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| KevSteele:
--- Quote from: Tiger-Heli on June 09, 2005, 12:38:34 pm --- --- Quote from: RayB on June 09, 2005, 12:32:46 pm ---Kind of like Napster. --- End quote --- Bingo! --- End quote --- |
| Tiger-Heli:
--- Quote from: KevSteele on June 09, 2005, 12:47:03 pm ---I don't know how it all works in the software world, but I know that creative works are automatically copyrighted at the time of creation (whether or not you apply for a copyright). --- End quote --- Except I think it makes a difference if you publish the work (in this case, release the game) and it gets out in the public domain and you don't challenge violations of it. I.E. if Namco comes down on most Pac-Man repro artwork (which they do) they can enforce a copyright on it. I'm not sure if they can say "MAME violated out game copyright eight years ago and we didn't challenge it, but now we're upset. --- Quote ---The MP3 format and readers can be analgous to MAME, while ROMs and songs ripped into MP3 format are similar, at least the way I'm looking at the situation. --- End quote --- Technically, I disagree, although I think it might not be especially hard to convince a judge to see it your way, which would probably be all it takes. |
| KevSteele:
--- Quote from: Tiger-Heli on June 09, 2005, 01:02:06 pm ---Except I think it makes a difference if you publish the work (in this case, release the game) and it gets out in the public domain and you don't challenge violations of it. --- End quote --- I don't know if you need to enforce a copyright to keep it. It's not like a trademark, which must be enforced. That's one of the problems here: copyrights, trademarks, and patents all protect IP, but in different ways and with different rules and loopholes. Kevin |
| Haze:
I don't see how the Napster comparisons apply. MAME does not in any way facilitate the sharing of ROM files. If you must compare MAME to something related to the music situation then compare it to Foobar, or Winamp. It knows how to play the files, but does not come with them. MAME contains a database of known ROM images, and how to load them, that in itself I'm pretty sure can't be considered Illegal, consider it like a fan site with a tracklisting of the CD on it, and information on track lengths. (Aren't there free legal databases of this type of thing used for identifying CDs? http://www.freedb.org/ etc?) MP3s/Roms also isn't a great comparison, MP3s are reduced in size to make distribution easier at the cost of quality (as MP3 is a lossy compression format) The ROM images supported by MAME aren't modified in any way, they are as read from the arcade PCBs, ease of distribution is not our concern. (Zip is supported for convenience as the zip structure contains CRC information etc, we've rejected multiple requests to make Mame support other compression schemes like Rar to save space) One thing you can be sure of, if somebody did write a P2P program and integrated it with MAME so that Roms were automatically shared we would make every effort to get them shut down, but until that day MAME can't be compared with Napster. I will however agree that MAMEs popularity is a large problem. |
| KevSteele:
My comparison was with MP3 players (ala Winamp), so it sounds like we're closer on that part. Basically, the infractions come when someone rips a song image or a ROM image and then shares it. MAME is not facilitating ROM IP violations in any way other than allowing you to actually do something with that ROM image once you've (illegally) obtained it. That may be enough of a violation to a judge, but I doubt it - RIO survived legal threats that claimed MP3 players facilitated copyright infringement, and I think that RIAA has given up on trying to squash MP3 players now that legal DRM songs are available. In other words, legal ROMs would be a godsend in this situation, essentially removing the main reason to step on the MAME project anymore. Kevin |
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