions.

Also, There is a factual difference between my writing and your lines of code to Pinnochio. Yours is a derivative work because it uses the original Pinnochio game. Your code cannot stand alone as an original work with use and merit, it does one thing: Alter an existing copyrighted work. You dont have the right to patch it, regardless of whether or not the patch itself is cleanroom. If the parch contains copyrighted materials, it is wrong. Patches have been removed from Romhacking.net before on copyright grounds: Just look at the Super Mario Advance 4 GBA patch that re-added all of the ereader content back in. When it was put on the WiiU shop for sale, it was summarily removed.

Video game companies dont go after romhackers because they are benefitting the companies when the games are patched and remade, Sonic Mania is a prime example of this. As is the Darius Gaiden port to Genesis which got an official release. So did the port of Pac Man Championship Edition to the NES by Namco, that was a romhack. Companies know it is free hype and advertising and its a training ground for developers who they can hire and make money off of later.

and the PR is terrible when they do go after them. People were pissed off when the Chrono Trigger remake, Streets of Rage Remake, the Super Mario 64 FPS port, and many others were shut down with cease and desist orders. But derivative works have no rights.

As far as my writing goes, I would not mind if someone added a coauthor credit to my own work because that is actually what happens sometimes when you submit articles for publication. Sega-16 can compile and sell this website and all of its writings in it, and I have no legal recourse for compensation because I submitted them for free. See the court case Tasini v. AOL, Inc., 11-CV-2472 (JGK) (S.D.N.Y.; Mar. 30, 2012)

Plus, imitation is the highest form of flattery. If someone wants to take my work and spread it out to others on the internet, good for them. I dont think its moral to steal someones work and put your own attribution, that is plagarism. But MasterLinKuei did NOT plagarize your work. You received due credit. And its not like you asked for permission to

In the case of the Saturn patching and Barone's work, we're talking about people giving no credit to the people whose work they're advertising as their own and using misleading descriptions of the end products.

Most of the patches involved are the equivalent of someone knitting a hat to place on a cabbage patch doll. That is not remotely piracy.

This is factually wrong. No one took Barone's work without credit and sold it. MasterLinKuei gave Barone credit for his changes on both Romhacking.net and the Youtube video.

These changes made by romhackers are NOT the equivalent of someone knitting a hat on a cabbage patch doll. They are full translations of unreleased games, like Miles Edgeworth Ace Attorney Prosecutors Path, Policenauts, and many others. They are effectively localizations, porting English language translations to Japanese works, like Trekkies work on Saturn Grandia. They are even putting back in copyrighted material into games where it was removed, like replacing the locations and music from Crazy Taxi back into the PC port where the music was changed from the Dreamcast original. In the latter case, that cant even be sold by SEGA in the original way because they dont have the rights to the music. We are not talking level editors here.

Whether or not romhacking is moral or justified or ethical is an entirely different argument from whether it is legal. The courts have weighed the balance and Congress has created fair use laws. Romhacking is not fair use in and of itself, until some court decides otherwise. But no one here can think of themselves as high and mighty because they wrote a few line of extra codes and fixed a video game they didnt own.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

In the case of the Saturn patching and Barone's work, we're talking about people giving no credit to the people whose work they're advertising as their own and using misleading descriptions of the end products.

Most of the patches involved are the equivalent of someone knitting a hat to place on a cabbage patch doll. That is not remotely piracy.

Part of what's irritating with the Translation patches is for things like Grandia it's still technically in beta testing. So them hosting it makes version control very difficult for me as I get people reporting bugs from very old versions as well as complaints from people who paid money for a repro that they can't finish because it's a very old version that had game crashing bugs in it. As much as I'm not happy with it being on CDRomance fully patched, I'll at least acknowledge that they're very good with keeping it all up to date.

The other problem is distributing the fully patched images for translations can possibly attract unwanted attention resulting in the patch developers getting Cease and Desists. From what I remember the Shining Force III translation got into hot water from people doing that, and it's why the patcher requires you to present a legitimate disc.

Then there's the blatant lying going on. They're at this point now so desperate to keep people from leaving their group to go to sites like RHDN or SegaXtreme to get their own patches that they are flat out telling people that patches are more illegal, our patching software is malware, etc. It's basically a giant ego driven circle jerk for them.

[turboxray]

Barone with all due respect, you are flat out wrong. You dont buy computer software and the right to change it when you have a physical copy, you buy a restricted license to use it. See ProCD v. Zeidenberg, a seminal case on this issue. All those EULAs that we scroll through have terms. Video games have terms.

You can however, reverse engineer video games and video game systems to run unproven code on them. Just look at Sega v. Accolade (9th Cir) (1992) and Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. v. Connectix Corporation. But that does not mean you have the right to then change discs and redistribute them with other copyrighted material. It is a very gray area of the law with many fine distinctions.

Also, There is a factual difference between my writing and your lines of code to Pinnochio. Yours is a derivative work because it uses the original Pinnochio game. Your code cannot stand alone as an original work with use and merit, it does one thing: Alter an existing copyrighted work. You dont have the right to patch it, regardless of whether or not the patch itself is cleanroom. If the parch contains copyrighted materials, it is wrong. Patches have been removed from Romhacking.net before on copyright grounds: Just look at the Super Mario Advance 4 GBA patch that re-added all of the ereader content back in. When it was put on the WiiU shop for sale, it was summarily removed.

Video game companies dont go after romhackers because they are benefitting the companies when the games are patched and remade, Sonic Mania is a prime example of this. As is the Darius Gaiden port to Genesis which got an official release. So did the port of Pac Man Championship Edition to the NES by Namco, that was a romhack. Companies know it is free hype and advertising and its a training ground for developers who they can hire and make money off of later.

and the PR is terrible when they do go after them. People were pissed off when the Chrono Trigger remake, Streets of Rage Remake, the Super Mario 64 FPS port, and many others were shut down with cease and desist orders. But derivative works have no rights.

As far as my writing goes, I would not mind if someone added a coauthor credit to my own work because that is actually what happens sometimes when you submit articles for publication. Sega-16 can compile and sell this website and all of its writings in it, and I have no legal recourse for compensation because I submitted them for free. See the court case Tasini v. AOL, Inc., 11-CV-2472 (JGK) (S.D.N.Y.; Mar. 30, 2012)

Plus, imitation is the highest form of flattery. If someone wants to take my work and spread it out to others on the internet, good for them. I dont think its moral to steal someones work and put your own attribution, that is plagarism. But MasterLinKuei did NOT plagarize your work. You received due credit. And its not like you asked for permission to



This is factually wrong. No one took Barone's work without credit and sold it. MasterLinKuei gave Barone credit for his changes on both Romhacking.net and the Youtube video.

These changes made by romhackers are NOT the equivalent of someone knitting a hat on a cabbage patch doll. They are full translations of unreleased games, like Miles Edgeworth Ace Attorney Prosecutors Path, Policenauts, and many others. They are effectively localizations, porting English language translations to Japanese works, like Trekkies work on Saturn Grandia. They are even putting back in copyrighted material into games where it was removed, like replacing the locations and music from Crazy Taxi back into the PC port where the music was changed from the Dreamcast original. In the latter case, that cant even be sold by SEGA in the original way because they dont have the rights to the music. We are not talking level editors here.

Whether or not romhacking is moral or justified or ethical is an entirely different argument from whether it is legal. The courts have weighed the balance and Congress has created fair use laws. Romhacking is not fair use in and of itself, until some court decides otherwise. But no one here can think of themselves as high and mighty because they wrote a few line of extra codes and fixed a video game they didnt own.

Yeeaahhhh... I don't think you really don't understand. Linkeui's patch contains Barone's work. A patch SHOULD NOT CONTAIN OTHER PEOPLES PATCHED WORK UNLESS THEY RECEIVED EXPRESS PERMISSION TO DO SO. Maybe posting it in all caps makes is more clear.. I dunno. All he had to do was instruct the user to apply said patch (Barone's), and then apply their patch. And yes, it's not directly sold... but there's a some shady shit going on with in-your-face patreon links accompanied by obscuring the original authors work (patch and via proper channels), and hosting the pre-patched rom in a direct google drive link that makes it appear that it's all your work.... in the description of the video (among other related things). Look, by all means do what you want with your own stuff - including e-begging for donations, whatever. But don't do it with other people's work.


@Trekkies That really sucks! I mean if you're the author or part of the team, and they're fan of the work, they should be respecting you. Period. Are you looking to get the word out? If it helps, I'd retweet on twitter (which seems to be "the hub" for news and links to other places retro stuff nowadays).


People have been shitty about this kinda of thing for the past 10 years or more. Especially with repos being sold without the author or teams consent that created the projects. And I think it's a bit bullshit to be more or less equating romhackers and translators as essentially "thieves". And that it's just some simple squabble among thieves. It's NOT.

I have some experience in this as well. I did the NES2PCE games for the PC-Engine (Megaman 1 & 2, Castlevania, Ducktales, Jackal, etc). An early version of my Megaman game on PCE got made into a repo sold by PCE WORKS. While I'm the author of the NES emulation/simulation code that runs the NES rom on PCE, I'm not the author or have any copyright claims to the original and patched rom (or CD version as well that I made with upgrades to the game). He eventually stopped selling it because of the some of the negativity he was receiving, but I had people (collectors) tell me that since I did not make a repo myself of the game and sell it, that I have no right complain that someone else did and sold it - even though that's my work running the final product. I actually made upgrades to the Megaman 1 game with 4bit color graphics, larger sprites, more tiles.. but in the end I stopped working on all that nes2pce related stuff and upgrades because of those kinds of assholes that are just going to sell it and not respect or care about authors wishes.

Anyway, I don't understand how the faecbook group could be so ignorant - why would you piss off or disrespect the people making the stuff that you want??? I mean, I've worked on rom hacks, as well as translations myself... I know the incredible amount of work that goes in it - and I completely respect all who put in that work. Some of it is downright grueling, but regardless, people are taking a good chunk of their personal time out of their life to complete these projects so that others can enjoy.. the community - and honestly rarely get the credit or recognition that homebrew or indie projects gets. I just don't understand the attitude that would potentially jeopardize any future work on your beloved system. Why????

[Baloo]

I am not trying to downplay the work that anyone does, I have enjoyed many the work of romhacking and think the people who spend their time doing this are ultimately serving the video game community. But what bothers me is that the game companies are so ambivalent and idiotic relative to their consumer base that they cant possibly figure out some of this work is clearly going for profit. So you have this totally gray legal area where people are doing free work on commercial products that are easily sold. But you wouldnt be able to do the free work if the companies either A: Did their job and didnt leave everything up to bean counters, and B: People didnt steal. But let's face it, if there wasn't widespread piracy in the first place on the web, no one would enjoy these romhacks in the first place. It is very murky all around. I just dont think it is as clear cut as dont build on someone else's romhack. Do original game developers want romhacking on their work? You never ask express permission from the original owner. That gets lost in the mix I think. So how can you say you want the same principle applied to your own work?

I think the sellers are messed up all around. But using romhacks in other romhacks is way grayer than putting someone elses work on a repro cart and selling it outright.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

@Trekkies That really sucks! I mean if you're the author or part of the team, and they're fan of the work, they should be respecting you. Period. Are you looking to get the word out? If it helps, I'd retweet on twitter (which seems to be "the hub" for news and links to other places retro stuff nowadays).

Yeah I'm pretty much in a similar boat as you were with the NES2PCE games in regards to my Final Fantasy port. Right now I'm just trying to get the word out that this particular facebook group is not a simple Sega Saturn fanclub as it appears. It's basically just a front for rampant piracy and theft run by some very dishonest people. You're free to spread the word as much as you want, but there are some in the community putting a video together on the matter, so maybe wait until that's finished?

On a side note, it's a shame you pretty much stopped with those NES2PCE conversions. I found them really interesting and were part of what inspired me to see if I could do a similar kind of recreation of FF1 on Saturn.

Anyway, I don't understand how the faecbook group could be so ignorant - why would you piss off or disrespect the people making the stuff that you want??? I mean, I've worked on rom hacks, as well as translations myself... I know the incredible amount of work that goes in it - and I completely respect all who put in that work. Some of it is downright grueling, but regardless, people are taking a good chunk of their personal time out of their life to complete these projects so that others can enjoy.. the community - and honestly rarely get the credit or recognition that homebrew or indie projects gets. I just don't understand the attitude that would potentially jeopardize any future work on your beloved system. Why????

Honestly these people don't really understand the ramifications of it and there' no explaining it to them. When I brought up "What happens if you giving out the NES FF1 ROM with my homebrew port get's me hit with a C&D?" one of the admins flat out said "So what? It's not like your source code and everything disappears when that happens! You can still keep working on it! You're untouchable!" These people are simply naive idiots high on their own farts. They only care about making money off other peoples work, and stroking their own ego by "Providing a quality service to the Saturn community" by effectively prepatching and distributing full images of translated/ported games.

[Segadream]

Take the hit, keep on trucking....
At the end of the day YOU know YOUR
contribution was for the good of ALL gamers...
Crappy People ALL OVER THE WORLD are ..
Well Crappy people....and to loose the WHOLE POINT
for personal reasons, you and I and the crapsters loose...
There's always going to be someone willing to ruin
it for everyone else.... because it's not a true passion...
If you got the passion, you're doing it for everyone including
you....
Don't let the jack asses be the reason WE ALL can't
have nice things....
Thanks for the heads up,(I don't use fb)
And a million attaboys from the bottom of
my heart for all your generosity....😘

[Pyron]

Well...

It once again is very sad to hear and became common nowadays. Nobody respects the work done in favor of a community.
Since its a "hack" everybody could copy/sell/ take by himself and nobody going to give a shit about it

For me, the worst part is reading a lot of guys from the community that supports this behavior

And you don't need to go to Facebook to see this type of guys
here on S16 the same happens with me, Lord Copy deliberated was stealing my work and I proved it
and in the end, people says..

"well fuck off, create another topic, and keep going because I want this ripped-off version thanks"

And guess what? They do it and keep claiming it as their own, without credit and respect.




Sadly Trekkies I fear that's not going to be the last time that we going to see this type of problem over here.

[turboxray]

Yeah I'm pretty much in a similar boat as you were with the NES2PCE games in regards to my Final Fantasy port. Right now I'm just trying to get the word out that this particular facebook group is not a simple Sega Saturn fanclub as it appears. It's basically just a front for rampant piracy and theft run by some very dishonest people. You're free to spread the word as much as you want, but there are some in the community putting a video together on the matter, so maybe wait until that's finished?

On a side note, it's a shame you pretty much stopped with those NES2PCE conversions. I found them really interesting and were part of what inspired me to see if I could do a similar kind of recreation of FF1 on Saturn.



Honestly these people don't really understand the ramifications of it and there' no explaining it to them. When I brought up "What happens if you giving out the NES FF1 ROM with my homebrew port get's me hit with a C&D?" one of the admins flat out said "So what? It's not like your source code and everything disappears when that happens! You can still keep working on it! You're untouchable!" These people are simply naive idiots high on their own farts. They only care about making money off other peoples work, and stroking their own ego by "Providing a quality service to the Saturn community" by effectively prepatching and distributing full images of translated/ported games.

I mean hey, if it inspired anyone then it was totally worth it! haha I didn't know about this FF1 project. That's really cool! (I have a lot of nostalgia for that game too)

Nowadays I'm focused on creating tools for my dev projects, and trying to bring "C" for PCE up to speed like SGDK and GBDK. I want a low barrier to entry, but still want some decent speed to go along with it - and a modular library design as well. I have a music and SFX engine too.. prepping for that to go into the whole "develop kit" thing. Anyway, I was away from the scene for like 4-5 years (a few years now), while I went back to school, so I didn't realize that you were doing Saturn development until I saw some of threads for the Saturn video and game translations. Maybe you were before and I wasn't aware? But yeah love seeing Saturn getting some dev love hahah. If you have a link to a video, then I'll definitely tweet it.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

I mean hey, if it inspired anyone then it was totally worth it! haha I didn't know about this FF1 project. That's really cool! (I have a lot of nostalgia for that game too)

Nowadays I'm focused on creating tools for my dev projects, and trying to bring "C" for PCE up to speed like SGDK and GBDK. I want a low barrier to entry, but still want some decent speed to go along with it - and a modular library design as well. I have a music and SFX engine too.. prepping for that to go into the whole "develop kit" thing. Anyway, I was away from the scene for like 4-5 years (a few years now), while I went back to school, so I didn't realize that you were doing Saturn development until I saw some of threads for the Saturn video and game translations. Maybe you were before and I wasn't aware? But yeah love seeing Saturn getting some dev love hahah. If you have a link to a video, then I'll definitely tweet it.

When the video is done I'll be sure to post it here.

As for involvement in the Saturn Homebrew scene, I've always followed it since about 2007ish, but I only recently started getting my hands dirty in the past 5 years or so? With doing actual homebrew and not hacks/translations for the past 2 years maybe? If you want to see what the FF1 Demo looks like so far this video has some good footage of the latest build at the 31:30 mark: