Originally posted by Carl SaganI don't even... what?!
Romhacking itself is using Nintendo's intellectual property. Beyond that, the romhacks are freely accessible to anyone.
Agreed, this invalidates any perceived grievance romhackers have, unless they can cite any copyright law
The rest of this/my post is largely irrelevant to any perceived rights of romhack creators
Originally posted by Carl SaganWhat is being sold is the hardware manipulation required to use it on a console,
You cannot ignore the fact that a preloaded rom is also part of this transaction
Originally posted by Carl Saganalmost all of which is going to the guy creating them not Trihex btw.
[Citation Needed]
You would need the cart creator to disclose received payments per "pre-ordered" cart to consider reaching this conclusion.
One fact is that Trihex is charging an extra $50 if a NTSC-U Yoshi's Island cart is not provided. At the time of this posting, I can purchase said cart for ~$21 on ebay. This refutes the claim of "almost all" the purchase price going to the creator for orders not providing carts.
Originally posted by Carl SaganThis is like saying, "you're not allowed to sell a device to read a book, furthermore the book isn't even a real published book but a fanfic, and the fanfic is freely available online."
I would agree as both use existing universes/engines and existing characters/resources, except the issue isn't capability but rather that the device is pre-loaded with content.
Originally posted by Carl SaganOr for example, you can't just make a remix of a licensed song and expect to have any rights to it, that's just silly.
Agreed, but selling a device with this content is questionable.
The caveat for all of this is that I am not an expert on copyright law concerning modified copyrighted content
Originally posted by Carl SaganImagine of all 10,000 SMW romhack creators said SD2SNES had to stop selling its product because people were using it to play their romhacks.
I think you posted this before mentioning it in IRC, but SD2SNES doesn't include any pre-loaded content, to my knowledge.
Originally posted by Carl SaganThat being said, it would suck if what Trihex were doing were going against the intent of the romhack creators. But quite the opposite, he is providing incredible exposure which is massively benefiting the yoshi's island and romhack communities.
It is commendable that he took the necessary courtesies to contact the romhack authors, but they possess no legal right to consent to the inclusion of pre-loaded romhacks since they hold no intellectual property rights.
Any "Massive benefit" is debatable, and could be done without reselling carts with pre-loaded romhacks.