racketboy.com

retrogamer wrote:

racketboy wrote:

retrogamer wrote:The only thing I would have liked would have been the FAQ feature to have been implemented since Paul had originally planned on doing so in the early stages of development. It is where you could save walkthoughs, maps, etc for each game and have it accessable right from the disc. I had also discussed the possibility of being able to access Gamefaqs.com using to dial up modem adapter on the Dreamcast to browse Faq's while in game using a submenu system while the game was paused. The programming end of it was doable and it would have been the perfect workaround to the legal ramifications of putting copyrighted faqs on the disc since most of the original authors who submitted them could no longer be reached to grant the necessary permissions.

That's a pretty interesting concept as well.
While I used to be able to dial in with my Dreamcast, I no longer pay for a land line, let alone a dialup ISP.

However, considering we're talking about playing game ROMs, I don't think the FAQs are the biggest legal concern you should have

Very true. Believe it or not he got more grief from the people who posted the faq's threating to sue or want money for the use of their faqs so he just scrapped the whole idea. Funny thing is most of the people who submitted the faqs in the first place were not the original authors and copied them off of someone else trying to claim is as their own work. Plus the roms are not included with the emulator since the end user has to supply them so it did not pose any legal problem for the creator of NesterDC SE.

Zalphier wrote:You wanna know what's really funny. a ton of online aritcles(faqs and the likes) don't even really have a copyright. They sey copyrighted to themeselves so no one steals their work. So I bet at least about over half of the faqs are fair game. And if I'm not mistaken, isn't falsifying copyright a crime?

racketboy wrote:Actually, metaleggman is right. Everything is automatically copyrighted.
A formal one is nice, but not required.

Wikipedia wrote:In the United States, copyright has relatively recently been made automatic (in the style of the Berne Convention), which has had the effect of making it appear to be more like a property right. Thus, as with property, a copyright need not be granted or obtained through official registration with any government office. Once an idea has been reduced to tangible form, for example by securing it in a fixed medium (such as a drawing, sheet music, photograph, a videotape or a letter), the copyright holder is entitled to enforce his or her exclusive rights. However, while a copyright need not be officially registered for the copyright owner to begin exercising his exclusive rights, registration of works (where the laws of that jurisdiction provide for registration) does have benefits; it serves as prima facie evidence of a valid copyright and enables the copyright holder to seek statutory damages and attorney's fees (whereas in the USA, for instance, registering after an infringement only enables one to receive actual damages and lost profits). The original holder of the copyright may be the employer of the actual author rather than the author himself if the work is a "work for hire". Again, this principle is widespread; in English law the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 provides that where a work in which copyright subsists is made by an employee in the course of that employment, the copyright is automatically assigned to the employer.