February 10, 2000
Here's what I know about you. If you found my site using Altavista, you were probably searching for "Dance Dance Revolution". If you found my site using Yahoo! you were probably searching for "dragon ball z game". Right.
Have you ever thought about what copyrights are for? If you read the U.S. Constitution, you would see that the idea of copyright is to promote creativity by protecting original works. By protecting something new, the law discourages people from copying what is already there. Makes sense. This concept survived intact until the later part of the 20th century when concepts of contract law were forced in. You know how when you buy a game or a movie there is some small print on the package which says something like "for sale and use in North America (or Japan or where ever) only"? That my friends is a very recent concept. You won't find it on books, magazines, records, tapes or CDs, but you will find it on computer software, games, DVDs and some other digital media. That is a license.
Starting in the 50's or 60's copyright law began to change. The time length of a copyright has been extended many times to the point where a copyright can now last up to 95 years. At some point the concept of licensing began to be introduced. The newest result is the DCMA. All the contraversy about DVD movies is going to affect gamers pretty soon. What media will the PS2 & Dolphin use? You guessed it DVD. Take a look at this for some food for thought. Want to go to jail for playing the latest import? If pending legislation known as UCITA passes, you just might. See what the LA Times has to say about it.
Of course companies have the right to protect their products from piracy. Pirates just plain suck and almost every country has laws against piracy. On the other hand, consumers have rights as well. If you live in the US, do you vote? How do your congressional representatives stand on these issues?
January 29, 2000
Just dandy. It seems that somehow my last update has disappeared from my server, hard disk and backups. Oh well. Nothing too exciting right now since my scanner and my digital camera are on the blink. I have updated the PCE, SFC, Saturn and Playdia pages to show current stock.
January 1, 2000
The new year is upon us, the new century has arrived! Each of the Big Three promises us some kind of upgrade this year and all our favorite old games will be just a little harder to find.
Maybe I have written about this before, but I want to write a bit about New Year's in Japan. First off, the change from the 20th century to the 21st is not such a big deal. Japan is not a christian country and so there is very little thought of the Millennium. Officially it is now Heisei 12 which means the 12th year of the current emperor. New Year's is a family holiday here. Most people go back to their home town and spend the evening with their extended families. Maybe after midnight or on the first, you go to your local shrine. This year we stayed in Tokyo and went to MeijiJingu (even though this is a Japanese site, there is English content). It used to be that almost all business were closed from Dec. 31st to January 4th, but this year many businesses are staying open, perhaps because of the recession.
Happy New Year &Best wishes to you all!
December 19, 1999
A quick glance at this page will show you that I have not been very active about working on this website. Regular customers and people who just email in know that this is because of my work schedule. Since I don't have time for a really good update with pictures and good descriptions, I'm going to get some things off my chest. Following is a big "screw you" to my two favorite industries for not trusting their customers.
Anyone who regularly reads gaming news will know that the Osaka court ruled against the sale of used games a few months ago. This is contrary to the Tokyo court ruling and came as quite a surprise. We don't have any concept like "states rights" here so the idea of district courts contradicting each other is weird. Two companies were named in the lawsuit, one of which is Sofmap. Since Sofmap does business in Osaka and Tokyo this has affected the largest volume source of used games in Tokyo. Sofmap 13 no longer sells used games. It was kind of sad to see three floors packed full of games go from having open spaces on the display racks, to one day there only being one floor, then none. Good bye Sofmap 13. Collectors all around the world will miss you.
By naming Sofmap as a defendant, the CESA lawyers knew that if they won their case they would be able to take out major sources of used games sales in two of the largest markets in Japan at one time. I would expect no less from the people who figured out that they could enjoy greater legal protection by having their products reclassified under Japanese copyright law. Even though I don't like CESA, I respect them. If anyone from CESA reads this site, I think you are a bunch of sneaky greedy bastards, but I tip my hat to you anyway.
I'd like to go off on a bit of an related tangent for a while since I have the time to write a bit. Anyone who follows gaming news is aware that DVD will be the storage medium of choice for the next generation of consoles. A fair number of you in the U.S. probably already have a DVD ROM drive in your PC/MAC and a DVD player hooked up to your TV. Unfortunately for you most of you in the US do not have wide screen TVs. Wide screen TVs are great for watching movies at home since you can see the film closer to the way the director intended it to be seen. You might want to take a look here or here if you don't understand why wide screen TVs are good and why movies should be released in Anamorphic format. A few videogames have even had a wide screen mode, but the only example I can think of right now is Panzer Dragoon Zwei.
Why do I care about this stuff? For quite a while now I have been wanting to get a DVD player, but I held off because DVD videos are subject to the same region coding as games. I have a wide screen TV, (they are very common here), and want to watch movies in anamorphic wide screen format. Since I live in Japan, were I to buy a regular DVD player I would be limited to watching only movies which were released here. This would mean that I would have to wait several months after the theater release which is already months after the US release and that I would have to pay between $45 to $58 apiece for new releases, BTW there is no discounting on VHS or DVD video sales in Japan. Why not rent you ask? We have a system here where movies can be released to consumers for sale, or for rental, or both. Read that carefully.
Even today I can go down to my corner video store and buy Pulp Fiction for $58, but I can not rent it for any price. That movie is available on DVD only for sale, not for rental. I can rent the NON wide screen VHS tape, but not the DVD. This kind of thinking makes sense, but only if you are one of the troglodytes who works for the movie industry. Back in the bad old days of VHS only, the studios were worried about home copying so they would delay rental releases and jack up the prices of new videos for sale. They figured of you just paid $100 for a movie, you would be less likely to give a copy to your friend. They also figured that people would not be willing to pay money for a VHS copy since copied tapes look really bad. Now set the clock to the end of the 20th century. The movie industry agreed that if they were going to embrace DVD as the new consumer format they would need region coding and some way to prevent people from making tapes from DVDs since a VHS copy of DVD would look pretty much as good as a store bought copy. The answers to these concerns came on the form of CSS content encryption and Macrovision respectively. The industry thought they had their problems solved. So why is it that I can't rent Pulp Fiction in Japan?
So anyway, I had been holding off on buying a DVD player. I could have ordered a "chipped" system which would defeat the region coding, just like I have had a chipped PSX for about 4 years now. Problem is that solution would have cost about US$1000 to obtain here in Japan so that was a bit out of the question. I even asked a friend of mine who works in the industry if there was a legitimate code free consumer player I could purchase. I am an American, my wife is Japanese, we have a legitimate need for a player which can play both Region 1 & 2 discs. No dice.
I finally broke down and built a PC designed to hook up to my wide screen TV (as a side note, thank you Intel for the i810 chip set which supports NTSC/PAL output on S-Video as a primary display). Now we can watch the movies we want to see in the format we want (mostly). The last "screw you" of this rant goes to the support people at Intervideo who make WinDVD for not reading email and not understanding their product. Those of you interested in the topic of Codefree DVD on PCs should start here.
Why should consumers have to put up with
companies who want to manipulate the legal system to ban the sale of used
games? Why should we have to put up with territory codes on game
and DVD console units? I honestly believe that most companies have
lost touch with their customers. If you are reading this it is because
you are someone who wants to play Japanese games outside of Japan.
You have already dealt with the region coding to play what you want.
You have probably received more information about the products you enjoy
from other users of the products than the companies which make them would
ever tell you. Are you happy with this? If you agree or not,
take a look
here.