A ROM selling scumbag

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Originally Posted by johnnyb

That`s one of the most ridiculous things I`ve read....
If you murder someone and the victims family says don`t worry about that`s all well and good, but the police will still nail your ass!

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Not the same thing, at all. Here, I'll make it more clear. How about if instead of a friend, it was your parents. If you go into your parents pantry without asking and take a bag of potato chips and eat it, did you steal it? You didn't ask, you took it, is it now stolen? Just to keep it outside of minor laws, etc. lets say you're 30 and have been living in another state for 10 years, so you're no longer financially dependent in any way. Taking a material good is not the same as murder, murder is murder is murder. Even still, there are degrees of murder. Its totally different if you shoot a helpless grandma between the eyes to steal her purse vs. changing the radio station in your car and not seeing the person crossing the street.

Or how about this: If I copy and paste exactly what you just typed on another website, am I stealing it? How is a line of computer code any different? is it how many lines that makes the difference? Is it the fact that it makes a program that makes it stealing all of a sudden? Programs are an iterative process, so at what point is it stealing? The more you know about the legal system, the more you realize that there is no black and there is no white, only a billion shades of gray. Giving a ROM of a Nintendo game from a defunct company is like an eggshell white. Charging money for a ROM is certainly a darker shade, but it really depends on what scale. The FACT is that there has never been an official court decision on whether or not non-profit ROM trading of technically obsolete (meaning not sold new for the purposes of this discussion) games is illegal. You can proclaim all you want, but at the end of the day, you're just speculating. Copyright infringement is a civil matter anyway, not a criminal matter.

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Originally Posted by MrMatthews

It's only illegal if the original company complains? He's not lying, he's delusional!

That's like saying it's only illegal to kill someone if the victim's family presses charges.

Idiot.

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I love how everyone compares ROM trading to murder. Is taking a napkin from McDonalds without buying something also comparable to murder?

What about repros? Everyone LOVES repros. Guess what, this is the EXACT same thing. Anyone in this thread that is bashing this guy and owns a repro is a fucking hypocrite.

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Originally Posted by 17daysolderthannes

I love how everyone compares ROM trading to murder. Is taking a napkin from McDonalds without buying something also comparable to murder?

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No one said anything about taking a napkin from McDonalds is comparable to murder, both can be considered crimes that`s all... and yes if McDonalds really wanted to get picky they could have you charged for taking a napkin if you just walked into the store, grabbed a handful and walked back out. Not likely to happen but can none the less.

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Originally Posted by Da_Shocker

Hmm I sell bootleg copies of Windows XP on CL.

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Tatatatata......Microsoft is watching

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Originally Posted by 17daysolderthannes

I love how everyone compares ROM trading to murder. Is taking a napkin from McDonalds without buying something also comparable to murder?

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I believe with a little bit of imagination, you'll see that the idea behind those comparisons is that a crime is a crime. Just because you don't get in trouble for it doesn't make it any less illegal.

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Originally Posted by 17daysolderthannes

What about repros? Everyone LOVES repros. Guess what, this is the EXACT same thing. Anyone in this thread that is bashing this guy and owns a repro is a fucking hypocrite.

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And since I'm sure you were specifically referring to me here, I might as well acknowledge this.

Was Bratwurst breaking the law by selling repros? Yes, I'm quite sure he was, even though he was quite upfront about what he was doing and I'm sure he wasn't actually in it for the profit. On the same token, was I breaking the law by knowingly buying a repro? Probably.

So I guess when you look at it from that light, this guy and I are both criminal scumbags.

I know from your perspective it's probably ridiculous for me to be okay with one form of copyright infringement and not another, but the problem I have with the subject of this thread is the blatant dishonesty. He's deliberately lying about the products he's selling for the sole purpose of turning a profit, and then defending himself by saying "if no one complains, it's not illegal!"

He's a cheat and an idiot, and I find both offensive.

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Originally Posted by MrMatthews

And since I'm sure you were specifically referring to me here, I might as well acknowledge this.

Was Bratwurst breaking the law by selling repros? Yes, I'm quite sure he was, even though he was quite upfront about what he was doing and I'm sure he wasn't actually in it for the profit. On the same token, was I breaking the law by knowingly buying a repro? Probably.

So I guess when you look at it from that light, this guy and I are both criminal scumbags.

I know from your perspective it's probably ridiculous for me to be okay with one form of copyright infringement and not another, but the problem I have with the subject of this thread is the blatant dishonesty. He's deliberately lying about the products he's selling for the sole purpose of turning a profit, and then defending himself by saying "if no one complains, it's not illegal!"

He's a cheat and an idiot, and I find both offensive.

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Actually I wasn't referring to you, I just knew a bunch of people bought Bratwurst repros and I was sure at least one was grabbing a torch and pitchfork in this thread.

I would like to read what his original listing was to know exactly what he was claiming. What if he was selling, say, a Dreamcast disc with every NES game and the Nester DC 6 and said "I am only charging for the labor of making the disc, the emulator and ROMs are provided free." Do you really see that as different than a repro? I don't. In fact, I myself once sold an NES and an SMS/GG emulator disc for Dreamcast for $20 to someone online. I offered many times to upload it and tell him how to burn it, etc. but he insisted he would rather have me burn it, so I told him $20 for the trouble and he was OK with it. Had he wanted me to burn a more recent game, say PS2 or newer, I would've required he show me some proof of ownership before I made it for him because newer games that are still being made and/or sold new need to be bought to support game makers. Regardless of what the law says, I think once a reasonable amount of time has passed since the last officially licensed game is made for a system(a year or so to sell off the stock) and the system is considered obsolete, it is ethical to download a game for educational and historical preservation purposes. If I like a game/company, I'll buy their new product to financially support them, end of story.

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Originally Posted by Da_Shocker

Hmm I sell bootleg copies of Windows XP on CL.

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It's not a crime until MS finds out and has you strung up by your small toes.

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Originally Posted by Rusty Venture

It's not a crime until MS finds out and has you strung up by your small toes.

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That's another thing I think people are misunderstanding about things I've said before. Its definitely a crime to sell bootleg copies of XP as geniune, or even at all for that matter. If Microsoft KNOWS you are doing it and says "meh, that's fine with me," its no longer a crime, well, as long as you tell people its a bootleg copy, selling it as authentic would still be fraudulent even if Microsoft was OK with it. With my ipod scenario in that other thread, I said if you took your friends ipod and HE KNEW ABOUT IT and did nothing, its not a crime. By knowing you took it and doing nothing, he is consenting you to be the new owner and its no longer stealing, he is giving you the ipod.

So, he's selling pirated software saying it's legit?
Or he's just selling CDR collections specifying they're Rom packs?

If he's saying it's Legit software in his argument just with 'You', I agree that's stupid, he has no grounds to stand on.
If he's not advertising this 'legit game' fact, then I agree with him on the matter out of principle.

Report him all you want if he's offloading CDRs at $10 a pop 'dishonestly', more power to him if he's stating they're roms.

Lurking and sniping his ads is one thing, but further rising a notice to the issue by 'not providing' detailed information, and then posting his email does indeed, make you a grade A 100% asshole Diosoth; Congratulations.

I would say welcome to the club, but that's not really our motto, it's:
"There can be only one!" :lol:

Based on the original post, the worst thing he's saying is that it's completely legal: not that there are likely to be repercussions, but it's still not technically lega, though neither is distributing unlicenced repros, unreleased beta copies, or imported games. (at least in the US, hence why ebay had recently taken to removing region converter listings, and even AR's... for Game Gear in a particular case -which has no region lock...)

The more important part is that he's charging for the "emulator" that he "has the rights to" total BS... whcih is not cool. On top of that, no sane emulator developers will distribute their program with copyrighted material included.


And I think I get what 17days is saying about the petty theft thing, it's the type of crime that won't be prosecuted if charges aren't pressed. (which isn't going to happen to individual users/consumers anyway, even small time repro producers won't really matter to big companies, it's the ROM distribution sites that they go after, and even then it's mostly nintendo that really goes after anything older than the current/direct previous gen stuff) Even then there's a legitimate purpose for such sites, as it is legal to downlod back-ups to games you own, for the majority of us without cart readers. (or if you own a game but it's broken -which would extend to disc media) -which is almost the only thing I do foe SNES emulation, except for a couple games that are unreleased and one or two I just wanted to try out. (which I tend to delete anyway)

No sane person would pay for a bunch of emulators and ROMs when they can be downloaded for free. I've never really condemned piracy, but charging others to obtain pirated goods is scummy. He also never once claimed they were ROMs in his initial CL ad, just "thousands of games". Anyone selling hundreds of NES titles on one CD-ROM is selling ROM files.

We're not talking about repro carts. Those require actual hardware. This idiot is selling PC emulators and ROM files he downloaded. And time and effort? I can download a full ROM pack through bittorrent, it takes maybe 10 seconds in a torrent search box.

One guy tried to sell a Dreamcast with some inexpensive games and 2 emulator discs for $200. He actually thought the emulators were worth about $50 each.

Another listed a modded 360, admitting that all the game discs were copies, and wanted $500.

Both ads got pulled in hours.

I also see people listing their DS Lite with some flash card that costs $10 online and trying to charge $150 because it has games on it.

It's like the idea that they shouldn't be charging money for free pirated games is foreign to them. Forget the legalities of it. Would you pay $20 for a bottle of water when there's a drinking fountain ten feet away?

Anyway, distributing ROM files is illegal, money charged or not. It's why CL pulls these ads. And if this dudes going to make personal physical threats over it then he deserves to be called out for it. Crying like a child because he can't sell things he has no right to.

Its silly to compare rom discs to a repro, a repro is created because someone wants to play the real thing on their console
and have a nice box to put in their collection.
illegal? yes most definitely.

But selling rom discs and defending yourself just makes you look like a douchebag.

I mean at least be honest and say "hey i'm a douchebag out for a quick buck!"

repro's are hardly a quick buck with all the effort it takes to make one.


so yes this guy is indeed a scumbag, though i have given up on reporting them since eBay just made it impossible to report someone.
(last time i tried to report someone they had me go through 20 pages of online forms to fill in what my complaint was about)

A spindle of 50 blank Memorex CDs at Walmart was... about $12. Torrent downloads are free. If I made such discs at $10 each there's no way I could justify "time and money".

Something also tells me that a certain someone has already emailed the guy and he'll show up here to "defend" himself eventually. That poster knows who he is. I hope the jackass does come here. I hope he finally makes a public death threat or something, anything that can be forwarded to the FBI.

I find nothing wrong w/ buying and selling reproductions as long whoever is selling it list the item as a reproduction and not genuine.

What I do have a problem w/ is somebody selling them and claiming its completely legal and also making all sorts of threats as this guy on craigslist was doing.

as for borrowing stuff. I borrow stuff all the time without asking, but only if the person isn't there, and after that as soon I get a chance I let them know I borrowed something from them, thats not definitely not stealing and everyone has done this at least once.

I never have... but I also never lend any of my things out to anyone. A policy I borrowed after a CD I loaned out came back looking like it had been used to play frisbee. Some people believe everything is indestructible and are incapable of taking care fo their things.
Basically, since I wouldn't want someone running off with my things, I don't take theirs.

Repros... if it's unreleased games, translations, or otherwise imports(say, Terranigma playable on an NTSC console) then it should be okay. Repros of stuff like NWC carts or "common but pricey" games shouldn't be allowed.

forgetting about the ROM or EMU legality...

the scumbag is selling stuff that is normally free and easily found :mad: