Good morning, been thinking about this one this morning and wanted to get some opinions. Contrary to some folks popular belief, I do understand you don't just share arbitrary IP data, and as such, in both of my current disassemblies that involve a security BLOB to send to the system's firmware to allow the game to load, I simply provide the dd(1) call to extract this security BLOB from a known binary.
Where it gets weird is on one hand, such a BLOB constitutes IP, something the IP holder would deliver to studios so that they could include the security in their final product, or maybe something that was added in the mastering process at the factory, something like that. Either way, it is data generated by an IP holder, so I would think constitutes copywritten work.
On the other hand, it is impossible to produce an executable game that would satisfy whatever console's firmware and allow the game to load properly unless one has this data. For instance, the FDS expects a file, typically named "KYODAKU-" that contains a security BLOB compared with data in the firmware image, the disk won't load if they don't match. The Sega CD has a similar mechanism where the first boot file contains a hunk of data that must match with something in the system firmware. In both cases, omission of this binary component will result in a failed load.
Now, when performing a disassembly, it makes sense to provide any IP-restricted material not in the distribution, but in the form of a script that can extract that material from a legitimate copy. This separates the concern of locating and providing the files, I've located them, but you have to provide a binary payload to then extract them from, so I'm not distributing IP, just describing it.
However, if one is producing their own game, not a disassembly, they are still required to load this security binary for their title to run. If one was producing an independent title in the modern age, would distribution of their title, even if all content is their own, constitute an IP violation as the image also contains that security BLOB that they technically did not procure through the proper channels? Given the licensing dubiousness, does owning one single copy of any game that contains said security BLOB license you to then at least have digital copies on your computer, meaning that technically you can license your game to anyone who does own a copy of *any* title for the console, but if they don't own even one, i.e. have not committed a legitimate financial transaction to own at least one specimen of the data in question...where does that leave someone?
Just to draw a parallel, Bell System UNIX licensing in the early 80s was quite liberal. So long as one held the proper license, that enabled them to use and modify the source code, use other people's modifications, share their own with other licensed parties, etc. This was a large reason why BSD was so successful and strains of that development survive today and run enterprise applications. All you needed was the license, and the license then allowed you to share with other license holders. That's kinda what comes to mind for me regarding the "I own a game" allowing use of the security BLOB, you could technically rip it directly from media you legitimately own, so distribution of the binary to you is not giving you IP you do not have license to. However, the other side of the coin is yeah, if you don't have the license, no dice, it may be very open, but there's still guardrails.
Thoughts? Despite the firey response when I mentioned the GNU utilities previously, I suspect most people aren't so noble as to care about this stuff, but I would be interested if there's been any significant thought given to this matter by folks who understand IP, licensing all of that (not the peanut gallery that thinks it's illegal to talk about GNU software please, I said "folks who understand IP")
Where it gets weird is on one hand, such a BLOB constitutes IP, something the IP holder would deliver to studios so that they could include the security in their final product, or maybe something that was added in the mastering process at the factory, something like that. Either way, it is data generated by an IP holder, so I would think constitutes copywritten work.
On the other hand, it is impossible to produce an executable game that would satisfy whatever console's firmware and allow the game to load properly unless one has this data. For instance, the FDS expects a file, typically named "KYODAKU-" that contains a security BLOB compared with data in the firmware image, the disk won't load if they don't match. The Sega CD has a similar mechanism where the first boot file contains a hunk of data that must match with something in the system firmware. In both cases, omission of this binary component will result in a failed load.
Now, when performing a disassembly, it makes sense to provide any IP-restricted material not in the distribution, but in the form of a script that can extract that material from a legitimate copy. This separates the concern of locating and providing the files, I've located them, but you have to provide a binary payload to then extract them from, so I'm not distributing IP, just describing it.
However, if one is producing their own game, not a disassembly, they are still required to load this security binary for their title to run. If one was producing an independent title in the modern age, would distribution of their title, even if all content is their own, constitute an IP violation as the image also contains that security BLOB that they technically did not procure through the proper channels? Given the licensing dubiousness, does owning one single copy of any game that contains said security BLOB license you to then at least have digital copies on your computer, meaning that technically you can license your game to anyone who does own a copy of *any* title for the console, but if they don't own even one, i.e. have not committed a legitimate financial transaction to own at least one specimen of the data in question...where does that leave someone?
Just to draw a parallel, Bell System UNIX licensing in the early 80s was quite liberal. So long as one held the proper license, that enabled them to use and modify the source code, use other people's modifications, share their own with other licensed parties, etc. This was a large reason why BSD was so successful and strains of that development survive today and run enterprise applications. All you needed was the license, and the license then allowed you to share with other license holders. That's kinda what comes to mind for me regarding the "I own a game" allowing use of the security BLOB, you could technically rip it directly from media you legitimately own, so distribution of the binary to you is not giving you IP you do not have license to. However, the other side of the coin is yeah, if you don't have the license, no dice, it may be very open, but there's still guardrails.
Thoughts? Despite the firey response when I mentioned the GNU utilities previously, I suspect most people aren't so noble as to care about this stuff, but I would be interested if there's been any significant thought given to this matter by folks who understand IP, licensing all of that (not the peanut gallery that thinks it's illegal to talk about GNU software please, I said "folks who understand IP")
Statistics: Posted by segaloco — Sat Dec 30, 2023 10:52 am — Replies 6 — Views 259