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Posted: 10/4/2018 5:38 PM
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feos
Site Admin, Skilled player (1254)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11475
Location: Lake Char­gogg­a­gogg­man­chaugg­a­gogg­chau­bun­a­gung­a­maugg
NES TAS of 2011
Okay, I've read it all, and this problem is very dark and complicated. Probably the most dangerous aspect is the black box nature of the hack that removes DRM. The hack may introduce viruses/miners. It may affect functionality of the game, obviously or subtly. We may not be playing the original game anymore, but literally a hack no one has guarantees about. Another aspect results from it. If we want to fight this black box reality, we have to apply easy and documented hacks by ourselves. That will help making it transparent. But it will blatantly mean we're endorsing DRM hacking for real! Now this doesn't smell even remotely legal. Then, hacked no-DRM versions of games may be taken down following the current tendencies, or they may be different and non-compatible, leading to impossible to sync TASes after some time. If no one dumped an obscure 30 year old C64 game, and its original image is literally non-existent, we really have to allow hacked versions of it at least. But just like with C64 disk games converted to cart format (which is impossible with stock C64) we can't say "Okay, we allow hacked versions already, now let's also allow hacking existing good dumps too". When the official DRM version is available, and official no-DRM version doesn't exist, preferring the no-DRM hack does feel like encouraging hacking DRM out. And of course, cases when a DRM game simply does not sync. Or its sync is dependent on your outdated USB muse driver. Or on your GPU. Like, the DRM system may be set up to check those just for good measure. And it's made sure to never tell, which really "helps" us. So far I lean towards disallowing no-DRM hacks unless the DRM prevents movie sync. But when we want to allow them for such lost cases, all the other problems say hi. Doesn't look like it can be gracefully resolved by a compromise really. And because of how dangerously shaky this ground is, I'd disallow no-DRM hacks altogether, and simply deal with rejecting movies that don't sync on unmodified PC games. Because once again, you either agree on installing arbitrary trash within a hack, or provide transparent ways to illegally apply such hacks to official games. I don't see a way out.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Posted: 10/4/2018 6:03 PM
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Memory
She/Her
Site Admin, Skilled player (1556)
Joined: 3/20/2014
Posts: 1765
Location: Dumpster
GBA TASer of 2020 GBA TAS of 2020 GBA TASer of 2019 Exotic platforms TAS of 2018
The key thing for me is that if a steam hook gets implemented like is planned I believe, allowing removal of drm would be completely unnecessary. Maybe if in the future it proves to be absolutely necessary we can consider it but for now libTAS is far too young to consider such tactics. For now we should let the program mature more and disallow any such pirated versions.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
Posted: 10/4/2018 6:09 PM
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ThunderAxe31
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Joined: 9/12/2016
Posts: 1646
Location: Italy
Arcade TAS of 2023 Homebrew TAS of 2023 PSX TASer of 2022 Gameboy TASer of 2017
I fully agree with feos. We don't want to endorse piracy and we don't want to require the players to use software that could potentially bring harm. I also agree that we can allow hacked ROMs only if the good dump of the relative game is not available. Hacking a good dump just for making it TASable defeats the purpose of making faithfully emulated movies. And if a game just can't sync, then I agree that it cannot be TASed. The only solution would be for the TAS tool to be able to sync while having the DRM working as intended, in order to avoid both hacks and legality issues.
my personal page - my YouTube channel - my GitHub - my Discord: thunderaxe31 <Masterjun> if you look at the "NES" in a weird angle, it actually clearly says "GBA"
Posted: 11/13/2018 9:07 PM
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MESHUGGAH
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Posts: 1353
Location: 𝔐𝔞𝔤𝑦𝔞𝔯
NES TASer of 2013 NES TAS of 2013 NES TAS of 2012 NES TAS of 2011
Forgot to post this, here's my views on current situation of "piracy". TL;DR: this post doesn't answers to anything just tries to get an overall view of this topic. I think there's a bit of misunderstanding around piracy... 1 - Usually pirate sites are hosting (or linking what they have uploaded themselves) files to be downloaded for free that otherwise costs money. 2 - The pirates tries to take their hands on these products and manipulate the files (cracking it to make it playable without buying it in the first place). 3 - "Supporters of piracy" will visit those pirate sites to generate revenue to the pirates, financially damaging the original party. So let's take ROMs and TASVideos: 1 - TASVideos does not hosts nor upload copyrighted ROMs. 2 - TASVideos does not requires manipulation of these file(s) (Note: for the sake of explanation, let's discard C64 and other hacked games with a TAS) 3 - TASVideos never suggested anything piracy related. It's not even TASVideos' domain to control the individual's actions. TASVideos does helps users to avoid getting in trouble by encoding videos of TASes as well as every information required to be able to replay the movie file. Now ROMs and TASer: 1 - The TASer requires the game in order to TAS it. Games usually costs money but might be free. 2 - The game (speaking about carts, disks, etc) is in a different form than what's needed. Need to dump it to get the .ROM file which the emulator waits for. There is no manipulation of files required, like we don't remove the game's antipiracy measures. (Note: again, let's exclude .nes headers and alikes) 3 - Most dumps per games are likely to be the same (because of only 1 version being released) so redumping is just wasting time.
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
Posted: 11/14/2018 7:40 AM
Post subject: Re: Removing DRM via piracy - acceptable on TASVideos?
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Warp
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
FitterSpace wrote:
There is, however, a way to get around DRM for plenty of games. Most pirated games either remove the DRM entirely or find a way to disable it.
Putting the legal and ethical questions aside, I would say that the general answer is "not acceptable" for the simple reason that it's a modified version of the original game, and in general we don't allow those (barring extraordinary exceptions).
Posted: 9/16/2022 2:00 PM
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feos
Site Admin, Skilled player (1254)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11475
Location: Lake Char­gogg­a­gogg­man­chaugg­a­gogg­chau­bun­a­gung­a­maugg
NES TAS of 2011
arkiandruski shared a relevant link that may help us solve the dilemma about potentially hosting gameplay of games with removed drm and having to host reproduction steps for those movies, basically telling people how to hack drm out: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/10/28/2021-23311/exemption-to-prohibition-on-circumvention-of-copyright-protection-systems-for-access-control I haven't read it fully yet but I have it in my TODO.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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