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What constitutes a valid rom license?
Chris:
--- Quote from: SirPoonga on May 16, 2004, 11:20:54 pm ---
--- Quote from: Chris on May 16, 2004, 10:20:43 pm ---Owning an arcade board does not give you the rights to the ROM because the software is not licensed to be used in that fashion. With really old ROMs, you may be able to get away with this because ancient ROMs may not have had license agreements as no one anticipated copying ROMs to a PC back in 1979.
If this was legal, arcade operators would buy one copy of a game and burn it to whatever compatible hardware they could find. The fact that this activity was widespread didn't make it legal. If you own the board it is legal to run that board, presuming that the ROMs on the board are in fact legal and not bootlegs.
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I am going to have to disagree. You are talking about arcade operators buying one copy and burning it to other hardware for use as a game for selling? Yeah, that would not be right. But you are entitled to a backup and use the backup over the original, that's why it is a backup.
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Not all licenses permit this. Even so, you are only licensed (in most cases) to use the software on it's original hardware. Again, licenses from the early days of gaming may not specify this, but any recent license does.
--- Quote ---It's like this, I have a CD that I bought with songs. I rip to mp3 and put them on a diamond rio. That's still legal even thought hte song is on a differnt hardware than the the CD could be used in. Sorry, that's the closest thing I could come up with that is close to what is being done with the arcade PCBs. Or does CD copyrights allow that, even old CDs before mp3s existed, I suppose cassettes existed and would be simular if they worded it as other media.
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Only if the license allows you to do so. Music is licensed, not sold, and you do not always have the freedom to shift the song to a different media. Owning the cassette version does not entitle you to a CD version.
Now, music licenses are far less detailed than a software license. If you look at a software license for a late 90's or modern arcade game, you'll be suprised all the restrictions in there.
It's worse for desktop software. THe Microsoft SQL Server 2000 license prohibits you from criticizing SQL Server's performance in print without Microsoft's permission. :O
SirPoonga:
--- Quote from: Chris on May 16, 2004, 11:32:08 pm ---Now, music licenses are far less detailed than a software license. If you look at a software license for a late 90's or modern arcade game, you'll be suprised all the restrictions in there.
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True, but it's the old arcade game license that produce the grey area.
Chris:
I don't have any manuals, so i couldn't tell you when licenses appeared. I'm pretty sure that by the time Pac-Man was on the scene, licenses were in full force... but Boot Hill? Surround? Sprint 1? Those games might predate licenses... That doesn't mean that they weren't under copyright, it only means they may not have had restrictions only allowing them to run on their original hardware.
DaveMMR:
--- Quote ---It's about as gray as music swapping, i.e. not at all. People (myself included) just want it to be a gray area.
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So what you're saying is music swapping is always illegal? Nope, not always. Say I was an musician and I used programs like Kazaa to distribute a song I created just to get it 'out there'. It's not illegal then. But when a song was created for the sake of selling albums, then yeah - you're breaking the law.
I was vague with my answer to spark a little debate - especially with the concept of owning a game for one format and being able to own the ROM legally. Personally, I believe that's not legal (mainly because of different licensing - i.e. one was meant for profit and the other for personal home use).
maraxle:
--- Quote from: SirPoonga on May 16, 2004, 11:20:54 pm ---I am going to have to disagree. You are talking about arcade operators buying one copy and burning it to other hardware for use as a game for selling? Yeah, that would not be right. But you are entitled to a backup and use the backup over the original, that's why it is a backup.
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The catch with backups is that technically, you have to dump your own ROMs for it to be a backup. Just like technically, you have to rip your own CDs, copy your own tapes/diskettes, etc. Of course, if the ROMs are identical to what's on your board, it'll be tough to prove that you got them from somewhere else.