emulation: legal question about dead motherboards

[Jack Burton]

Hi,

I was wondering, if a person had a dead arcade mother board and were to install an emulator and pc into a cabinet with the rom data of that board alongside the unconnected dead motherboard could they use this machine for commercial purposes?  Assume in this situation that the emulator is licensed to allow commercial use. 

Edit:  I did a little more research and realized that it may not be legal to connect a pc to an arcade monitor because it is not designed to do this and would not pass inspection.  Also there are legal issues regarding amusement equipment.  However, in this hypothetical situation, let's assume that this cabinet is only so in cosmetic appearance only, with a cased pc and cased monitor inside with proper ventilation and powered through their normal means.  I think this setup would be much more likely to be legal, but I'm not sure.

[SavannahLion]

The answer is slightly more convoluted than what you're looking for. The shortest answer, ask a copyright lawyer.

My personal answer, based on what I've read and can understand of the various laws at issue here and making several far reaching assumptions (such as, you are living in the U.S., the hardware is in the U.S., the PCB in question is of relatively recent age from a still viable company, the emulator in question is indeed licensed for commercial use, you are licensed to place arcades commercially, whether I actually remember the results of all the relevent court cases and whether I know of all the relevent court cases) the short answer is no.

Asking a group of fans who are likely non-laywers is like asking a bunch of football fans what computer you should buy. You'll get an answer, most likely not a very accurate one.

[shardian]

MAME is not licensed for commercial use.

[Jeff AMN]

I don't know. I think you'd lose the UL certification and you could face some serious liability issues apart from the actual legality of using the emulator for profit.

[Fozzy The Bear]

Asking a group of fans who are likely non-laywers is like asking a bunch of football fans what computer you should buy. You'll get an answer, most likely not a very accurate one.

Actually, I'll give him quite an accurate answer..... The answer is NO! it would be a breach of copyright to do that. Simple as that. You'd be running the copied software on a system it was not designed to run on. In the USA that would be a breach of the DMCA.

In actual fact the act alone of dumping the ROMS except for archival purposes (backup of the originals for repair of the original hardware) would also be illegal.

There are also no emulators licenced for commecial use right now, as if they were, they would be viewed as a method of circumvention of copy protection and would themselves be illegal.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[Organic Jerk]

MAME is not licensed for commercial use.

This is really a key point here.  Your solution to your problem isn't one provided by the original creator, but a seperate one that was created and is currently maintained by a seperate team under seperate license terms.

By adding the emulator and the rom, (even if they produce a similar visual output) you're using totally different products, and you have to abide by those products' terms.


Anything else is illegal.

[Jack Burton]

Asking a group of fans who are likely non-laywers is like asking a bunch of football fans what computer you should buy. You'll get an answer, most likely not a very accurate one.

Actually, I'll give him quite an accurate answer..... The answer is NO! it would be a breach of copyright to do that. Simple as that. You'd be running the copied software on a system it was not designed to run on. In the USA that would be a breach of the DMCA.

In actual fact the act alone of dumping the ROMS except for archival purposes (backup of the originals for repair of the original hardware) would also be illegal.

There are also no emulators licenced for commecial use right now, as if they were, they would be viewed as a method of circumvention of copy protection and would themselves be illegal.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

I think this answers the situation the best.  I did some reading and found out that any kind of video game rom is illegal for any kind of use.  It even seemed to include back up purposes.  But that is a seperat issue we should not get into.  Let us agree that this particular use is concretely illegal in the United States, and puts a dead stop to any other questions.

However, for posterity, I will also address the other issues.

MAME is not licensed for commercial use.

I know.

However, there are other emulators other than MAME.  Additionally, nothing theoretically stops me from coding my own emulator for this purpose. 

EDIT: This would still be illegal since it circumvents copyright protection.

I don't know. I think you'd lose the UL certification and you could face some serious liability issues apart from the actual legality of using the emulator for profit.

If it is a computer connected to a computer monitor, I don't see how that would lose any sort of certification.  But anything is possible, especially when dealing with this sort of strangeness.  The liability issue concerning whether it is legal or not is probably much worse.  I don't think any company would be interested in anything that was "gray area" legal, or questionable in any way. 



But, I suppose it was only an idea, one that seemed to be too good to be true. 

[SavannahLion]

Fozzy and Organic Jerk, I agree with you. I gave the same answer (NO). But nowhere does the OP state he is using MAME. It's probably an accurate assumption, but might not be a fair one.

It's not even about the possible existence of a commercial emulator or the DMCA (though the DMCA plays a HUGE part in this scenario), it's about the ROMS themselves. Archiving software is specific to volatile media (ie floppy disks). There was a court case preceding the DMCA which crossed the topic of ROMS. I'll have to verify my facts, but IIRC, ROMS are not considered volatile media and, therefor, are exempt from the archiving clause. It's also a persistent myth that having the original ROM (even non-working) somehow allows you to have a copy of it from other sources. Again, if IIRC, there is no section addressing this specific action and probably wouldn't stand up in court anyways.

There is a section that does allow a copy to temporarily exist for the purposes of repair and/or though normal operation of the intended (in this case, original) hardware. This is the "archival copy" that Fozzie mentions, though I wouldn't go so far as to actually call it an archival copy.

You don't even have to bring the DMCA into this discussion, it's moot.

Up until about three years ago, I practically humped the statutes relating to this. If you're going to be around people who are going to break laws, it's a damn good idea to know what's being broken.  

[BobA]

Wasn't the infamous Ultracade basically an emulator licensed for commercial use?

[ChadTower]

I don't know. I think you'd lose the UL certification and you could face some serious liability issues apart from the actual legality of using the emulator for profit.

Yes, insurers would not touch you with a 20 foot pole if you had non UL certified machines out there.  Or, alternately, they'd write you a policy that you prepaid and then they'd give you the stink finger if you ever made a claim.

[SavannahLion]

Thought I might as well respond to this.

MAME is not licensed for commercial use.

I know.

However, there are other emulators other than MAME.  Additionally, nothing theoretically stops me from coding my own emulator for this purpose. 

EDIT: This would still be illegal since it circumvents copyright protection.

That's the wrong legal reason. Creating an emulator is a protected and court proven legal act with interesting loopholes (against you) in recent statutes like the DMCA.

The real legal issues isn't about the emulator itself, it's the ROMS.

[Dreamwriter]

You'd be running the copied software on a system it was not designed to run on. In the USA that would be a breach of the DMCA.

In actual fact the act alone of dumping the ROMS except for archival purposes (backup of the originals for repair of the original hardware) would also be illegal.

Not quite.  It's not illegal to run copies of software on systems it was not designed to run on, in the US at least.  Emulation is perfectly legal.  Nor, interestingly enough, is dumping ROMs.  What *is* illegal is distributing said ROMs (so you can't download them, or upload them, sell them, etc.), and breaking encryption.  If you have to break encryption to dump the ROMs (say, dumping a CPS3 game), *that* is illegal.

Of course, this is all based on my knowledge of the DMCA - maybe there are other laws covering this that I know nothing about.

[SavannahLion]

Nor, interestingly enough, is dumping ROMs.

I really had to do some digging around, I knew I remember reading about a court case where ROM dumping was founded to be illegal based on the argument I presented above. That solid state based ROMs were exempted from section 17 USC 117 (The archival rule) because they were not considered volatile media. (As a software developer, I realize the truth is a little different, but we're discussing what the court says, not what physical laws of the universe say.)

Atari vs JS&A in 1983 established ROM copying illegal as I describe it.
It was later modified in 1992(?) with SEGA vs Accolade to give software developers the right to dump said ROMS for the purposes of developing software, eg emulators. If I understand it right, that right does not apply to the average end user.
I know there's a third case that addresses this, but for the life of me I can't remember who was involved. I'm convinced it was Nintendo. Then there's two or three semi-related cases involving companies like IBM about dumping the BIOS of computers.

The DMCA throws a monkey wrench in the whole thing. The way I understand it, the DMCA makes selling the tools to dump the ROMS illegal. I believe this was shown in Nintendo vs Lik-Sang which forced Lik-Sang to remove the ROM dumpers they used to sell.