ExoDOS Import

[Zombeaver]

7 minutes ago, eXo said:

For what it's worth Zombeaver, do a forum search on that word. It's repeated over and over and over and over. Looks like you have a busy day of deleting posts ahead of you!

Good idea. I found 10 references. Deleted them all.

[eXo]

Might want to talk to Jason and ask him whats cool on here and get all the mods on board, because what he is saying and what you are doing are at odds with eachother. 

[Zombeaver]

9 minutes ago, FistyDollars said:

Fair enough. Let's just say that if you know what Kubla Khan decreed in Xanadu, you might find answers. Vague enough?

Honestly this kind of stuff isn't too good either (though I'll admit this is considerably better than some of the cutsie stuff I've seen to skirt around things haha).

6 minutes ago, eXo said:

Eh. I was worried because several months ago someone said something and the guy with his hand on the trigger at the time got all bent out of shape. Obviously that's not the case anymore though. PD gets mentioned all the time on these forums. Seems to be a lot more random now as to what is cool and what isn't.

I don't think it's so much that it's "random" so much as things just go unnoticed. Only so many of us that can read so many posts.

[Lordmonkus]

Personally I am of the opinion that simply naming sites should be fine as long as there are no links, this is just my opinion though. And I am certainly not going to read each and every single post made to see if someone is linking to a site that should not be linked to, that is what the report post function is for.

[65Cobra427SC]

Obviously everyone has their own opinion, based on their own experience, even their age, and there is nothing wrong with that. I'm used to the newsgroups and find it to be faster and more reliable than anything else I tried. I very rarely have to download any par files, but at least they're there if needed. Whoever uploads the files has control over the file size which determines the number of parts. Select what you want and it's saved in an NZB (text) file. Run it before you retire for the night. If you don't belong to a newsgroup, most have free trials (i.e. 7-14 days) which is more than enough time...and/or monthly fees. Again, only suggesting as an option.

[65Cobra427SC]

17 minutes ago, FistyDollars said:

Fair enough. Let's just say that if you know what Kubla Khan decreed in Xanadu, you might find answers. Vague enough?

I had no idea what Kubla Khan decreed in Xanadu, yet I found the answer in 3 seconds.

[eXo]

1 minute ago, 65Cobra427SC said:

I had no idea what Kubla Khan decreed in Xanadu, yet I found the answer in 3 seconds.

that was sort of the point.

[Zombeaver]

I'd prefer to err on the side of caution is all. It will not hurt us in any way to not allow name-dropping sites that are purely for the purposes of obtaining roms/pirated material. The opposite may not be true.

Nor is it of any particular concern to me if someone gets frustrated by the fact that they can't have said roms/pirated material placed into their hands, either directly or surreptitiously, by someone on these boards. That's not a policy exclusive to these boards or even most emulation-related boards for that matter. Try going over to the PCSX2 forums and asking where to "acquire" something and see how it works out.

If you have to ask whether or not something is "pushing it", it's probably best to assume that it is.

[65Cobra427SC]

1 minute ago, eXo said:

that was sort of the point.

Yeah, I realized that. Just didn't expect it to be in the very first line of the very first hit on Google. It would be more baffling to just use PD, this way you can't look it up. Well, you can, but you'll mostly get hit's referring to various Police Departments 8-)

[65Cobra427SC]

1 minute ago, Patham said:

Everyone knows PD is public domain.

I can't believe I didn't even think of THAT! 

[Lordmonkus]

I always thought it meant Penile Dysfunction.

[Zombeaver]

I don't care one way or the other personally. It's not my business that's at stake. So if Jason's fine with it, so am I. Just trying to protect him and these boards is all.

[eXo]

28 minutes ago, Zombeaver said:

I'd prefer to err on the side of caution is all. It will not hurt us in any way to not allow name-dropping sites that are purely for the purposes of obtaining roms/pirated material. The opposite may not be true.

Nor is it of any particular concern to me if someone gets frustrated by the fact that they can't have said roms/pirated material placed into their hands, either directly or surreptitiously, by someone on these boards. That's not a policy exclusive to these boards or even most emulation-related boards for that matter. Try going over to the PCSX2 forums and asking where to "acquire" something and see how it works out.

If you have to ask whether or not something is "pushing it", it's probably best to assume that it is.

I get it. I really have no dog in this race. I was asking for consistency. I'm a mod over at the site in question. The primary difference being, there is a lot less "personal opinion" on the matter over there. We have a clear set of rules and we stick by it. You don't get a different result depending on if mod1 or mod 2 happens to stumble across your post. 

My primary concern was establishing consistency. When I release this first volume, it will be the first time that LB has been released in a major package along with a very large set of games. That will inherently lead to folks coming to these forums. That can be a positive thing, but only if handled correctly. If they arrive and start getting all their posts deleted, then that establishes their opinion of the launchbox community. 

The simple fact is, while no legitimate project wants to be associated with piracy, these discussions and forums are often populated with a bunch of arm chair lawyers with no real world experience in any of it.  Front ends don't exist without roms. And the number of people with legitimately acquired roms is infinitesimal. It's like the ScummVM guys pretending that everyone has legit copies of their games. It is a silly charade. Same with the DOSBox forums. In both cases it has led to toxic communities that have damaged them in the long run. The quest to stamp out any mention or piracy has led to over zealous mods who delete and accuse with no evidence. More than once I've asked a question about getting a game to run over there just to be met with copy & pasted replies of "FORUM RULE 0: WE DON'T SUPPORT PIRACY". So then I turn around, take a picture of my bloody disc, upload it, and ask them what they are talking about and they sheepishly wander off, but hey, guess what, I still don't get my answer. Know why? Because anyone who actually knows anything about these games has gone elsewhere, because they have made it too difficult to even have a legit discussion.

Speaking as someone who has been releasing large rom packs with my name stamped all over them, I have *never* had a representative from any company or any developer reach out to me and ask me to pull their games.

Speaking as someone who has had their work available over at archive.org, a site which hosts terrabytes worth of legit content, we have had 2 lawyers ask us to remove a handful of games. These are lawyers on retainer who get paid to google a list of games once every few months, and send out a letter to any site they find hosting said game. Ironically, one of the games they asked us to pull down was one given to me by the developer (and copyright holder) of the game, with his explicit permission to distribute. Which goes to show how the left hand is divorced from the right hand in many of these cases.

Speaking as a staff member of a torrent site that hosts the one of the, if not *the*, most up to date mame & console romsets, we have *never* had a legal letter sent to us asking us to remove anything. 

So, to recap, there has never been a backlash towards dosbox or scummvm, the software that makes most of these older titles playable. There has been no backlash towards hyperspin, meagre, or any other front end that I am aware of for making it aesthetically pleasing to launch copyrighted games. There has been no backlash, legal or otherwise, to the specific person (me) who compiled every DOS, Win3x, and ScummVM game he could get his hands on and then personally uploaded to the internet. There has been no backlash to any torrent site that actually hosts these games. There is only a single case I can think of where a site shut down, but even that one was based on one of the admins essentially panicking over a percieved threat and literally destroying the server.

To make the discussion even more contemporary, look at Nintendo, one of the most litigious companies out there. Then look at the number of websites that describe, in detail, how to hack their mini consoles. With links to the software to hack and links to the roms to populate them with. Again, no response.

The fear over these things is self generated within the community.

I am not making any claim as to how this particular site should be run or moderated. I fully support the decision to shut down any discussion of roms or where to find them. But I do want to point out that this product is inexorably tied to roms, and it's a fine line between moderating talk (reminders and gentle edits) versus a toxic environment (straight up post deletion).

The most important thing is to establish consistency in how it will be handled. Then the second most important thing is to enact that policy in a positve manner.

But hey, what does eXo know. He's only been invovled in this stuff since computers used to beep at each other other phone lines. 

Edited November 29, 2017 by eXo

[eXo]

6 minutes ago, Patham said:

I was drawn in to this with an inbox full of notifications. This sure has been an active thread of late.

At any rate, thanks for the update @eXo, my seedbox will be ready and waiting.

My plan to generate controversy, and in turn attention for eXoDOS, has been successful! And I didn't even have to release my sex tape....

[Lordmonkus]

1 minute ago, eXo said:

My plan to generate controversy, and in turn attention for eXoDOS, has been successful! And I didn't even have to release my sex tape....

 

[FistyDollars]

2 minutes ago, eXo said:

My plan to generate controversy, and in turn attention for eXoDOS, has been successful! And I didn't even have to release my sex tape....

Ah yes, the SeXo collection...?

[Zombeaver]

1 minute ago, eXo said:

The simple fact is, while no legitimate project wants to be associated with piracy, these discussions and forums are populated with a bunch of arm chair lawyers with no real world experience in any of it.  Front ends don't exist without roms. And the number of people with legitimately acquired roms is infinitesimal. It's like the ScummVM guys pretending that everyone has legit copies of their games. It is a silly charade. Same with the DOSBox forums. In both cases it has led to toxic communities that have damaged them in the long run. The quest to stamp out any mention or piracy has led to over zealous mods who delete and accuse with no evidence. More than once I've asked a question about getting a game to run over there just to be met with copy & pasted replies of "FORUM RULE 0: WE DON'T SUPPORT PIRACY". So then I turn around, take a picture of my bloody disc, upload it, and ask them what they are talking about and they sheepishly wander off, but hey, guess what, I still don't get my answer. Know why? Because anyone who actually knows anything about these games has gone elsewhere, because they have made it too difficult to even have a legit discussion.

You'll get zero argument out of me. This is why I specifically said it's not meant as some kind of sanctimonious nonsense - I do it, you do it, everyone here does it. To pretend to do otherwise is just ridiculous. I saw someone on the PCSX2 forums banned because they had a screenshot of like 6 bioses in their emulator and they were told that unless they "owned 6 PS2s" that they couldn't do that. I just rolled my eyes. Again, it's not about me trying to pretend anything to the contrary. I don't care. It is, however, my job to try to protect these boards. Don't take it as anything more than that. It's not me attacking you or anyone else. It's not me being a snob or an "arm chair lawyer" or equivalent.

6 minutes ago, eXo said:

Speaking as someone who has been releasing large rom packs with my name stamped all over them, I have *never* had a representative from any company or any developer reach out to me and ask me to pull their games.

Speaking as someone who has had their work available over at archive.org, a site which hosts terrabytes worth of legit content, we have had 2 lawyers ask us to remove a handful of games. These are lawyers on retainer who get paid to google a list of games once every few months, and send out a letter to any site they find hosting said game. Ironically, one of the games they asked us to pull down was one given to me by the developer (and copyright holder) of the game, with his explicit permission to distribute. Which goes to show how the left hand is divorced from the right hand in many of these cases.

Speaking as a staff member of a torrent site that hosts the one of the, if not *the*, most up to date mame & console romsets, we have *never* had a legal letter sent to us asking us to remove anything. 

So, to recap, there has never been a backlash towards dosbox or scummvm, the software that makes most of these older titles playable. There has been no backlash towards hyperspin, meagre, or any other front end that I am aware of for making it aesthetically pleasing to launch copyrighted games. There has been no backlash, legal or otherwise, to the specific person (me) who compiled every DOS, Win3x, and ScummVM game he could get his hands on and then personally uploaded to the internet. There has been no backlash to any torrent site that actually hosts these games. There is only a single case I can think of where a site shut down, but even that one was based on one of the admins essentially panicking over a percieved threat and literally destroying the server.

I believe you.

After speaking with Jason, the conclusion is that it's okay so long as nothing directly is directly linked. That's how he wants to do it so that's how we'll do it.

[eXo]

1 minute ago, Zombeaver said:

I believe you.

You shouldn't. I lie a lot.

[Lordmonkus]

Yup, we specifically wrangled Jason into a mods discussion on Discord to sort this out to get a consistent way forward and mentioning sites is fine, just no linking.

[Zombeaver]

1 minute ago, eXo said:

You shouldn't. I lie a lot.

But you admit it. So I still believe you.