this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2024

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ROMhacking.net shuts down after 20 years; database has been moved to the Internet Archive (alternativeto.net)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

Hi there.

I'm a bit hesitant about allowing or not linking to the website archives.
For the time being, and while we discuss about it among the mods, I'd like to ask you to refrain from posting any link to said archive.
If we decide to allow it, I'll restore the comments containing said links I've removed.

Thank you for your understanding.

Final Edit :

After carefully considering both sides arguments, and talking about it with LM admins and the mod team, we decided to keep the direct links removed.

LM allows meta-discussions around piracy, but not linking to possible pirated content. As we do not have the means and resources to check the whole 12Go dump to make sure no there is no copyrighted content in one of those Rom Hacks. More information here.

Rom Hacking is a gray area which is, depending on your location and/or interpretation of your local law, allowed or not. LW is under EU Jurisdiction (see that part of the TOS), and has to abide with rather restrictive law on that matter. There is unfortunately no broad "fair use" exception in that jurisdiction, only specific exceptions listed here. None of them seem to be applicable to Rom Hacks, which mean that they are to be considered potentially illegal under LW jurisdiction.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 month ago (1 children)

If it's a romhacking site, it wont have the actual ROMs, just the patches. It never would have survived 20 years if it had been hosting ROMs.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

You got a good point here. I'll take that into consideration.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 month ago (2 children)

From what I see in the archive link I posted, it only contains patches, not playable games, neither original nor patched. You need a copy of the game already to make any use of it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I'll take a look tomorrow. I'm UTC+2 (I just can't sleep right now 😅), so I'm not yet in the required state of mind to go and check all of that.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That's correct. The entire archive is only about 12GB; it couldn't possibly contain the full games.

[+] [email protected] -12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

You don't need to have the full game to be considered as piracy. Anything allowing to break a DRM could be considered as such.

Edit :

I understand that most of you do not agree with that, and I do too, but as a mod I have to put my feelings on the matter aside and put the community and lemmy.world interest first. If we get DMCA (or the EU equivalent), consequences could be quite significant for this community or the server itself.

You can find a more specific explanation of my stance here :

https://lemmy.world/comment/11587381

[+] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Thank you for taking the time to share your expertise.
In the EU, things are a bit different. US Fair Use is quite open ended, with a lot of room for interpretation. In the case of EU copyright laws, the list of exclusions is explicitly listed in Information Society Directive Article 5.
In my opinion this could fall into either art. 5.3(d), art. 5.3(i), or art. 5.3(k), but I'm no copyright law specialist. I do have one among my friends, but she kinda got a child last week, I'm not gonna bother her for that 😅.

[+] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

First, please take into consideration that lemmy.world website and organisation is bound to EU laws (as stated in the TOS). As such, in the current case the EU copyright laws, that are as previously stated, far more restrictive than the US ones.

As you stated, the objective of ROM patches is to modify copyrighted material. One of the right protected by copyright in the EU is the right to modify a software.

By default, if no licence is given, software is considered as being under the most restrictive licence available (even if the source code is freely available), which means, in this case, an "all rights reserved" licence, which prohibit software modification.

In the EU, third party patches are considered as derivative works, and requires an explicit authorisation from the copyright holder to be published and used on copyrighted material. Some exceptions exists, as previously stated, but applying them here would be quite far fetched.

For now, and while I keep researching on the application of EU copyright laws to try to find a flaw that would allow me to authorize those links, I'll have to keep those links removed.

The comments would be restored if the link are removed by the comment authors.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Saying you're cross usually means angry.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Oh, my bad 😂

I meant that I was hesitant.

As you can see, English is not my main language.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Two Irish nuns were sitting in their car at a traffic light when a bunch of rowdy drunks pulled up alongside.

"Hey, show us your tits you bloody penguins!" shouted one of the drunks.

The Mother Superior turns to Sister Margaret and says "I don't think they know who we are. Show them your cross!"

So Sister Margaret rolls down her window and shouts, "Sod off you little fucking wankers before I get out and rip your goddam balls off!"

Sister Margaret looks back at the Mother Superior and asks, "Was that cross enough?".

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

🤣

[–] [email protected] 63 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

Such a shame...

Here's Gideon Zhi's response and a little explanation, from his side anyway, of what has actually happened.

If you're not familiar, he runs Aeon Genesis, one of the longest, if not the longest, running translation groups.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yeesh, I've never used the website but that NightCrawler person seems like they have some serious control problems. The fact that the whole community was willing to chip in/pay for it and take it over and the admin still refused to cooperate is pretty shitty. At least it looks like someone managed to convince the admin to let them host and takeover the site's wiki.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

This is oddly common in ROM hacking/mod scenes. There's been no shortage of drama in the Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy Tactics communities, too.

At the very least I wish people would consider the bus test once a site/project gets to a certain critical mass. Insane to me that a site with this kind of profile never had coverage for that scenario this entire time.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

after some further research, it became apparent that Discord staff could save a significant amount of money by changing S3 providers. The new bucket was set up, but when the time came to make the change NC refused to do it, even though he was not the one footing the bill.

There's a conspicuous absence of explaining why they wouldn't do it. What were their actual concerns? Did they not voice them or are they just being withheld?

NC refused to join the Discord to talk about solutions in real-time.

Why was this a requirement?

Did we vent in private? Sure.

And what did you say?

Did we dox or threaten? Fucking hell, no! And frankly I'm LIVID at even the suggestion that we did.

Well something clearly happened if his family was brought into it, so if you're going to skimp on the details, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to believe that.

The whole thing just comes back to the larger issue with discord: the record vanishes.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I really hope that tcrf doesn't take over. I STILL can't contribute to that website because it requires you to sign up for Discord and agree to Discord's ToS just to paste some stupid code into their bot.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Wait are you talking cutting room? I had no idea they did that. Very weird for a site that's just copying Wikipedia.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Copying Wikipedia? Where did you get that from? They have loads of content, including stuff like text dumps, that you'd never see on Wikipedia.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I mean the format, it's a generic wiki formatting. Not referring to the actual content. The content they have is awesome.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Yes, the software that runs the site is Mediawiki, same one that runs Wikipedia and others. Sites can add their own registration requirements.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 month ago

One of the last Web 1.0 bastions in gaming. Really hate to see this, especially when Discord is around the peak of its popularity right now. Here's hoping a more future-proof alternative than that arises.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I thought it was NOT shutting down and is instead turning into 100% a news site only?

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Functionally speaking the distinction is negligible. Users won't be able to download patches from the site, and new patch submissions won't be accepted.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

People also used RHDN as a news source to find out about new hacks and translation releases, and it was the best resource for doing that. And it sounds like it still will be going forward, so... I disagree with you on that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Yeah, WTF?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Oh, like abandonia? Their last six articles, all newsvertainment for gambling shit, are years old, but their database is still there last I checked.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

Nooooo!!!!!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

Wtf no

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

NOOOOOOOOOOOO

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

A lot of internet gardens are dying these days…

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Jesus Christ.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Hail Hydra

[–] mindbleach 1 points 1 month ago

Well, fuck.