What's with all the UK bootleg emulator crap on ebay?

[Hobie-wan]

Let me start by saying I'm not meaning to be insulting. My mother is English and I love British comedy and peculiarly British foods. I always have a jar of Bovril on hand, though I use it on toast as opposed to drinking it.

That being said, WTF is up with all the discs of old console roms for sale on ebay coming from the UK? They like to say that the games are in the public domain, but I'm sure that's just spurious bullshit. I first really started seeing them when looking for Battle Squadron for Genesis a while back. For those in the US, if you search for "Battle Squadron" there are two of the bootlegs that show under international sellers. I was just looking up Castlevania Legacy of Darkness for N64, and there's one of it too showing under international. Both are in the UK and proclaim these to be Windows games. The Castlevania person also has discs full of roms for various old consoles and computers as well.

I can't believe that UK copyright law is that messed up in the opposite direction from the stranglehold ours are turning in to. Any Britons have any insight to this madness?

[GSZX1337]

I don't know anything about copyright law, but I know that those emulator andROM CDs are nothing new. All the time there are auctions for "every N64 game" or "every Genesis game". Hell, there (not sure if it's still there) was a seller claiming to release "PC remakes" of N64 games. They were CDs with a .exe launching an emulator and a ROM. I wouldn't be surprised if soon there are "every Sega Saturn game" and "every PS2 game" auctions.

[neilencio]

I don't think those are really public domains. The sellers are probably just out to make a quick buck selling software that they have no right to sell.

Maybe we should post links to romsites on their auctions.

[Curlypaul]

I've noticed more and more of these things showing up lately and its a joke. I feel sorry for the ill-informed people that buy these things. I should post a 'question' poining out that these things are firstly illegal and secondly available for free to anybody who looks

[lisalover1]

I see it more as a case of "There's a sucker born every minute". Yeah, the people selling them aren't right at all for selling normally free roms, but it certainly is funny to see people bid on these things.

[Niode]

It depends what games they are. If they really are in the public domain they can sell them and distribute them however they want.

[gtmtnbiker]

If you see an auction that you think it's illegal, you can always flag it and let Ebay take care of it.

[Hatta]

I see people advertising roms on Craigslist a lot too. I just flag them.

[Hobie-wan]

Yeah, seems like its an offshoot of the car boot sale which the UK seems to have more of where I think the US has more flea markets. I did flag a bunch of that stuff and I flag Craigslist rom and backup sellers too. Regardless of one's moral standing on roms of any age, selling them is just being a dick.

I just wondered why it always seems to be UK sellers with these things.

[Curlypaul]

Its becuase we are all pikey chavs out to make money out of nothing. I reckon that has something to do with it