Is it legal to own a ROM of a game from a compilation?

[Ack]

You do realize you've been arguing about law with an anarchist this whole time, right noiseredux?

[noiseredux]

Actually I was arguing about semantics.

[vejita]

YAAARRGGGGGGHHHH ME HEARTIES!!!!

[elvis]

By that definition. Yes. You are right. However, I doubt that if you got caught stealing a used game from Gamestop and they called the cops that you'd be able to use this line of reasoning to get out of trouble.

Flawed analogy for two reasons:

1) Stealing a physical game from Gamestop is removing an item of theirs (i.e.: theft in it's true definition). Again, the discussions thus far have revolved around copyright infringement, not theft (regardless of those who try very hard to merge the two).

2) If I were to steal a game from Gamestop, the employees won't be calling the cops and saying "some guy came in here and didn't reward the game author". They'll be concerned instead with their own, first-party losses.

[MrPopo]

Breaking rocks in the hot sun.

I fought the law and the law won.

[RCBH928]

piracy is stealing because you are not rewarding those who put in the effort and risked their own money to bring this game, so they deserve the reward.

By that definition, buying a second hand game is also "stealing".

Not exactly, while it may sound similar.

Imagine it is a book.
If the author published a 1000 books and sold them all. Then that is all the author published and he got paid for it. When I let you read my copy or buy it there is a limit of 1000 books, and only 1000 books at a time can be read which the author got paid for it.

piracy is like buying one book, then replicating it 100, 000 times and distributing it while the author did not get anything for it. His hard time put in research/thinking of this book and he didn't get anything for those extra 100,000 copies.

when buying physical thing you give the author a reward for his hard work. If you buy an ideas(books, novels) or a replicated digital thing like a game , you are jut replicating and the author does not get anything. He put a lot of effort into studying this art and time of his life to create this thing, not just cause you can recreate it it means its for free.

Of course stupid companies and analyst are like " Nintendo lost a billion dollars because of piracy" Truth is all those people who pirated the software would have NOT bought it in the first place if it was for money so Nintendo is not losing anything. If you give me an apple for free, sure I will eat it. But if you tell me it costs me $10 i will not buy it. This is the reality, those who got the Nintendo games(just an example) would not buy it for its real price or half the price. So Nintendo did not lose any sales or potential buyers.

I will also like to add if prices were fair I would buy original. It is so much better to just get the real thing with its cover than having to deal with downloads , ripping stuff, playing around with your console/pc software and all the stupid hassle . But when you go to a place where it says "LOW PRICES" and tells you that Okami for Wii costs $40 as a low price because it is used and the new ones costs $80(that means you are saving big time) while it is sold on amazon for $20 new, What do you expect me to do?

[jfrost]

Agreed. I just found the dragging-of-the-feet a bit funny. I pictured a courtroom scene as such:

Judge: jfrost, you broke the law.
jfrost: what's wrong with that?

I really don't see what's funny about this at all. Really:

- You broke the law.
- What's wrong with that?
- Uh, the law is the law. So it can't be broken.
- Why?
- Well, it's the law, and by definition you can't break it.
- Alright, but do you have any justification for why I should follow this particular law, instead of just asserting it is the law? I mean, a law must be justified, no?
- Well, we have guns.
-

In which case, I really have to wonder who the joke is on.

[jfrost]

You do realize you've been arguing about law with an anarchist this whole time, right noiseredux?

Well, as far as I'm concerned, law is fine. But not any law, they must have some sort of moral justification. In the case of copyrights and patents, even morally that might be a grey area. Not so much in other cases.

Now, for someone to claim that the law is the law and it shouldn't be broken, ever, is a pretty extreme claim, much more radical than my point that not any law should be observed.

Now, if noiseredux was merely asserting that it is "wrong" to break the law in the sense that it is illegal and you're going to jail if you're caught, that's a banality, and I don't know why he even bothered to say it.

If, on the contrary, he was asserting that the law shouldn't be broken, then that's the point I took issue with. Most people I met do claim that we shouldn't break the law, but when pressed, they assert that the law must have some kind of justification (for instance, laws passed by Congress, which was elected by the people, are therefore justified). To sum up, most people do believe the law has got to be morally right by some standard, they just not formulate the question like this and so fall in confusions like the one in this thread (which I admit was partly my fault).

[noiseredux]

Now, if noiseredux was merely asserting that it is "wrong" to break the law in the sense that it is illegal and you're going to jail if you're caught, that's a banality, and I don't know why he even bothered to say it.

That is what I was saying. And I was saying it because it was relevant to the original poster who said he didn't want to do something illegal.

[jfrost]

Fair enough.