Amiga Emulators

[THANAMELESS]

Its wholly a decision for the site moderators and admins rather than an issue for open debate.
The site rules are fairly clear on acceptable content, but occasionally you get a site that sits in a marginally grey area at which point its at the discretion of any mods or admins whether it stays or not.

Lemon Amiga doesn't host any breach of copyright material although it does have links to some other Amiga related sites which in turn can offer access to potentially infringing material. Bearing in mind you would need more mouse clicks and more searching to find such material via Lemon Amiga than you would with google and the fact that its an Amiga community fansite that has nothing to do with roms its not even in the same ballpark as offering rom links. The potential for possible access to infringing content however does mean its sitting firmly on the fence line which is why its at the discretion of the mods and admins. If they decide it needs to come down then it will.

i understand what your saying, and i know it doesn't directly provides any links, however i think that we may end up having more discussions about roms, and wich links are legal and wich aren't so avoiding that at all costs. we shouldn't end up discussing wich things are legal and most importantly we shouldn't talk about roms because it's an emulator forum... there are already forums out there for roms. we shouldn't be talking about roms in the first place, neither should we have this disscusion wich in my eyes means that to avoid endless talking the link better could just be deleted... its an emulator forum but not a rom forum... now i understand that rom's mostely are used in emulation, but on a camera forum you shouldn't have a discussion about batteries neither. so however i might not mind, the host might not mind it, the companies might not mind it but we will end up people say go to example.com and then click in top right on that affichies (or something like that) in the right and you'll find the roms, refering to this topic. wich is providing roms

[FatTrucker]

Telling people how to navigate to roms via other sites is providing rom links. Linking to a community site that offers a Front-End solution for their emulator issues isn't.

No-one's making an issue over rom links, getting confused or getting the wrong idea. I think you're creating an issue where one doesn't exist.

[THANAMELESS]

i understand, but the problem is where is it gonna stop without ending up banning a hell of a lot people getting endless useless pointless discussions about what is legal or not.

Telling people how to navigate to roms via other sites is providing rom links. Linking to a community site that offers a Front-End solution for their emulator issues isn't.

i know we aren't doing it here, but the problem is yet... i think there will be a time when some people will go against the decision of the moderators, wich might be really a problem, because banning 6 or 7 people wich are just good members isn't really what this forum could use... believe me if been an admin and a moderator, and i noticed my site's got shut down by this type of stuff, refering to an old forgotten ''it has nothing to do with it'' topic...

getting confused

i think there is, many people just read topics half, and the rules half, and start posting links to all type of stuff (im not directly reffering to roms) without knowing they've done something wrong, the problem with that is that they can be pointed at that, but it still might get the site into trouble. again back to that getting cofused, that's why i think we should delete the link, if it doesn't create confusion, but takes even a single bit away, it's worthy of deleting. however it's the mod's choice to don't do that i can't bring on something against him, neither do i feel the need to do that, but i'm just scared waking up one day and finding out that this site has been deleted.(and for me then immidiatly my only forum)

[FatTrucker]

The sites more than adequately and fairly moderated so I don't think you need to worry about the thought police sending it to Guantanamo just yet.

[THANAMELESS]

yeah if they ever put to jail every copyright vialator of the world they would need Australia as a prison island again, and then still it would be the highest populated country in the world

[retroguiden]

Be that as it may, there seems to be a gray area when it comes to sites who link to files, even if they aren't the direct hosts, they still provide access.

Well, as I said I realise the line has to be drawn somewhere. But this kind of thinking and reasoning is beginning to sound like the game "Seven degrees of Kevin Bacon". A site that links to a site that links to a site that links to illegal roms. Where is it ok, in the second degree? Or third or fourth? I think it's almost silly to take responsibility for any other sites than Emu Zone. And I sure as **** can't see a court deciding that linking to a site that has a few links is the same thing as making the Rom available. (Well, the purpose of the linked site does play its part.)

Otherwise you could argue that we should be allowed to link to public/private trackers and on and on.

Nope, I see a distinct line drawn there. Trackers is something completely different than a homepage.

you have to keep in mind when it comes to Wikipedia they either

A) may not know and assume its legit to do it
B) may be linked to material whose copyright was relinquished or otherwise expires.
C) may be doing it with the permission of the original developer.

All of which could be easily applied to Lemon Amiga and almost every other site that doesn't explicitly state: "Here are links to all the Roms you want!"

It's all a careful dance these days

Well, actually the climate for Rom sites is a lot "better" these days. The companies seem to have other priorities right now. That however, could change any day now so one should always be careful.

Its wholly a decision for the site moderators and admins rather than an issue for open debate.

Everything should be an issue for open debate. The decision though is solely up to Mods/Admins, and if we're lucky and they are wise they will occasionally listen to the user input. This topic is a bit sticky as it has it has to do with legal stuff so I understand that they must act strictly, but in general I see no problem with discussing policies.

The potential for possible access to infringing content however does mean its sitting firmly on the fence line

As is Google. And that requires less mouse clicks than Lemon Amiga. Just a thought.

[Zach]

Alright, this is getting out of hand.. So I'm going to make a few statements and that's the end of it.

As has been pointed out already, what is and isn't allowed here is at the discretion of mods and administrators, or GHD the person who owns, and hosts the site on his servers.

Members don't need to be telling other members what they should and shouldn't posts, unless there are clear rule violations and a mod has not yet OK'd the content of a thread - I already did that here.

This is not a free speech issue. You do not have a right to free speech on this forum, and that extends to what you think should and shouldn't be debated. EZ is not a public forum that guarantees free speech rights. It is a privately run site and forum, of which you are subject to agreement terms to post here. A common misconception about free speech is that it extends to everything just because someone is from the USA (and I know many of you aren't) and the Internet is unregulated. This isn't really much to do with this discussion but I've seen inuendo that eludes to it, so I'm saying it for clarity.

The EZ servers are subject to the laws of whatever country they are hosted in, and I'm not sure where that is. However, GHD has made it clear that posting links even to sites that provide copyrighted material, or to the material itself can get EZ sued or shut down. That's why these rules are in place. I made a judgement call because of the age of the software and because Lemon does not actually host copyrighted material themselves; GHD could still show up and delete the link, because they do link to it.

Also.. Google vs Lemon is NOT the same thing. Google is a search engine that was designed to crawl pages and use search algorithms to return relevant results. I can be misused to find copyrighted material just like a CD Burner can be misused to burn/copy copyrighted matertial. The law still makes a distinction.

Lemon LINKS to copyrighted material exclusively, within the interest of the site format. In terms of the law that is considered a facilitation of copyrighted infringement, because the purpose of those links IS to explicitly provide you access to material that may still be subject to copyright law.

This isn't about what is morally right or wrong. I don't have a problem with Lemon as I already made clear. But as a moderator it is also my duty to enforce the rules of the forum, including rules meant to protect EZ from possible criminal liabilities. Many countries have laws similar to US laws, such as facilitating a crime, aiding an abetting in the commission of a crime, etc. Just like drug dealers or addicts caught with a certain amount of drugs, even if they are not dealing, can be charged with possession with intent to distribute. Granted linking to sites who link can be a stretch of the law, a case could still be made because of the format of our site and forum, being about emulators and playing old games, and supporting users in those activities. That is why direct links are not allowed, and linking to sites who link is usually not allowed either.

The same thing goes for torrent trackers. The majority of traffic on those sites is to download torrents that connect you to people serving copyrighted material. Plenty of sites specialize in categories of material (games, anime, retro) while other are more general and also include non-copyrighted materials. However I have yet to come across a site solely dedicated to P2P file sharing of legal materials. That's why sites like Supernova have been shut down in the past, and many sites like Pirate Bay are hosted in foreign countries with lax or no copyright law enforcement, and are still prone to legal attacks that can temporarily interrupt their service.

Some guys homepage with tons of links to cool sites, is one thing as you pointed out. But when dealing with Retro emulation sites, linking to roms or linking to sites that link to roms, or multi-level linking still shows a clear intent to provide access. Period. You don't need a court case to set precedent to know what can happen. We have rules, I could have easily deleted the link, and maybe I should have. But my decision is made. Why I allow lemon and not something else is not up for debate - I only have to explain my reasons to other moderators, Lefty, and GHD Pro. Period.

Now everyone do yourselves a favor and let this thread die, so I don't have to lock it.

BTW.. Nameless, talking about batteries on a camera forum is completely acceptable. People will want to know the best batteries to power their camera.. Your logic goes a little too far when you try to make analogies. Talking about roms or issues getting them to work is NOT breaking the rules here. The only thing we do not tolerate is giving other users a means to get those roms. Again, Lemon is a gray area and I made my decision. That's it.