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Discussion: Ultracade and the Mame Trademark

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mr.Curmudgeon:


--- Quote from: DarkKobold on March 11, 2005, 01:42:53 pm ---You know, with all this talk, has anyone actually done anything? Or are we just sitting around this sewing circle, and 700 replies later, still reitierating the same things?

Now, granted, I've not taken any actions, but it appears, other than cute pictures, no one else has either.

--- End quote ---

I am working on a boycott site for Ultracade. I didn't want to post anything about it yet, but I figure I might as well get some suggestions from the crew here. PM me with any suggestions, or offers to help. DO NOT POST INFO HERE...I don't want to tip my hand any more than this post already has.

I want it to have a database of products that are directly manufactured by Ultracade. I want to list EVERYTHING. I also want to list vendors that 'stock' Ultracade products, so we can possibly boycott them as well.

I intend on building/hosting the site, with others in the community helping me to manage it. Users that are given accounts will be able to add products to the list, so it will be a true community effort.

There will also be contact information for the various vendors, as well as information on how to go about addressing this issue w/ them most effectively.

I cannot stand by and wait while someone tries to destroy something I love.

More info as it develops.


mrC

IntruderAlert:


--- Quote from: DarkKobold on March 11, 2005, 01:42:53 pm ---You know, with all this talk, has anyone actually done anything? Or are we just sitting around this sewing circle, and 700 replies later, still reitierating the same things?

Now, granted, I've not taken any actions, but it appears, other than cute pictures, no one else has either.

--- End quote ---
Did you mean reiterating? ;D

JoyMonkey:

As I've said earlier in this thread, I think the best way of helping the MAME community battle Ultracade and the upcoming iRoms service would be to help their only competitor in the roms-for-private-use area; StarROMS.
With this in mind, I emailed Frank Leibly of StarROMs (you can read an interview with him here) and asked him what the Mame community could do to help StarROMs and for his take on the situation.

With his permission, here is his response:

--- Quote --- Paul while I'm thinking of it and since I really wanted to give you more in depth response anyway, let me suggest an idea to you.  The most important thing that the MAME community can do to help StarROMs is to help promote our service as a legitimate source of ROMs.  I realize our selection is limited but you see there is a kind of chicken and egg problem.  We need to show higher sales in order to acquire new licenses, and yet it's hard to generate large sales numbers with only a limited set of titles.  In our view a large percentage of MAME users are still using pirated ROMs.  Perhaps the rationale is that if you have to download some roms illegally, what is the value of downloading others legally.  We feel like we've received quite a bit of support from the MAME community, and we would like to be in a position to offer more support in return.  But the truth is that we have still not yet been universally accepted by and within the MAME community and there is a lot more that could be done to highlight StarROMs as a legal source for ROMS.  Honestly, I think David Foley is partially correct when he suggests (I'll paraphrase) that a lot of folks are at least implicitly, if not explicitly, encouraging illegal ROM distribution.

Clearly I'm biased, but I would love to see StarROMs more prominently highlighted as a legal source of ROMs on MAME related sites on the web, rather then pointing users in other directions, shall we say.   I honestly believe that if the MAME community were to universally embrace StarROMs and encourage MAME users to support us that our sales would sky-rocket and we could make much, much more compelling offers to game owners than we have been able to make thus far.  I understand that initially perhaps there was some concern that since StarROMs was a for profit venture, why should the MAME community embrace us as a solution.  We haven't tried to take a forceful approach to encouraging legal ROM use.  Instead we've taken the approach of letting users decide.  But the truth is it costs money to secure licenses and to hire lawyers to deal with, for example, the likes of Ultracade.  And a legal, commercial ROMs service such as StarROMs is in our view a very positive thing for the MAME community.

Let me suggest one other thing for your consideration and the consideration of others whom you may come into contact with.  Without StarROMs, I believe a fairly compelling case could be made by Ultracade or whomever that pretty much everything MAME related is illegal, since it is by and large used for illegal purposes.  MAME has never been put to this test but it seems possible and even perhaps likely that it will be in the future.  StarROMs has truly helped to legitimize this entire area, from a legal perspective, by offering a fully legal and compelling user experience with the games we offer.  With the Atari ROMs freely available from StarROMs (well, not free, but), it is quite reasonable to conclude that a large and substantial amount of the use of MAME is fully legal, something which could not previously be said.  StarROMs has never attempted to use a heavy hand to encourage the community to "come clean".  On the other hand if Ultracade were to become the only legal source for ROMS, I believe they would have a strong case, potentially, to "extract royalties" from anything and everything MAME related.   Clearly this is their intent, as evidenced by their actions.

In summary, perhaps if the MAME community were to collectively do some self policing, so to speak, highlighting the legal use of the product by encouraging people to use our service, rather then downloading ROMS illegally, this could prevent a situation longer term where David and his lawyers take on the "policing" role.  With greater support from the MAME community, I think there is a reasonable chance that together we can help preserve what has been created and build upon it's legitimacy rather then to see someone else hijack the entire market.

Thanks again for getting in touch Paul.

-Frank
--- End quote ---


KevSteele:


--- Quote from: IntruderAlert on March 11, 2005, 11:00:24 am ---Oh goodie.. here are the pics for the Ultracade Racing Sim:

--- End quote ---

Am I the only one who find "Press Start to Breed a New Horse" hilarious?

Perhaps I just have a sick mind...

Kevin

Crazy Cooter:

I've contacted every distributor I can.

Any website I find that has an article about an Ultracade/Arcade Legends machine, I send an email pointing them to this thread with a nice message asking them to read it and post a link for their readers.

I got my local CostCo to remove an Arcade Legends machine.

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