FileTrip.net file Legality

[The Minecrafter]

I want to create a rom hack with a friend, and we thought that filetrip.net would be a good place to collaborate and share the files. Unfortunately, we would be dealing with the files inside of a rom. (.narc, .nsbmd, .nsbtx,...)
I was wondering if we are allowed to post those types of files to the site to share and collaborate. We would not be including the overlay folder, Arm7, Arm9, Header, Banner, y7, or y9 files, and we would not include all of the files in the data folder, so someone could not recompile it into a playable game.

I do not want to get into trouble for this, so I want to check and get an answer before I upload any files of that sort.

 

[notmeanymore]

My understanding is you cannot share any of the original code from the ROM, only the patch to the .nds

 

[FAST6191]

You are free to post whatever you like on the private side but if we get complaints then things can go missing and likewise we do not encourage the posting of copyrighted content (and this would definitely fall under that- we have deleted undub patches before as they technically contain code from a rom).

I would encourage you however to set up a version control somewhere else as that is going to be far better in the long run (you can revert to older files if necessary and it quite often is, make a little wiki for yourselves, allow access to certain files for certain people and more) on a cheap host (I do not know of any good free ones that allow it to be done but I avoid free hosts like the plague). I have seen a few hacking projects appear on google code as well but the same potential problems as you see on filetrip will be upon you.

In no order a list of version control programs I like and have used or vetted for rom hacking purposes
Mercurial
http://mercurial.selenic.com/
SVN
http://subversion.apache.org/
GIT
http://git-scm.com/downloads
Fossil (my favourite right now and can quite easily be set up on a local machine if you want without the need to turn it into a full blown server)
http://www.fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/index.wiki

If you need a hand getting them set up and with some basic usage post either in the rom hacking section or the computing section with a nice title and someone should be able to guide you through it. They will be slightly more annoying to use at first but in the long run both for hacking and as someone that aspires to know how computers work it is well worth knowing how to work a version control system.

 

[PolloDiablo]

hey FAST
I just uploaded a modified ".csv" file needed to make an undub of The Last Story. It doesn't have any code in it, it's just a list of file names.
it's legal?

 

[Luigi2012SM64DS]

just make an xdelta patch.

 

[FAST6191]

If file names were not free use pretty much everything would have been shut down years ago, indeed I would be shocked if there was any legal recourse to take down something with a few basic file names like that.

 

[The Minecrafter]

What about modified .narc, .nsbmd, .nsbtx, and such, where someone has edited a large portion of the code, but it still contains Nintendo code in it?

 

[Cyan]

If it contains code that you didn't write yourself, then it's copyrighted and illegal to share without the author's consent.
That's why patches were created (ips or xdelta), which contains only your own modified data. They are created by comparing the original and your version, and only the addresses of unmatched data and the new data to be replaced/added are kept in the patch.


But, like said, we can't control what you upload.
We only take action if we have complaints because you posted the link to copyrighted material on public website/forums/etc. and someone reported it.

But if you want to be clean, don't upload files you didn't create yourself.