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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:
--- Quote from: SavannahLion on June 20, 2007, 01:02:23 pm ---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.
--- End quote ---
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)