Main > Main Forum

Continuation of HAZE and ark-adr's legal conversation re: MAME, etc.

Pages: << < (10/17) > >>

mcseforsale:

As I've stated a thousand times (OK, maybe 5), it would be ideal if all of the IP owners would offer the ROMS for a set, small price.  Say $.25 for individual use and $2.00 for commercial.  All of the rom hustling sites are ALREADY making money on these ROMs indirectly since they're generating ad revenue by simply hosting them, so that's already profiting on the IP, whether indirectly or not.

I, for one, wouldn't mind at all licensing all my ROMS at a respectable price since the only time I use quarters in my arcade is to show off that the coin door works.  And even then, I generally unlock it and take that same quarter back out when I'm broke and need to turn in my change at the grocery store.  :dizzy:

So, for the small amount of ROMS that I have, I would only be paying about $50.  Paltry and easily workable into a cab project.

C'mon MAME guys, open up your rolodexes and get in touch with the OG developers and let's make this happen.  Hell, we got Space Ace and the other LD games this way!

AJ



--- Quote from: McHale on August 08, 2013, 10:11:37 pm ---I'm amazed this thread went on this long and kind of amazed these discussions still take place.

Let's use FHMC Q*bert as an example.  There's only ONE person I'm aware of who has the LEGAL right to possess the ROMS - Warren Davis.  Not a SINGLE person here owned the original boards or ROMS.  The reason we have them is because he wanted others to enjoy a game that nobody would have a chance to play if he didn't release them.  He was fully aware of MAME and gave them to the MAME team so MAME users could enjoy it.  The nice side benefit is, if you have an original Q*Bert, you can burn 'em and throw 'em in.  He didn't do it for profit.  He did it to support the MAME cause - preservation. I believe a large number of prototypes became available the same way.

That being said, the ROMS are *NOT* in the public domain.  They are *STILL* under copyright protection.  And selling them is not only illegal, it's a HUGE knife in the back to a really cool programmer who probably could have made a ton of money selling his cab with the original ROMS.  Had he not released them to the MAME team, his original FHMC Q*Bert cab would be MORE rare than Marble Man 2 and probably more desirable.  But because he released them, anybody can burn the ROMS and make a FHMC cab. 

Some programmers are like Mr. Davis and enjoy sharing with fans (the free ROMS on the MAME site are a great example).  Others (Sega comes to mind) are always thinking about future sales so they aren't keen to lose potential future sales by having arcade games out there that they made no money on.  Personally, I can tell you what it's like to release something for free that was VERY popular only to have others sell it for profit - it sucks.  It sucks a lot.  Nothing will kill the MAME project faster than people selling ROMS or selling MAME cabs and "giving" the ROMS for free.  Believe it or not, I know a number of people who only have roms in their MAME cab for the games they legally own.  While it would be foolish to believe everybody is that honest/legal, it would be better for the project if more people were or at least appeared to be.

--- End quote ---


Haze:

We emulate stuff, the technical side.  As I mentioned earlier I think it's important that we stay neutral in that, work with what is presented to us with no level of bias.

Others can chase ghosts if they want.

Last place I was working a company contacted us saying they wanted to do a pack with some of their games in.  The paper trail was amusing, turns out they'd auctions off the rights to the game years ago as part of some other deal to a company who made washing machines, tracking back that far they then found said company had likely sold it off as part of another bulk deal to a company who now operate fast food restaurants, but hadn't got any actual paperwork to say either way.  In the end the whole idea was abandoned.

This isn't the role of Mamedev, nothing would get done and trying to work within such constraints would be reckless and irresponsible when it comes to actually caring about the past and actually ensuring nothing becomes inaccessible.

I'd say if anything Daphne was a good example of why such methods should be avoided, instead of an emulator they've got a psuedo-emulator tailored to the desires of certain copyright holders locked to specific platforms requiring special DRM encumbered files and the project is basically locked out of actually progressing or doing anything *properly* as a result.  Maybe that is of no concern to you, but such a model is not a long term solution to anything.  With MAME instead we just get on with things, and provide a resource to those who need it.

mcseforsale:

As for Daphne, that's a bit different.  The range of games for that particular platform were doomed from the onset because of their difficulty in programming and hardware maintenance.  Laser discs sucked then and do now.  However, it was a novel attempt at bringing them back and I posit that the way they did it was the only way to emulate them, copyright them and mass market them short of offering a gigantic laser disc player and some 10" discs.

As for MAME and throttling the output of ROMs with some phoney EULA, I understand the legal risk it is that the devs' hobby is potentially risky.  ROMs are being burned.  Someone is supplying the boards.  I don't believe that it's the IP owners that are presenting you with these boards, nor do I think unravelling the ownership knot would be productive in any way.

I think that by developing MAME (and a hearty THANK YOU to all the devs) started out as a noble cause, I also believe that the IP owners of these ROMs either could care less, or don't even know they own the IP. 

With that said, I would think un-coupling yourselves from the burning of the ROMs, instead of throttling their use with MAME would be far more productive and could potentially allow you to capitalize on its use, rather than not allowing it to be licensed software...even for a pittance. 

That way, you could provide the tools to burn ROMS, develop MAME any way y'all see fit, profit from it's sale (to corps) and make the burning process the legal issue that the end user has to deal with.

Just a thought.

AJ




--- Quote from: Haze on August 08, 2013, 10:56:18 pm ---We emulate stuff, the technical side.  As I mentioned earlier I think it's important that we stay neutral in that, work with what is presented to us with no level of bias.

Others can chase ghosts if they want.

Last place I was working a company contacted us saying they wanted to do a pack with some of their games in.  The paper trail was amusing, turns out they'd auctions off the rights to the game years ago as part of some other deal to a company who made washing machines, tracking back that far they then found said company had likely sold it off as part of another bulk deal to a company who now operate fast food restaurants, but hadn't got any actual paperwork to say either way.  In the end the whole idea was abandoned.

This isn't the role of Mamedev, nothing would get done and trying to work within such constraints would be reckless and irresponsible when it comes to actually caring about the past and actually ensuring nothing becomes inaccessible.

I'd say if anything Daphne was a good example of why such methods should be avoided, instead of an emulator they've got a psuedo-emulator tailored to the desires of certain copyright holders locked to specific platforms requiring special DRM encumbered files and the project is basically locked out of actually progressing or doing anything *properly* as a result.  Maybe that is of no concern to you, but such a model is not a long term solution to anything.  With MAME instead we just get on with things, and provide a resource to those who need it.

--- End quote ---


Haze:

Well there is already a disconnection between the dumping / distribution of ROMs and the work done on MAME.

The Dumping Union are a separate entity and a lot of what I work with is from individual contributors too, providing a service to them by emulating what they have.

As I've said, we provide the technical service, the technical software, the emulator.  We figure things out, we present what we find out to the world to better the knowledge of the world.  We call that creation MAME.



mcseforsale:

Then you hide behind licensing.  I'm not trying to be a dick, but creating MAME and offering a license for personal use, then shunning its use in a cab that get sold without ROMs is like Linux was 10 years ago. 

It's bad policy.  MAME is an amazing bit of software, if you really analyze it.  If the dumping of ROMs can be de-coupled from your work, why then don't you let people license it for sale on built cabs?  It makes no sense.  And it seems a bit out of place in today's market.  For the 20 people that have asked me to build them a cab, I know only one that would actually pay for it.  I wouldn't mind figuring in a MAME license in the build estimate, writing an interface to help them put the ROMs in the correct place, pulling the pin and lobbing it over the wall.

AJ



--- Quote from: Haze on August 08, 2013, 11:32:13 pm ---Well there is already a disconnection between the dumping of ROMs and the work done on MAME.

The Dumping Union are a separate entity and a lot of what I work with is from individual contributors too, providing a service to them by emulating what they have.

As I've said, we provide the technical service, the technical software, the emulator.  We figure things out, we present what we find out to the world to better the knowledge of the world.  We call that creation MAME.

--- End quote ---


Pages: << < (10/17) > >>

Go to full version