Erik_Twice wrote:It's not about reporting, Ack, I'm simply wary of the aura of legitimancy that is given to what is pretty much a rom site like Emuparadise, Romhustler or whatever junk we use to play games made by Toaplan. It's one thing for this stuff to exist in an underhanded, clearly illegal, at best morally grey way and another to put it as preserving gaming or what have you.
Perhaps, though it's also worth noting that the Internet Archive makes it a point to try and backup as much as possible for the purpose of research. They're interested in trying to preserve these things, even if it is via a legal grey area.
They're not a ROM site. They preserve webpages, audio, video, text, etc., from the Internet that may well otherwise have been lost to time if they hadn't come along. And I don't believe they offer any means via which to download the game ROMs, just to play them in a browser-based emulator they helped design themselves. The hope is that people will be able to turn to this partly for nostalgia, but also for research, reference, and preservation. Otherwise, some of it may well be lost.
You've talked in the past about how you would like game reviewers to play certain classic games. And these guys are preserving games like I, Robot or the Birdie King trilogy at least partly for that purpose, without offering users the chance to pirate them on their own. If we could all access such games easily, sure, that would be great. But many of the games represented there are from long-defunct companies that never saw a home release.
Here's a quick read on it if you would like a look into the mind of one of the guys who put it together:
http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4419
