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Ultracade send Cease and Desist letter

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DreamArcades:

Thanks for everyone for all there messages of support. Honestly, seeing how much support there is in the community for MAME cabinet builders is great.
Obviously I can

daywane:

other then calling him a Mame Nazi.
I wonder why he would not debate with me?
I fell all the sales for art he stopped the first time on ebay, the seller has a case for law suit for lost sales.

elvis:


--- Quote from: Lilwolf on May 13, 2005, 01:09:34 pm ---What the !@# is Dave worried about (other then competition?)

--- End quote ---

Unfortunately this is the way of the world (or at least the USA) these days.  If you can't win by fair and honest competition, then sue someone.

Mr Foley is panicing because he used to be the only player in the game.  Now there are more and more people building cabinets, and these people are turning to StarRoms for legal licensing options.  And might I add, StarRoms deserve commendation for providing the service they do to MAME users who are willing to legally buy the games they wish to play but so far have been denied.  But I'll leave that speil for another post.

All of a sudden there is legal competition to Ultracade.  And while the subject of ROMs is still a grey area, Mr Foley will spread as much FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) through abusing the legal system as he sees fit.

This is a business practice that is common on modern America.  Copyrights where originally penned as an idea to HELP progress, not stifle it.  What Mr Foley forgets is that he doesn't own MAME, nor the games he supplies with his hardware.  As long as he is able to legally license them, so are any other people in the same market.  This is what we call fair competition.

So yes, these C&D letters are a desperate grab at attention by a man who knows he is no longer the monopolistic "big fish" of the pond.  All of a sudden there are a lot of little fish making ripples, and he doesn't like it one little bit.  Welcome to fair trade, and the capatilist market Mr Foley.  That's the same market that made you your dollars, if you recall.  If you don't like it, you can always emmigrate to a nice Draconian society like China, and buy all the control you can afford.


RayB:

Oh woe is Foley.
Welcome to the business world Mr. Foley. Every good idea is followed by imitation. To succeed in business you have to adapt and continue to innovate.


Tiger-Heli:

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.


--- Quote from: Lilwolf on May 13, 2005, 08:52:00 am ---btw, if you DO use mame's name and links to illegal mame roms online, you REALLY need to remove them.

--- End quote ---
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).

--- Quote ---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.

--- End quote ---
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.

--- Quote ---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.

--- End quote ---
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).

--- Quote ---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)....

--- End quote ---
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.)

--- Quote ---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.

--- End quote ---
Agreed, but it looks like this is being done.

--- Quote ---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...

--- End quote ---
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.

--- Quote ---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)

--- End quote ---
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!  :police:

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