'Intellectual Property'... what meaningless words. They are better known as Trademarks ™, Registered Trademarks ®, Patents, and Copyrights ©. On the internet these lose all meaning. For example.. how many pages are actually registered with the US Copyright Board? About 0. Yet nearly every page has a copyright notice on them. please see 'Intellectual Property part.3' for some clear ups. This is very important.

When we place things on the internet, we put them up for other people. What point would there be if this wasn't so? An international hard drive? So when we place items online, we should expect them to be used by other people. If we place files online, we should expect to see them pop up on somebody else's site.

Now I myself think that it is wrong to copy HTML, JavaScript, Images and other coded material onto one's homepage without giving credit and/or getting permission from the originator. But some people think that you shouldn't use somebody's file archive as your own.. even if you transfer all files to your own server. If you don't, I would agree, with them, but file archives cannot be one's 'Intellectual Property'. Especially so when the files were originally collected from many sources anyway. I wouldn't care if somebody downloaded all of Patent Pending's archives and used them as their own, as long as the HTML was their own, and not mine.

Basically, "Everybody has lots of different files, then somebody comes along a compiles all of the files, then others come a use the file compiliation." This is a basic way of the internet. If it were not so, files would be spread all over the internet, making it a incredibly terrible place to find what you want.

But apparently not everybody thinks this as Deezer and I found out yesterday. The following comes from our own SNES SRM archive index page.

SNES SaveRAM Status (March 15, 1998)

Well, to start, I received the following e-mail today (name left out):

Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 17:37:31 -0500
To: megabyte@mindless.com, deezer@usa.net
Subject: ur site kix ass!

hi.
i'd like to know what exactly it is that you think you're doing. it took me a whole year to get all my Snes SRM files...

oh..and don't even think about saying that u didn't steal my SaveRAM files. those contributors are the same people that uploaded the same SRMs that I had a year ago.
frankly, i'm very pissed off at u for stealing my SRMs, but i'll give you 1 day to delete all of the SRMs and the page altogether. go ahead and steal ZST and S9X files from otheer sites, but you're not gonna steal my SRMs. is that clear, sir?
i hope it is.

please delete them now.

This is what Deezer had already placed up (obviously pissed):

In a profanity-riddled e-mail, someone (who doesn't seem to believe in capitalization) asked me to remove "his" SRMs. This person will remain nameless.
If you want an alternative download site, check out the SRM Pit. Good day.

What's even more peculiar about this is that the SRM Pit claims that we copied them (which we didn't), yet the other site says that SRM Pit copied them. Anyway what I thought about this matter can be summed up in my reply to Deezer concerning this matter.

To: deezer@usa.net
From: megabyte@mindless.com
Subject: Big Shit w/ SRMs..

Umm.. well. OK, you read this so tell me what you think.. This is what I have to say about it:

1. Not ALL of the files came from his archive.
2. If they are public on the net, we have every right to post them. _It is NOT stealing._
3. He obviously did not create those (or most anyway) SRMs, so he has no right to tell us to take them down
4. He IS credited on the Credits page and perhaps should be put on the SRM index itself.
5. He has no right to tell us to delete the page either that YOU created, not him.
6. Fuck, if we have to, lets contact the contributors themselves.
7. It's up to you, but I say that we not take them down. What's he going to do about it anyway? If you don't want things 'stolen', don't put them up, and kiss up to your local CDA rep... hehehe

--=MEGAߥTE

BTW, Why was the Subject named "Ur site kix ass!" ? LoL

So that leaves it at the present status. We took the files from the other archive to make them easily accessable to all who came here. I've decided to take the archive down, for now until I get support of the actual SRM contributors. I have removed his site link from the Special Thanx, and it will not appear on this site again. All previous SRMs can be acquired from the SRM Pit, for now. We just might decide to put them up anyway because of the seven reasons listed in my e-mail. Input welcomed. Stay tuned because things may change very quickly. --=MEGAߥTE

Well for one, how dare he claim that we stole files if he placed them on a public archive site AND the files were contributed by different people, not himself. (which is what I said in a long form in my reply to Deezer) One thing I just noticed in this e-mail is that he orders us to remove our OWN HTML off of there. We certainly will NOT. Also the 'owner' of this archive has the nerve to put this on his site:

- *Note* I've now added a copyright notice on the bottom of my site...so anyone who's found stealing my HTML source will be in big trouble now...trouble with the law, that is.

OK, he JUST 2 days ago added any copyright notice. And remember this online copyright notices mean jack in the real world of copyrights. He did not apply anywhere to get it.. If he doesn't want anybody using 'his' SRMs then he shouldn't have a public archive. This whole matter has pissed both Deezer and I off about the way some people are online. We haven't released the name, e-mail addy, or page addy, of this person, but if we get any other harrassments, we are prepared to do so. It's people like this who make emulation degrade. We need to remember a few of Jeremy Chadwick (Y0SHi)'s quotes about the 'SNES emulator wars' (from Super Nintendo Emulation Ego 97.10.23):