A legal SFD player?

[kRYPT_]

I've been thinking...

In the NTSC demo disks (aka ODM), there came a little binary called PLAYVID.BIN .. it was basically an SFD player.

Since these demo disks were given away for free (and many, many people have them), would it still be illegal to distribute the player on these CDs?

I've just trying to find a legal way to play SFDs of any size...

[The Kron_]

Since it requires the GD-Rom to be ripped to be able to view the file the answer is Yes.

[kRYPT_]

But according to that line of thinking, the IP.BIN we're using is just as illegal, but that's freely available to download.

Same goes for the web browser images.

Since it requires the GD-Rom to be ripped to be able to view the file the answer is Yes.

[biohazard]

But according to that line of thinking, the IP.BIN we're using is just as illegal, but that's freely available to download.

Same goes for the web browser images.

Shhhh!

[ultradude]

i dont get why u ppl care about all this legal shit.
007 prollay has all DC games (warez ones).

useing the boot disc is illegal, making selfboot images is illegal..hell there all illegal. cut the crap about legalty.

[Dr Wily]

But according to that line of thinking, the IP.BIN we're using is just as illegal, but that's freely available to download.

I believe theres a legal precedent with the ip.bin with such things as Game Shark / Action Replay; Sega probably aren't happy about it, but I think they know that they might not win a succesful case in court...

Same goes for the web browser images.

well, thats a different matter, and has been discussed before. Sin-Tex has recently removed the DP3 browser from the downloads because of this.

i dont get why u ppl care about all this legal shit.
007 prollay has all DC games (warez ones).

useing the boot disc is illegal, making selfboot images is illegal..hell there all illegal. cut the crap about legalty.

uh... believe it or not some people don't like willingly breaking the law.

Emulation is in a slightly grey area legally, but is for the most part legal, albeit unpopular with the games companies.

If they're "all illegal" I would like to see any court on the planet say something like Snoozys Shuffle was in any way damaging Segas financial or intellectual property, which is what copyright law deals with.

[TheBouncer]

I think half the problem is that while we're busy playing Super Mario on our SNES emus, Nintendo are losing sales on the new stuff. Nah, that's crap. To be honest, I've never understood why companies like Nintendo cry & whine about the use of NES or SNES ROMs, for christ sake when was the last NES game made? Like we are really hurting their sales now.

[DeGamer1]

To be honest, I've never understood why companies like Nintendo cry & whine about the use of NES or SNES ROMs, for christ sake when was the last NES game made? Like we are really hurting their sales now.

That is true but most people want to emulate EVERYTHING nowadays. They forget emulation is to preserve the games of the yesteryears.

Look at Gameboy advance, it is a new system. We don't need an emulator that runs GBA games right now, they are not hard to find games. I would agree for Nintendo to be pissed at GBA emulation, but as for NES they should care less since they don't sell them anymore.
Also, emus on the GBA[/b} such as PocketNES should not really bother Nintendo either, but then again

[kRYPT_]

Same goes for the web browser images.

well, thats a different matter, and has been discussed before. Sin-Tex has recently removed the DP3 browser from the downloads because of this.

Somehow the PlanetWeb 2.6 image is less illegal?

[arcticblue]

you know, i think this topic is going to be closed soon. for some reason, the admins/mods don't like talking about this so they close it as soon as someone makes a good point. I don't think that Sega would care if someone used the demo disc to play sfd movies. the only problem that I see is that to make sfds you have to use the sega movie maker. Of course, you could download sfd movies of some games at dreamcast.planetweb.com.

[ultradude]

ah..

sega doesnt care, period!

they have givin up on consoles, they just wanna make games for all the consoles now. they couldn't care less about a dead system. it's not like they can stop all this piracy. if they could, it would have been done by now.

[kRYPT_]

I was under the impression the Sega Movie Maker was legal?

It doesn't matter, if it's not, it's not the only way to make SFDs..
An SFD is just a slightly-odd MPEG1 stream (can be made with TMpgEnc) multiplexed with Cinepak audio (for which there are numerous freeware encoders for).

I just wanna know if I can play back these SFDs legally, as I can probably find a way to MAKE them legally and release a toolkit.

you know, i think this topic is going to be closed soon. for some reason, the admins/mods don't like talking about this so they close it as soon as someone makes a good point. I don't think that Sega would care if someone used the demo disc to play sfd movies. the only problem that I see is that to make sfds you have to use the sega movie maker. Of course, you could download sfd movies of some games at dreamcast.planetweb.com.

[Dr Wily]

Somehow the PlanetWeb 2.6 image is less illegal?

Its been discussed (many times!) before, I think at the moment the sites stance is "its given away free with a DC, and doesn't actually harm anyone" but as you may or may not know, the sites 'stance' can change on the legality of things without any notice - look at s3gag3n for example.

I have always justified it to myself as a UK user, because the web browser provided by SOE does not allow users to change their ISP details - something which is pretty much essential if you want to use your DC on the internet for any sustained period of time. Of course, with the release of the new European browser this will not be such a good justification in the future.

you know, i think this topic is going to be closed soon. for some reason, the admins/mods don't like talking about this so they close it as soon as someone makes a good point.

No, we close things when people insist on taking the theoretical and applying it. Its all well and good talking about illegal things, but as theres not much to say beyond "yes it is illegal" or "no, its fine" theres not much point letting them run forever - its not like a bunch of people on a chat room are going to change copyright law, no matter how well reasoned their arguments may be.

Besides, 99 times out of a hundred, any topic involving even slightly legally dodgy areas wil end in one of two ways; someone starts posting warez links saying "yo yo, get j00r sfd playa here" or flaming the mods for being hypocrites for allowing stuff like this to be discussed.

(sigh)

I was under the impression the Sega Movie Maker was legal?

heh, I bet I know who told you that as well - no, the SFD maker that most people have found on the web is one of the components from the Official Sega SDK, and as such is warez; although as you say you can do nearly identical compression legally...

[Heliophobe_]

But according to that line of thinking, the IP.BIN we're using is just as illegal, but that's freely available to download.

Not necessarily.

There was a legal precedent set back in the days of the Genesis (when Accolade started making unlicensed Genesis games), when it was decided that it was legal for a company to reproduce the copyrighted string of bytes that the Genesis requires to make a cartridge that runs on a Genesis, if there was no other way to make working software. As with the Dreamcast, the series of bytes was checked against a copy in the BIOS rom, and it would refuse to run the game if the sequence was missing.

There is a section of the IP.BIN that must be there and be an exact copy of what's in the BIOS. The rest of it can be replaced (and lienus is working on a replacement). Sega hasn't challenged Pelican, Gameshark, or Bleem, even though they use the copyrighted bootstrap in the ip.bin, probably because they lost against Accolade and figure they'd lose again.


No loopholes for the Web Browser though, you do need permission from the authors to redistribute them, even if they were distributed free of charge before (free of charge does not necessarily equal freely distributable).

[kRYPT_]

Its been discussed (many times!) before, I think at the moment the sites stance is "its given away free with a DC, and doesn't actually harm anyone" but as you may or may not know, the sites 'stance' can change on the legality of things without any notice - look at s3gag3n for example.

I have always justified it to myself as a UK user, because the web browser provided by SOE does not allow users to change their ISP details - something which is pretty much essential if you want to use your DC on the internet for any sustained period of time. Of course, with the release of the new European browser this will not be such a good justification in the future.

The demo disks were also shipped with many DCs

And if we want to get technical, all the WinCE DLLs distributed with things like Boob!Boy are just as illegal as the movie maker.

[Holly Hasney]

Yep, they are which is why most sites don't host the WinCE files