First off, IANAL (I anal? - could be argued, I suppose!) - don't take anything I say here as legal advice, and some of it is somewhat devil's advocate.
Secondly, I have not dealt with DA personally, but from everything I read they seem like a reasonable company, I am glad they are available to the community and I support them in this effort.
btw, if you DO use mame's name and links to illegal mame roms online, you REALLY need to remove them.
As I understand it, using MAME in any commercial enterprise without the express permission of Nicola is a violation of the new copyright. I would take MAME off the machines.
Regarding links to illegal roms - hard to say what makes the ROMS legal or illegal - if I say "Games to play on the cabinet can be obtained from
http://www.romsformame.com/ (darnit they took the site down!), but make sure you are legally entitled to anything you install", I think that covers him legally. At least the MAMEdev's seem to think that covers them when you start a new game. Now whether I can legally download say gyruss and play it in MAME (with or without a boardset containing the original game chips) is really up to Konami or whoever currently owns them (if that can be determined) and their lawyers to decide, but I don't think that's happened yet. (But someone will debate it again on the software forum in a week or two, so we can come back to it there).
But since you can buy legal arcade cds that play 10-15 different games for 2-10 bucks in different locations. You should probably install them for free on each PC.
Careful with this too. I assume you are talking about something like Microsoft "Return of Arcade" in the discount software aisle or sth. You could mention that these will play on the cabinet. If you wanted you could buy and "throw them in" with the sale. But be careful that they are licensed to allow for resale and that when you install them you don't have to agree to a non-transferable license that states that only the person installing them on the machine is licensed to use them and they must be removed before sale of the machine. Personally, I wouldn't install them as most of your target audience will remove them and use MAME anyway.
Next... I would ask (after cleaning up your site) the mame team for permission to install MAME on your cabinets if you don't advertise it, and only put on the free roms you can download from their site... Plus add in the instruction manual the link to star-roms.. If you get permission (and do it nice and legal) you will have a easier case in court.
First off, MAME wouldn't authorize that, and there's NO point installing it if you don't advertise it. Look at it this way, the only benefit is that some customer might say "Hey, I didn't even have to download MAME". Then that gets spread around, then you are informally supplying MAME which LOOKS like a violation of the MAME license, which gets you in more trouble than if you just said MAME has given us permission to use the software and include it on the machine.
(OTOH, it would be worth a chuckle to have licensed permission for say the artwork characters, or the MAME distribution, not mention it, wait for the court appearance and then say "Oh yes, here is the legal documentation authorizing what we were doing", but it's not worth the hassle involved.)
Other than maybe a licensed copy of the OS, I wouldn't include ANY software on the cabinets (and I doubt the current MAME team would give permission). However, if you posted a link to
www.sys2064.com or
www.retrogames.com or
www.mameworld.net/easyemu - that should be enough to get anyone started with
the customers possibly violating the copyrights and not you. (As a courtesy, I would recommend getting permission from the webmasters (if possible) before doing this).
But remember. You ARE making money on mames name if you use mames name... or say runs thousands of classic arcade games (unless you find another emulator to do that)....
Statement 1 is correct. Statement two is incorrect. If I install Z26, Raine, NeoRage, ZSNES, FCEultra or NESTER, MESS, Project64, Chankast, Bleem, and Daphne - I'd bet I'm close to supporting thousands of (loosely defined) classic arcade games and I haven't made a dime off MAME (although the legal and copyright issues there may well be worse than those with MAME.)
You should REALLY consider cleaning up the act. I don't believe anyone who is buying your cabinets have never heard of mame.... or the ones who haven't wouldn't care about
using a arcade collections CD instead.
Agreed, but it looks like this is being done.
LAST - I would MAKE sure its OBVIOUS its for home use only on your website... This IS foleys case here (the unfair). Because he is paying to have legal roms to be put on his machines for buisiness use. His cabinets can be put in an arcade legally. And that is the unfair aspect that he is paying someone where you aren't. If its cutting into his arcade owner clients sales, and it is illegal, he might really have a case...
This is a good idea, but not necessarily required, or maybe desirable by dreamarcades. If someone buys an empty cabinet, puts an arcade monitor in it and a PS and a Pac-Man board, I think they could put it in a bar or pizzaria and have it set to make money and no-one could complain. If they put Raine on it and put a half of a Pac-Man board with the roms intact inside and charge for it, it's much more of a gray issue, but I don't know that DA wants to limit that and lose those customers. DA's call, IMO.
Back to what Saint said. Pay a lawyer for a few hours. Cost a bit but will be worth it.
And last... I wouldn't take Folley on head on. He probably is looking for a test-case. Expect that he has copies of your website as of today. The best case would be for him to ignore you from this point on. If you clean up, talke to a lawyer.. And he believes that his case isn't going to go well and he doesn't continue it... it WILL be in your best interest (unless you really don't have any links to roms ect)
Agreed. And as someone else said -
IF Foley is serious, I would almost bet that he has copies of the text and art from your website from the time that the C&D letter was sent. And if he doesn't,
www.archive.org probably does!
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Topic: Ultracade send Cease and Desist letter (Read 17158 times)
