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by guerrilla 1240 days ago
They could have rewritten them themselves or just emulated them is where else. If they are just imaged from the original ROM chips, then is it legal to host them here and if so why? Is it not piracy or do they have permission or even cooperation, e.g. from TI? Or has their copyright (not sure if that's the right concept here) expired?
1 comments
db48x 1240 days ago
Lol, of course there’s no cooperation from the copyright holders; that would cost real money and generate no revenue. And the copyright, as usual for works created in the US, lasts for the lifetime of the author plus 70 years. These things won’t be out of copyright for at least a century, so piracy is the only option.

If the copyright holders complain, IA will make the complained–about items dark. That means nobody can see them, though without actually losing any of the files or metadata. If anyone remembers the dark calculators a century from now, someone at IA will be able to reverse the decision and make them available to the public again.

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guerrilla 1240 days ago
> that would cost real money and generate no revenue.

This isn't necessarily true. In fact, it could be the opposite. It may be very good PR for them and could cost as little as some board meetings and some lawyers' time.

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db48x 1240 days ago
Tens of thousands in cost for $0 revenue. You can’t measure good will, and probably only a few hundred people would even notice. HP’s advertising department doesn’t get out of bed unless they’re doing a television commercial to be seen by a million people or more. That means printers, not 40 year old calculators.
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guerrilla 1240 days ago
I don't know why you have your head stuck in a rock. Corporations spend trillions on good PR and they have a plethora of ways to measure how they profit from it. "Good will" is branding and advertising.
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db48x 1240 days ago
Yet somehow they never ever help emulators. Nintendo actively hunts down sources of roms and destroys them, year after year. For every game they’ve ever made, even for games you’ve never heard of (all except that one single game that they licensed to someone else 40 years ago). EA kills off a few games every year, and those are usually just a few years old and still have players. A company called Atlus sued its own fans when they created a server emulator for an MMO that Atlus was shutting down (<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qS6oBjK8AwQ>). Software companies just do not care about the good will of their own customers.
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lupire 1240 days ago
The don't want to encourage undermining their school calculator sales scam in any way.
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