Mame rom legality question

[ark_ader]

just ignore ark_ader and his incorrect advice.

every time he gives bad / illegal advice on purpose I'm just hitting the report to moderator button, you should do the same.

if he continues, I'll concede that he wins and the forum doesn't want correct advice but would rather listen to people saying it's ok to use MAME where it isn't, and retire my account here.

I'm sorry Haze, but MAME is in such a legal haze (sorry poor choice of word) that it cannot enforce any usage rules, especially in international law.  The means of gathering the technical information to reverse engineer the technology it emulates is highly questionable.   There is also the problem of  intellectual rights to the said emulator as I can argue that I have a small investment in regards to development.  Heck nearly 1000 people helped code Mame in any one particular time, which brings ownership issues in any legal challenge.  Probably one saving grace in regards to a class action lawsuit.

But I can see that you have been gravely injured in my comments which I humbly offer my sincere apologies, but you are on a message board that is not Haze controlled and other peoples views are discussed.   If you object to any comments you are welcome to comment, report, or ignore.

I sometimes forget that you are the official spokesman for Mame, and that you own the majority of the code.

[paigeoliver]

My one sticking support has always been the fact that mame specifically supports bootleg games and the bootleg software they run. Being that you can't really LEGALLY even be in possession of that software outside of a few failed states and 3rd world nations that don't recognize copyright protection so I am wondering how exactly that support was developed and why? Did one of the 10,000 people in Tuvalu who all share the same 1.5 meg internet connection code all the bootleg support? Even if they did, shouldn't that be in a fork from the main development?

just ignore ark_ader and his incorrect advice.

every time he gives bad / illegal advice on purpose I'm just hitting the report to moderator button, you should do the same.

if he continues, I'll concede that he wins and the forum doesn't want correct advice but would rather listen to people saying it's ok to use MAME where it isn't, and retire my account here.

I'm sorry Haze, but MAME is in such a legal haze (sorry poor choice of word) that it cannot enforce any usage rules, especially in international law.  The means of gathering the technical information to reverse engineer the technology it emulates is highly questionable.   There is also the problem of  intellectual rights to the said emulator as I can argue that I have a small investment in regards to development.  Heck nearly 1000 people helped code Mame in any one particular time, which brings ownership issues in any legal challenge.  Probably one saving grace in regards to a class action lawsuit.

But I can see that you have been gravely injured in my comments which I humbly offer my sincere apologies, but you are on a message board that is not Haze controlled and other peoples views are discussed.   If you object to any comments you are welcome to comment, report, or ignore.

I sometimes forget that you are the official spokesman for Mame, and that you own the majority of the code.

[jennifer]

      Thats an interesting point, and Id be the last one to ask given my limited exposure to the Mame...I have recently taken a newfound interest in the subject however, and have to give these guys some credit. what they have achieved over the years is quite amazing, although it seems a bit over complicated for the average curious user and seems to have a limited support group. [most likely due to to the legality factor].... Jennifer did however manage to get some Mame to work [not with the hyperspin] and had to trial and error her way through that much Because everyone was so secretive about the Roms.... I like what I finally saw, and have become to be a Mame believer.

[Haze]

As I've said before, MAME is a *document*

It documents the good, as well as the bad, it documents history.

Bad things happen, ignoring bootlegs would be like history books conveniently ignoring WW2.  They represent an important part of the story, eg. how the Korean industry came to be, how the official SF2 Turbo came to be, why CPS2 was so heavily locked down etc.  It also can document the effectiveness of certain protection systems, which again is part of history (to date *nobody* has figured out Seibu's Raiden 2, and clearly NMK004 was effective for NMK too because all the bootlegs of USSAF Mustang ended up using music ripped from Raiden instead of a clone of the original chip) .  Furthermore the information we present can be correlated directly with the stories about how prototype games often got dumped at trade shows and ended up on the markets as bootlegs before the official products (Defender being the prime example, most of the bootlegs are based off the White label prototype build)

If MAME was just about playing the best version of games for free, I'd agree, we should get rid of the bootlegs, relegate them to another build, but it isn't.  MAME is about documenting what we know, what we've found, documenting our history.  If anything by taking such a serious impartial view of things it strengthens our legal position by making it clear that these are our goals.  Once you understand this you'll understand the reasons things are done as they are.

Other emulators, in the past, where the focus is purely on giving you playable games HAVE taken this approach, from memory Retrocade supported just the single 'Best' version of each game, different project, very different goals.

I find the points made by a certain other laughable at best.

Writing about illegal things, documenting them etc. doesn't make the project illegal.  The downloads on mamedev.org document what we know, they do not include the actual illegal material.

Furthermore many seemingly original games could well have illegal content.  Take the games DoDonPachi II - BeeStorm and Wyvern Wings, both from 2001, both use ripped mod files as the basis of their music, things taken from websites and used presumably without permission (WW has bits of Metallica / Slayer etc. in the music..)  Both are 'legitimate' products, but if MAME was to start ignoring everything which could be deemed of dubious legality for one reason or another you'd be surprised at the number of things that got dropped; it would be far greater than the obvious 'bootlegs' and could well extend into popular series'  (I believe some later ports of Rainbow Islands can't use the original music because it's such a shameless rip of 'somewhere over the rainbow' the legal departments of the publishers decided against it eg. the Saturn / PSX? versions )

As I said, the role of the project is to document history, not rewrite it or selectively ignore it.

With the ever increasing prominence of MESS in the project and codebase it should also be becoming clearer than ever that the emulator isn't about playing free games.  MAME already supports various firmware update programs (pointless if you just want to play a game) but once you open up the MESS side of the code you've got ancient mainframe terminals (with no practical use these days) to built-it-yourself z80 based boards (distributed as schematics + rom in the first place), alarm clocks, eeprom programmers (virtual rom dumping ftw!), car computers (well maybe you could hook it up to the accelerometer on a laptop?), calculators, phones, chess computers, you name it, and while there is some friction regarding some of that code and some members of Mamedev it is still part of what MAME is and what our technology is documenting / running, even if you have to compile it separately for now.  Just because these things aren't as widely talked about as some other parts of our project and aren't currently supported in MAME by default (although I expect as the project further matures this will change) doesn't mean they've had any less time spent on them or they're any less part of what we do.

My one sticking support has always been the fact that mame specifically supports bootleg games and the bootleg software they run. Being that you can't really LEGALLY even be in possession of that software outside of a few failed states and 3rd world nations that don't recognize copyright protection so I am wondering how exactly that support was developed and why? Did one of the 10,000 people in Tuvalu who all share the same 1.5 meg internet connection code all the bootleg support? Even if they did, shouldn't that be in a fork from the main development?

[ark_ader]

Without stirring the pot or shaking the beehive,  you have to look at how MAME operates, in relation to end user interaction, instead of code mechanics.

We all accept that MAME is an emulator that requires rom files to operate.  By itself, without the said roms, the software provides instructional output to assist in its operation.  Forks aside.

The roms come from system boards of the actual arcade machine, which had to be dumped to removable media via physical interaction with the hardware.  We know that these arcade system boards (ASB) have in the early days of the project, came from collectors that wanted a backup of the ASB incase of ASB failure. MAME promised those collectors a software replacement.

Roll on a few years and the project has worldwide media attention, but to keep true to the original concept, the project requests funds from the general public to buy ASB from major online auction sites,  where these rare ASB are located.  The ASB are dumped by the dumping project and are made available to the MAME developers to include in the project.  The bought ASB are not held in storage to show tracability in relation to the backup principles for copyrighted works, but sold on for revenue for these boards.

These files that are dumped are released to a select few, who at the time offered a library of rom images to the general public.  The onus on the end user of the roms to use them if they had the original hardware. 

Another issue from the ASB is encryption.   Other companies during the 1980s were hacking game roms (using similar techniques that the associated parties use for the project) changing colors, level design or adapting them to different ASB architecture.  So these main companies created encryption to protect their intellectual property.  This is where the beehive is being wobbled.

Cracking encrypted software is necessary to allow the game to function with MAME.  This cracking of encryption was a contravention of copyright law.  Haze on his website regularly promotes this activity of cracking encryption.   Personally this is a sore point with me, as it teaches our youth that hacking protected systems is a good thing.  Where our banking and personal information is secured.  We cannot place full blame on Haze as our governments engage in such practices, but Haze is just an individual.  Look at it from Nintendo or SEGA's perspective,  where millions of dollars in research and development have been unlocked by some software hackers.  Yes it is hardware that is old, but who makes the determination that it is safe to breach intellectual property rights?

Now we roll on to today.  Copyright law has been ridiculed, broken and apparently unenforceable.   If these giants of the gaming industry did not take a stand against a mass breach of intellectual property rights, what stops our youth from committing the same acts on modern games?  This is not a subject that can be construed as a laughing matter.  It is quite serious and will have ramifications in the future.

[SavannahLion]

Ramifications for whom? An entire generation of youth afraid to approach technology, and by extension, all sciences because governments and powerful companies say it's not OK to explore and learn? The U.S. as a whole is working hard to create obedient little soldiers who think chemistry is nothing more than vinegar and baking soda because anything more directly leads into bombs and meth.

Has it not occurred to anyone that the people at these companies who are spending billions on R&D and court costs to protect their products from piracy are hiring the very same people that pirated software and hacked encryption schemes twenty or thirty years ago? Where the ---fudgesicle--- do you think they got their expertise in the first place? It sure as hell wasn't by writing software "legally" like good little boys and girls.

[ark_ader]

Ramifications for whom?

For those who work hard and bring a product to market, which eventually pays the salaries of those people that work in the industry.

An entire generation of youth afraid to approach technology, and by extension, all sciences because governments and powerful companies say it's not OK to explore and learn?

An entire generation too lazy to learn, who by my generation disenfranchised them to make them feel worthless in regard to technology and let them be enslaved by it.  Explore and learn within the boundaries of the law.  Which and what law is the problem, and no enforcement by financial penalties.  This is not the Sony and Connectix argument.  MAME does not play retail roms.  If it did then I would not have an issue with it.

The U.S. as a whole is working hard to create obedient little soldiers who think chemistry is nothing more than vinegar and baking soda because anything more directly leads into bombs and meth.

I would laugh at that, if it wasn't so true.

Has it not occurred to anyone that the people at these companies who are spending billions on R&D and court costs to protect their products from piracy are hiring the very same people that pirated software and hacked encryption schemes twenty or thirty years ago? Where the ---fudgesicle--- do you think they got their expertise in the first place?

By originality, hard graft and taking chances.  Sure employ hackers to protect your industry, but not let them give away the keys of the kingdom, by ignoring the merits of those who bring the technology to market in the first place.

It sure as hell wasn't by writing software "legally" like good little boys and girls.

It was in my day, maybe your computer history is somewhat fuzzy.  Which doesn't stray from the original argument.

But if we invite some of those IP owners into this debate, maybe we would get a better insight.

Should we email Sony, Nintendo, Tecmo, and Sega for comment?   

[nullPointer]

It sure as hell wasn't by writing software "legally" like good little boys and girls.

It was in my day, maybe your computer history is somewhat fuzzy.  Which doesn't stray from the original argument.

But if we invite some of those IP owners into this debate, maybe we would get a better insight.

Should we email Sony, Nintendo, Tecmo, and Sega for comment?   

I'm not entirely certain what "day" you're referring to, but I gotta call shenanigans on this.  The entire history of personal home micro-computers is awash with gray moral grounds and outright theft of ideas.  Had it been left up to corporations computers would have only ever have been used for business.  Period.  Big honkin' mainframes that needed to be moved with heavy equipment.  We wouldn't even be sitting here in our homes debating trivial arguments on the internet if it weren't for some hippie-cum-computer engineers from Stanford.  If you think those guys followed the letter of the law in terms of creation and ingenuity, or that they set out to support the existing structures of corporate power rather than subvert them, you sir are incredibly naive.  That mouse in your hand?  That intuitive GUI interface in front of you?  All ideas stolen from Xerox (and actively marketed) by that very same group of engineers.  People who we now (rightly) praise as visionaries and pioneers in their field.  Perhaps we should all start cutting Xerox checks for infringing on their intellectual property all these years, no?  To suggest that the advancement of technology has in any way been attributed to or enriched by draconian copyright law is ridiculous.

And this is nothing new.  Edison himself was rather renowned for liberally borrowing and building upon the ideas of others.  Look all I'm trying to say is that technology has never advanced directly as a result of the stifling "shelter" of copyright law, but rather in spite of it.  "Fuzzy History" indeed.

[ark_ader]

It sure as hell wasn't by writing software "legally" like good little boys and girls.

It was in my day, maybe your computer history is somewhat fuzzy.  Which doesn't stray from the original argument.

But if we invite some of those IP owners into this debate, maybe we would get a better insight.

Should we email Sony, Nintendo, Tecmo, and Sega for comment?   

I'm not entirely certain what "day" you're referring to, but I gotta call shenanigans on this.  The entire history of personal home micro-computers is awash with gray moral grounds and outright theft of ideas.  Had it been left up to corporations computers would have only ever have been used for business.  Period.  Big honkin' mainframes that needed to be moved with heavy equipment.  We wouldn't even be sitting here in our homes debating trivial arguments on the internet if it weren't for some hippie-cum-computer engineers from Stanford.  If you think those guys followed the letter of the law in terms of creation and ingenuity, or that they set out to support the existing structures of corporate power rather than subvert them, you sir are incredibly naive.  That mouse in your hand?  That intuitive GUI interface in front of you?  All ideas stolen from Xerox (and actively marketed) by that very same group of engineers.  People who we now (rightly) praise as visionaries and pioneers in their field.  Perhaps we should all start cutting Xerox checks for infringing on their intellectual property all these years, no?  To suggest that the advancement of technology has in any way been attributed to or enriched by draconian copyright law is ridiculous.

And this is nothing new.  Edison himself was rather renowned for liberally borrowing and building upon the ideas of others.  Look all I'm trying to say is that technology has never advanced directly as a result of the stifling "shelter" of copyright law, but rather in spite of it.  "Fuzzy History" indeed.

In 1979, Steve Jobs made a deal with Xerox's venture capital division: He would let them invest $1 million in exchange for a look at the technology they were working on. Jobs and the others saw the commercial potential of the WIMP (Window, Icon, Menu, and Pointing device) system and redirected development of the Apple Lisa to incorporate these technologies. Jobs is quoted as saying, "They just had no idea what they had." In 1980, Jobs invited several key PARC researchers to join his company so that they could fully develop and implement their ideas.

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox

OK. We have 1 million dollars paid to Xerox, and they were on board to take their designs commercial. I do not see any borrowing or theft there.  Do you?

Usually I would be laughing at you for that comment, I will just let the BYOAC do that instead.   

I have been in the IT world since 1987.  I have worked for large corporations like IBM, Data General, TRW and SAIC that have those mainframes you speak of.  I also know how tightly secured they are.  That is not my argument.

The more you distance yourself from the fact of copyright theft, the more difficult it is to defend your actions.  Oh, and please research your comments.   

[Vigo]

OK. We have 1 million dollars paid to Xerox, and they were on board to take their designs commercial. I do not see any borrowing or theft there.  Do you?

Let me make an emphasis on the source you quoted:

In 1979, Steve Jobs made a deal with Xerox's venture capital division: He would let them invest $1 million in exchange for a look at the technology they were working on.

"Looking at" something does not = rights to Steal the companies employees and publish Xerox's work as their own. Since it cost 1 mil. to even look at the work, it is obvious it was highly valued by Xerox. Reading comprehension fail, Ark.

[lilshawn]

shudda had him sign a NDA 

all in all, let's put it this way, everybody does illegal things...some people get caught. if you think you can slide though under the radar without ruffling feathers of the "owners" is more or less the consensus here.

Download ROMS onto your machine and play them for fun, Really, no worse than speeding to beat the yellow light. Still illegal though.

If you make up computers and sell them with ROM collections for profit... Bad. Tantamount to driving 170 down the freeway. Still illegal. You may get away with it but someone is bound to eventually notice you and what you are doing.

I'm not saying it's okay everybody does it...or that it's 100% wrong and you will die and go to hell and burn for all eternity. All i'm saying is you ALL can make your own decision. If you want to do it, fine. if not, don't. simple as that. but don't get all butthurt if you are selling ROMs and someone knocks on your door with a bill and a court summons in hand.

[mcseforsale]

PARC was a seriously naive group of engineering talent back then.  They saw the future, but in the feel-good 70s with all that LOVE flying around  , they didn't realize that these technical ideas would culminate into the most widely adopted sensory input scheme of all time, with a $ value unimaginable at the time.

While Jobs did license some of the stuff, the overall "scheme" of the look and feel was not something that could be licensed and/or copyrighted at the time because there was no precedence to rely on, such as with more tangible technologies such as processors, memory, etc.

AJ

[ark_ader]

OK. We have 1 million dollars paid to Xerox, and they were on board to take their designs commercial. I do not see any borrowing or theft there.  Do you?

Let me make an emphasis on the source you quoted:

In 1979, Steve Jobs made a deal with Xerox's venture capital division: He would let them invest $1 million in exchange for a look at the technology they were working on.

"Looking at" something does not = rights to Steal the companies employees and publish Xerox's work as their own. Since it cost 1 mil. to even look at the work, it is obvious it was highly valued by Xerox. Reading comprehension fail, Ark.

I used Wikipedia....



Xerox made out like bandits on that deal.  Besides Xerox didn't invent the mouse.  Doug Engelbart did (who recently passed away this year).  GUI?  Well that is a another win for Doug Engelbart.  Before that it was Vannevar Bush that started work on the principles of GUI.  Per the BBC article: Mr. Englebart did not make much money from the mouse because its patent ran out in 1987, before the device became widely used. SRI licensed the technology in 1983 for $40,000 (£26,000) to Apple.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23174052

So Apple did not steal anything, it just made the technology more mainstream.  Sorry Vigo you are completely wrong on your assumptions.  My fault for using Wikipedia.   

I studied graphical user interfaces and cognitive psychology for my thesis.  It is quite fascinating when you get into the aspects of GUI and human interaction.

[lilshawn]

[UFO]

*1000000000000000

[ark_ader]

 

I'm always right so anything else is like....

[ed12]

i love that lilshawn
beat the thing after it is dead

most ppls points are vaild and moot at the same time
ppl are going to it no matter what
if there is a buck to made they are going for it
it is about that simple
u cannot tell me moral high ground is in order here
as i will say no no,the coders knew in the back of there heads it would happen
but they the group the fav and let out the code
so really how is right how is wrong 
for me i would never charge for freeware..that is just wrong in my mind
in other ppls mind they cannot reach >code< or even understand it
or are to dam lazy to want to try,why again 
it is what it is and u walk away
u just can not fix stupied
that simple

ed

[rpgposer]

Ark was that guy in High School who would give you ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- for copying Atari 800 games.  BTW - I could never get the old turn down the drive speed pot to write a fuzzy sector trick to work.
I have been in the IT business just as long and my perspective is 180 degrees different than his.  He makes me want pirate software.

Good Day.

[ark_ader]

Ark was building IBM XT PCs out of his garage and selling them when you were spit-wadding in class during senior year in high school. I graduated HS at 16 with a GED and already started college. 

I had a Atari 400, but with only one cartridge slot and a membrane keyboard it was limited. Loved Star Raiders.

My C128 was the business, and I had to buy all my CPM, (including dbase) software thank you.

If you are home audited like I am, you would think twice dabbling  in software piracy.   

[rpgposer]

Now wait a sec... when I was a Senior in high school there were no PC XT's, let alone something you could build.  We were upgrading TRS-80's to 32k ram and adding second 5" FDs.
Nice try, youngun.
Sorry you are getting home audited, that sounds like a drag.