Little Triggers Part 3

In response to the post in response to my post...

In my post on music piracy I talked about when it's ok to pirate a copy of an album, and I think that my argument can more or less apply to video games as well. As I said before, when a creator of an artwork has already profited a lot from that artwork, then non-physical copies of it should be made available for free.

And I think Square has already profited tremendously from Chrono Trigger. According to Wikipedia, "Chrono Trigger sold more than 2.36 million copies in Japan and 290,000 abroad." So while it hasn't done as well in America, it has still been very successful and Square has profited a lot from it. Because of that, at this point I think it's totally fine to download it illegally.

The argument that Square still gets harmed greatly by this because they just released a port of Chrono Trigger for the DS can also be refuted for several reasons.

1) The product which infringes on copyright is almost an entirely different game. As I said before, people won't play it as a substitute for Chrono Trigger.

2) While this game does essentially force people to pirate a copy of the original Chrono Trigger as well, this will in no way get rid of the market for the port, since it's for a unique handheld system. For this reason, it would make complete sense for a consumer to have as many as three copies of Chrono Trigger at once: the original, which might have been in their possession since it came out; a pirated ROM to play Crimson Echoes; and a DS version to carry around, and to use with special features. In fact, people could even have as many as four copies, since this actually isn't the first time Chrono Trigger has been ported; it was released for the Playstation in a pack with Final Fantasy IV. But I digress. The point is that since the port is for a portable system (no pun intended), especially one as unique as the DS, there will still be a market for it even if people use the illegal ROM to play Crimson Echoes.

3) We're talking about a port. A port of a port, for that matter. The DS version of Chrono Trigger is even less of a new game than the illegal one. I do agree that Square should profit from it, but since less work went into its creation than would have been put into an entirely new game, it's ridiculous to say that Square should profit as much as they did from the original Chrono Trigger. At most, the developers of Crimson Echoes should be forced to wait a little bit to release this game. Although that might even be too much, since the DS port has been around for a little while now.

So the main reason I think that this ROM hack is ok is because in this case, at this point, Square has had many chances to profit from the original work already. But are ROM hacks ok in every case? Well, in theory no. But in reality, I'd say that ROM hacks are OK the vast majority of the time. The reason is that, as I've said before, I think that piracy is OK after the creator has profited significantly from the artwork. And by the time that a game becomes significant enough for fan-made ROM hacks of it to be made, chances are the creators have already profited a ton. So if someone made a ROM hack tribute to World of Goo, for example, then that would be kind of fucked up. But that's way less likely to happen than someone making a ROM hack tribute to an emulated Final Fantasy game. So while in some instances ROM hacks are really harmful, those instances probably won't happen very often, and when they do they should just be taken in a case by case basis.

And I'll also say that because they involve illegal downloading, ROM hacks are definitely not the fairest way to go about making tribute games. But, I still think they should be protected legally in most cases, since it's even less fair to give excess profits a higher priority than a wide variety of art. While a ROM hack wasn't the best way to go about making Crimson Echoes, that's not justification for the entire game being destroyed. I understand why allowing its existence would set a bad legal standard for Square, since copyright laws allow companies to protect their products , and since this would chip away at the protection Square has of Chrono Trigger. But I honestly think that copyright laws give companies too much protection over their products. Just look at Mickey Mouse for proof of this. Disney has made millions and millions of dollars off of Mickey, and copyright laws still won't let his image be used by anyone else, even though Disney doesn't need this money anymore. I can understand why copyright laws give companies so much protection over their products; struggling companies absolutely need it. But already successful companies don't need this protection. Square doesn't need this protection. At least they don't need Chrono Trigger to be protected. Square and Chrono Trigger are so successful and so well established that even if this game means reduced sales for them, these reduced sales are not a threat, and even if other people use Chrono Trigger features in other artwork, they will never really be separated from Square. It's fair to give Square a little bit of this protection until they make a significant amount of money off of the DS port, at least considering what work was put into its creation. But Square does not need unlimited protection of Chrono Trigger. Even if Squaresoft were to somehow lose their copyright on Chrono Trigger (which is so incredibly unlikely), no one else would gain that copyright, which means that it would essentially be in the public domain, which it probably would be by now if Disney weren't so disgustingly protective of their copyrights, and which would still allow Square to profit from it more than anyone else. So I'll conclude by saying that while I'm not in favor of ROM hacks, I'm even less in favor of companies that have already benefited a lot from an artwork forcing people to buy that product when, quite frankly, they'll still make tons of money that they don't need. I wish that Crimson Echoes had been made in a different way, but I wish even more that it was able to exist.