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Question about legalities of Roms

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MonitorGuru:

Mame's (and all emulators) days are numbered.   Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it's just the plain hard truth.  Latest article today.

Link:
http://news.com.com/Justice+Dept.+wants+new+antipiracy+powers/2100-1028_3-5406654.html?tag=nefd.top


Snipits:
"The U.S. Justice Department recommended a sweeping transformation of the nation's intellectual-property laws"

"In an extensive report released Tuesday, senior department officials endorsed a pair of controversial copyright bills strongly favored by the entertainment industry that would criminalize "passive sharing" on file-swapping networks and permit lawsuits against companies that sell products that "induce" copyright infringement. "

""The department is prepared to build the strongest, most aggressive legal assault against intellectual-property crime in our nation's history," Attorney General John Ashcroft"

"would create a new crime of the "importation" of pirated products"

Tiger-Heli:

I still say this is much more gray than people interpret it as.

Case in point.  Assuming I own the board from a Pac-Man cab, presumably, I could image the ROM chip (using hardware like Guru has), burn this to a file, and use that with MAME.  There is no agreement on the game board that says that if I own the board, I can download/get a copy of the ROM image that someone else burned off their board and use that with MAME.

OTOH, nothing says I can't.  What I mean is - if I buy an album, or buy a piece of software, there are copyright statements and EULA's that specify that I cannot freely distribute unauthorized copies of the product.

Arcade Roms never said this.  So what you are dealing with are intellectual property laws, and existing copyrights which inherently belong to the developer, even though they were never exercised or officially registered.

MonitorGuru:


--- Quote from: neuromancer on October 12, 2004, 01:27:38 pm ---
--- Quote from: whammoed on October 04, 2004, 08:27:24 am ---You can get some legal roms here:
http://www.starroms.com/
However you would want to wait to purchase them until you have made the sale and purchase them in your buyers name...I believe they are non-transferable.

--- End quote ---

Does anyone know if they really have a licence to distribute the roms?

Bob

--- End quote ---

And that's the problem... They are non transferable, yet everyone is "selling" them on ebay along with Mame installed claiming they're fully licenced.  Humm buy a set (no, not really, just download them free) then install on many machines and sell the machines claiming their licened.  Good enough for ebay I guess since Namco/Nintendo/Midway/Atari are no longer shutting down auctions, or eBay is ignoring them.

Chris:


--- Quote from: Tiger-Heli on October 13, 2004, 09:50:02 am ---Arcade Roms never said this.  So what you are dealing with are intellectual property laws, and existing copyrights which inherently belong to the developer, even though they were never exercised or officially registered.

--- End quote ---
Some of them did, mostly more recent ones, in the manual.  Williams Pinball ROMs include a license that explicitly limits their use to the supplied Williams hardware.  The earliest ROMS, though, I doubt had any kind of license, but more attention was paid to the legalities once bootlegs started appearing.

Tiger-Heli:


--- Quote from: Chris on October 13, 2004, 04:12:57 pm ---Arcade Roms never said this.  So what you are dealing with are intellectual property laws, and existing copyrights which inherently belong to the developer, even though they were never exercised or officially registered.

--- End quote ---

--- Quote ---Some of them did, mostly more recent ones, in the manual.

--- End quote ---
Okay, I was thinking more of the original arcade roms from the 80's.

--- Quote ---Williams Pinball ROMs include a license that explicitly limits their use to the supplied Williams hardware.

--- End quote ---
Which is interesting b/c (I won't post the link, but) I can go to Williams official website and download most of their pinball roms with no questions asked.

--- Quote ---The earliest ROMS, though, I doubt had any kind of license, but more attention was paid to the legalities once bootlegs started appearing.

--- End quote ---
And again, I think the bootlegs were prosecuted under intellectual property infractions -

Differences - Under U.S. copyright law, if say you post an copyrighted image on a website, for example, I believe you could be fined around $100,000 per image by the copyright holder.

If you steal someone else's IP, I believe you can only be prosecuted to the extent that they can show loss of revenue from the infraction - i.e. in the case of arcade roms, if they really wanted to, the IP owners could probably come after us for the value of an arcade board containing the ROMS on E-bay (minus the value of the other chips on the board) so usually $10-15.

IANAL (fortunately), though.


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