Kit's Blog

Just thought I'd at least throw something up

     I threw a few more games up on scuzzstuff. That's about the extent of really exciting news. Even so, I'm treading some pretty legally bad waters with the stuff. I've realized that I probably need to take down the gameboy rom of Super Mario brothers deluxe and Wairoland. Both of those need disclaimers that say "it's taken on good faith that you in fact owned these games and have fair use rights to use a copy," or something. Chip's challenge is one of those things where somehow I doubt that Microsoft will really care. Considering the fact that there are already so many websites offering it, they probably won't care, but I guess I'm just worried that if my site gains any notoriety, I'll get in trouble.
     Aside from that there's also the issue of games that I've been ripping the mochiads out of mercilessly. DesktopTD is the only example I have of that one. I guess that's just one step more malicious than I have been up to now. Really, I've only "mildly" broken the protection on these games. Basically games like bells have php scripts that they require to run. I make a copy, and put it up, the game runs on my site. The reason I'm okay with that? It means that if someone downloads the swf from my page, it won't work on theirs. Same is true with heliattack 2. I broke the protection so that the flash file on my site will only work on my site. So if you downloaded the flash file from my site? You couldn't steal it unless you knew what you were doing, like me. And those kinds of things? Those aren't so bad. By doing it that way, I ensure that I don't spread copies of those games around the internet that deny their original creators from protection.
     The problem with something like removing the mochiads is that people can come to my site, download a copy of that game, and put it on their site, no problem. And the ads still won't be there. I've suddenly denied handdrawngames their sponsorship. They can't make money off of any of the copies of the flash file up on my site being put in other places. The copyright is protected on all the others I just listed, but not that one. And I'd like to keep it that way. If I break protection on that game, I break it for my site alone. It prevents me from hurting the flash creators more than just by having people view their games on my site. If they ask me to take it off? It's gone. And it's like it was never there. But if I were to truly break the protection? Then I'd take it off, but the damage would be irreversible.

**NOTE:**
     After making this post I basically had guilted myself into taking down the ad-free version of DesktopTD I had put up. If I can make it so the ads are only disbled on Scuzzstuff, I may do so, but I'm worried about the implications, as always.