[X] My Assistant

Law is a complex affair. Copyright law is worse than most. If you are not a lawyer, do not attempt to find loopholes. At worst, you will give yourself and others a false sense of security. At best, you make a fool out of yourself.

Disclaimers other than "we don't know shit, just send us a takedown notice and we delete stuff" are completely useless and mostly made out of myth. Even that kind of disclaimer is not bulletproof, obviously.

ROM sites exists because nobody bothered to go after them yet, or because they managed to make it hard to get to them from a technical point of view.

petty crimes/loosely enforced laws can still get someone into trouble.
(aaron swartz should knows this better than anyone)
thats why i asked that loopholes be used when translating/editing/scanning.
examples of legally downloading:
the disclaimer thats included with roms usually says,"you can only legally use this if you already own a copy"

[kusanyagi.blogspot.com] http://kusanyagi.blogspot.com/
he uses a payment service that allows translating
and has his own servers, exept he doesn't have DMCA section or at least a diclaimer like
[thetsuuyaku.blogspot.com] http://thetsuuyaku.blogspot.com/p/disclaimer.html

It's called flying under the radar. The internet is full of copyright infringement. It's hard to go after each and every case, especially when the rights holder is in a different country. Discovering the identity of the infringing parties is also somewhere difficult to impossible, depending on how stringent the requirements of proof are in a certain jurisdiction.

as far as scans/editing:
what if they had a system similar to j-comi?
[torrentfreak.com] http://torrentfreak.com/distributor-offers...e-files-110411/

Then you are illegitimately distributing the raw copies. Either get permission from the rights holder, or be aware that you are doing something the law might not like. Obviously, if you do have permission, as in the case of J-Comi, you are good, as long as you abide by the terms given to you.

This post has been edited by jfji552: Oct 12 2014, 14:47

I'm not really sure about ROM legality any more. I can remember a time when I was young (i.e. the Industrial Revolution) when everyone thought that ROMs were legal for 24 hours or if you owned the original. I tried reading up on the subject a couple of years ago, and the more informed opinions seemed to be that flashing a rom from your own cartridges MIGHT be legal for archival/backup purposes, but that any other form of ROM usage is illegal. I highly doubt that merely saying "don't download unless you have permission" is going to cut it legally. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

UF

I'm not really sure about ROM legality any more. I can remember a time when I was young (i.e. the Industrial Revolution) when everyone thought that ROMs were legal for 24 hours or if you owned the original. I tried reading up on the subject a couple of years ago, and the more informed opinions seemed to be that flashing a rom from your own cartridges MIGHT be legal for archival/backup purposes, but that any other form of ROM usage is illegal. I highly doubt that merely saying "don't download unless you have permission" is going to cut it legally. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

UF

Correct. The 24 hour stuff is just an urban legend. Offering ROMs for download without permission is just as illegal as any other software.

This post has been edited by jfji552: Oct 12 2014, 19:04

[en.wikipedia.org] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J-Comi seems like an interesting project, but it's clearly is not gaining much traction (at least it's not dead yet)

Most of us know that much of this is dead equine abuse. Copyright is broken. What we are doing is illegal but few care. Some do, and some mangaka did go after our site here, LINDA being the most infamous - https://forums.e-hentai.org/index.php?showtopic=19797

I am totally for changing copyright law, and stand by the position that sharing is boosting salves through viral marketing, but that's a bit OT, and more necrophilic abuse. Ditto for my ideas that artists should get donation pages (pateron accounts, etc.) and link them from our galleries. The best we can do is to link to mugi, mugi often links to websites currently selling dojins, so at least there's some positive flow of $ towards the artist..

Anyway, scanlation is illegal, particularly when it comes to more than fair use covers (and most countries don't have even the crappy US-style fair use provisions). There are two solutions:
* support activist organizations like EFF that are trying to change the law;
* support business initiatives like J-Comi or Pateron and spread awareness of them among the artists. Or users of sites like ours.

Cheers,

[en.wikipedia.org] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J-Comi seems like an interesting project, but it's clearly is not gaining much traction (at least it's not dead yet)

* support business initiatives like J-Comi or Pateron and spread awareness of them among the artists. Or users of sites like ours.

For what it's worth, I tried to translate something on J-Comi once, back when it was new. The interface was really clunky and there didn't seem to be any way of getting feedback, which can be useful, so in the end I gave up. Also, the pages were tiny, making it hard to read the more dense characters.

I wonder if it's nicer nowadays.

I wonder if it's nicer nowadays.

No, and I don't think they've bothered to make an English version of the site. Their early efforts at internationalization have completely stagnated. It's quite a shame.