Legality of Youtube, Rom Downloads, and Vimeo?
 

Hello,

Although that those websites, Youtube, Rom Downloads, and Vimeo, are against copyright and do a infringement to the legality, they are still there.

If you want to listen michael jackson, you've got music that you can hear for free.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Nh7...47CF5DBBBB19F3

Those albums are available in store, so why Youtube is still legal.
Same for roms.

They are illegal and shall NOT be used.

More reading: https://www.howtogeek.com/262758/is-...ms-ever-legal/
edit: example of coolrom for roms

Many sites like YouTube pay copyright holders to host their work even if it is posted by individual users. Unless you're Madonna or something, why do you care and are commanding that we shall not use these sites?

As far as old ROMs are concerned, what really is the value of an old Atari Space Invaders ROM image? Really nothing...

Apple released large amounts of code from the original Mac OS into the public domain and it's much more valuable (the source for the application MacPaint and the graphics API QuickDraw).

And yet Lakka exists, which is a distro for playing ROMS.

Kali, Parrot, etc. exist as "pen testing" distros. How much pen testing do you think actually goes on with Kali compared to it being misused?

Then there are movies. That's where the big money is at so that's the least tolerated, and maybe that's the operative word here. Megaupload went under and Kim Dot Com is still on the run last I heard, but movies upload sites still exist. People upload them and new releases are taken down sometime as quickly as they go up, but there they are and some sites have been up for years. Some IP's have the 5 strike rule, so even if they are aware you're doing something illegal they turn a blind eye to it the first 4 times, if they enforce it at all. Not all though, and some young kids have paid a hefty fine for downloading a song or two.

You've never watched a video on youtube? I'll admit I watched, or more precisely, listened to one today. A version of a recording of a Jimi Hendrix song I had never heard before. Probably not legal, but there it is, along with cuts from Blue Oyster Cult, Tool, and more bands than I could mention. Why, you even linked to one. ;)

I've noticed many native French speakers tend to use "shall" where I would have written "should". You shall not take it literally. ;)

Yes, these sites do pay royalties, and police copyrights.

ROM downloads, however, should not be presumed to be legal.

I'm not saying it's necessarily legal, but who owns the copyright to the ROM of Space Invaders and are they going to pay to sue anyone in court over it? What if the person they sued owned and bought an original Atari 2600 and the Space Invaders cartridge as well? Wouldn't that be legal fair use?

I'll ask my cousin. She's a District Court judge, albeit state not federal, so while she can send people away for life for murder, copyright is a federal issue. But she's the closest I can come to getting an opinion from a judge.

I am not sure it pertains, but I see three types of legal downloads of rom images of games for different systems.

1. Some IP owners have released the right with conditions. A common condition is that you own the game, but want or need to play it under an emulator. If they do not police this and protect their IP rights, it may not be enforceable. They retain the full IP rights if they police this themselves. Often these images are available from the vendors site, or a business partners site.

2. Some IP owners have abandoned older games and images voluntarily as a service to older fan base, or lost the rights to them in mergers and bankruptcy actions or by government action. Abandoned this way makes them virtually public domain.

3. Some IP owners no longer exist. The company when under, the people died, and no one transferred the IP rights. These are fully abandoned and available in many countries (not all).


There is an odd mixture in a few cases, where the IP rights have been stripped or abandoned on one jurisdiction but not others. The laws are so different in different countries that this is actually pretty common. You might need a program, several maps, and a lawyer trained in international IP law to track down exactly who could legally download a particular image and who should not.

All of the sites I download from have pretty good descriptions of where they stand on the law, and are scrupulous are removing or blocking anything that might put them on the wrong side of a legal action. If you run into a site that does not discuss that subject, beware!

All of the big providers have a legal staff to make sure that they are on the correct side of IP law, fair use, and international regulations. They misfire on occasion, but very rarely. They indemnify their users against action as long as the users have lived up to the use terms of the service.

Disclaimer: This is my opinion based upon my many years of research, but not legal advice. I am not a lawyer.

The copy protection is almost impossible to break these days. Just because software in abandoned doesn't mean it is free. Some heir or remnant of a company usually still owns it. Kind of like an old field. It may be dormant but someone owns it usually.

The Youtube deal was all over the news and they pay a ton in royalties. They do let some users sneak by for a while and some users try new ways to prevent automatic detection.

Would you get arrested for having a rom? About zero chance. Would there be a market for a rom today? On the surface now, in truth many current games may have some base in these old games. If you were to try to use it, I'd imagine that some company would discover that you owe them. Like fishing. Just waiting for a big one.

I worked at a big company that hired thousands of lawyers. We'd get some interesting replies from requesting opinions about employee suggestions along these lines.

You'd NEVER get arrested for ANY copyright violation, even if you were selling bootleg Star Wars DVDs or Blu-Rays out of the back of a van. That's a civil not criminal violation.

I will ask a provocative question here. Of what compulsion is "legal" when corporations appear able to modify laws to suit their wallets? The case in point is Patent and Copyright laws that originally found a balanced sweet spot between temporary exclusivity to reward creativity and R&D, and that of the Public Domain to improve and enrich the entire nation community, spurring further creativity "on the shoulders of giants". The laws have recently been altered to eliminate the latter in favor of the former, and I suspect stagnation is not far down the line.

You're very right. The Constitution specifically says that Congress should protect people's creations for limited times. Yet, Congress seems to keep extending that period after corporations (such as Disney) have lobbied them. Will they ever let some of Disney's earliest creations such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs ever lapse into the public domain or will they keep extending it? I think we all know the answer.

Yes it seems to me that whether the Government controls the Means of Production or vice versa, the result is the same - Fascism. Please do not misunderstand me. In many areas I am not only not a Leftist but further to the Right than a bicycle on the Autobahn. I have great confidence in Capitalism... BUT... I also recognize that it is not without flaws of the human sort and must be reigned in from time to time, just like almost any institution over time.