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Havok:

--- Quote from: SirPoonga on August 11, 2005, 12:07:33 pm ---What saint said
Copy protection does not equal copyright!

The law says it is legal to break protection, like encryption techniques.
--- End quote ---
SirPoonga:

--- Quote from: Havok on August 11, 2005, 01:04:35 pm ---bah! Abandonware in my book. Most of the owners of the IP - (a concept I have serious problems with) don't even care about 20 year old ROM usage, or are dead. Granted, I seriously believe in the policy that MAME devs practice - no emulation for games that are still in production, or less than three years old. I say the old stuff however is up for grabs!

--- End quote ---
I agree, with games, if they are 3-5 years old they are obsolete and not making money anymore.  There's some oddities like pacman, counter strike, etc... but for the most part no one is going to bother with them.  Still doesn't mean it isn't illegal.  There's  jus ta good chance on the old stuff no one is going to care.

You do have to worry about the big name companies though.  Capcom, Namco and Midway own the rights to alot of arcade titles through their ventures.
ultramagnus:
hmm, heres a question, now IIRC, i remember reading that it is legal to download and use roms as long as you have the original cart, now i assume that would apply the same if you owned the PCB of a arcade machine.  so this begs the question that legally, if you had the permission of MAMEdev, and had the original pcb of a arcade game, could you use MAME and the ROM of that game to make money (as in have a coin door ect)?
SirPoonga:

--- Quote from: ultramagnus on August 11, 2005, 03:06:54 pm ---hmm, heres a question, now IIRC, i remember reading that it is legal to download and use roms as long as you have the original cart, now i assume that would apply the same if you owned the PCB of a arcade machine.  so this begs the question that legally, if you had the permission of MAMEdev, and had the original pcb of a arcade game, could you use MAME and the ROM of that game to make money (as in have a coin door ect)?

--- End quote ---

First, no, you can't use mame to make money, read the mame license.

Second, if you have a cart of a game, I assume you mean like the NES cart Double Dragon means you can have the arcade.  No, those are different software on different machines.

If you own the PCB that's a grey area.   The purpose of allowing one backup of software is so you can run off that backup instead of the original so you don't ruin the original.  It's not incase you loose/damage the original, then the backup is no longer valid since it's original doesn't exist.  And that's the grey area, a rom backup can't really be used in place.  You could burn the software to a new rom and repair a broken PCB if the ROM chips went bad, but that's pretty rare compared to all the other problems arcade games can have.  Not much can really go wrong with Read Only Memory other than maybe burning out due to too high a voltage from a hardware fault.

But, like everything, there's always exceptions.  Look at Williams, they have roms for their pins on their website.  There is an agreement to download them I believe.  Those files are meant to repair an existing rom.  It's kinda hard to make a bootleg copy of a pinball machine, you need to copy the playfield, mechanics, and computer.  Yeah, I don't think Williams has to worry about people taking their roms and selling their property illegally as much as a video game manufacturer.

The reason this is a grey area is the license agreement and copyright laws at the time the game was introduced.  How does today's laws fit with their license. 
Havok:

--- Quote from: ultramagnus on August 11, 2005, 03:06:54 pm ---hmm, heres a question, now IIRC, i remember reading that it is legal to download and use roms as long as you have the original cart, now i assume that would apply the same if you owned the PCB of a arcade machine.
--- End quote ---
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