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| Zebidee:
--- Quote from: pinballjim on September 12, 2007, 09:50:03 am ---End of Discussion --- End quote --- Promise? Last time you said this you kept crapping on anyway. |
| RayB:
--- Quote from: pinballjim on September 12, 2007, 09:50:03 am ---It also doesn't matter if an emulator can do legal things if parts of the software are illegal. CPS emulation = illegal End of Discussion --- End quote --- Is not. Discussion Resumed. |
| sac01:
Well since we're still going then... Once again you say CPS3 emulation is illegal Jim, but that statment itself makes it false, since emulation isn't illegal.. It's not cps3 copying, it's not cps3 selling knockoffs, it's cps3 EMULATION.... and since the court cases needed to set presidence for your argument seem to fall to emulation being perfectly legal. I know what your going to say next, "the mame code includes the ability to circumnavigate the encryption of the cps3 games and that's illegal" But it's not breaking the encryption in order to make CPS board sets intended for sales. It's mearly emulating the hardware. Which as has been stated falls outside of the copyright laws. :dunno |
| Green Giant:
--- Quote from: pinballjim on September 12, 2007, 09:50:03 am --- --- Quote from: Green Giant on September 12, 2007, 09:29:26 am ---Also, just because an emulator has the ability to play illegaly dumped roms doesn't make it illegal as long as it can also do legal things. --- End quote --- It also doesn't matter if an emulator can do legal things if parts of the software are illegal. CPS emulation = illegal --- End quote --- You really have trouble reading don't you? Once again, the mame devs are not providing illegally dumped roms or roms for games still made by the copyright holders. CPS emulation is perfectly legal in the United States of America because it is an obsolete technology and obsolete technology is not protected by US copyright laws. The DMCA explicitly states that "For purposes of this subsection, a format shall be considered obsolete if the machine or device necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that format is no longer manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace." Golden Tee 2007 is still being produced by Incredible Technologies, therefore it is not available in mame or it would make mame illegal. Commercially viable games cannot be played on mame and they aren't. If you haven't checked lately, Capcom has left the arcade business and ventured into the console world. CPS games are not being produced anymore, just resold. In fact, had mame not emulated CPS, those games would all be lost to the world forever before 2020 because of the suicide batteries. To sum things up, CPS->not produced anymore=legal to emulate->if legal to emulate->the emulator itself is legal=MAME is LEGAL!! Golden Tee 2008=commercially viable->illegal to emulate->not emulated by mame=Mame still LEGAL!! If someone is good with photo shop maybe you could draw them a picture. --- Quote from: pinballjim on September 12, 2007, 09:50:03 am ---End of Discussion --- End quote --- Have a quick perusal over this if you still have trouble understanding. |
| RayB:
From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_emulator#Legal_issues Legal issues As computers continued to advance and emulator developers grew more skilled in their work, the length of time between the commercial release of a console and its successful emulation began to shrink. Many fifth generation consoles such as the Nintendo 64, the Sony PlayStation, and sixth generation handhelds, such as the Game Boy Advance, saw significant work done toward emulation while still very much in production. This has led to a more concerted effort by console manufacturers to crack down on unofficial emulation. Because the process of reverse engineering is protected in U.S. law, the brunt of this attack has been borne by websites that host ROMs and ISO images. Many such sites have been shut down under the threat of legal action. Alongside of the threat, link rot has occurred at several links without update to the webpages. Another legal consideration is that many emulators of fifth generation and newer consoles require a dumped copy of the original machine's BIOS in order to function. As this software is protected by copyright law and typically not accessible without specialised hardware, obtaining them generally requires the user to obtain the file illegally. Basically supports what I said earlier. Emulation is not illegal but the BIOS (if any) falls under copyright law, as does the program data (ROM). ----------------------------------------------------------------- More information, from Nintendo's own current website: http://www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp Note how they consistently refer to "illegally copied Nintendo software" and at no point in the entire page do they state that emulator programs are in themselves illegal. They do claim that copying devices (hardware) are illegal (which is debatable). And they state that they feel emulators promote piracy and hurt their business. However neither of these positions makes an emulator illegal. They could perhaps take an emulator author to court based on that position (damages to business, revenue, trademarks, etc) but that still doesn't make the emulator itself "illegal". ----------------------------------------------------------------- More, from Wikipedia's page on emulators in general: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emulator Emulators in computer science Emulation refers to the ability of a program or device to imitate another program or device. Many printers, for example, are designed to emulate Hewlett-Packard LaserJet printers because so much software is written for HP printers. By emulating an HP printer, a printer can work with any software written for a real HP printer. Emulation "tricks" the software into believing that a device is really some other device. I'd like to find information on any cases involving HP suing other manufacturers for using these "printer emulators". All I could find was lawsuits against third-party ink cartridge makers. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Here's Wikipedia info about reverse engineering: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_engineering Reverse engineering (2nd paragraph) In the United States and many other countries, even if an artifact or process is protected by trade secrets, reverse-engineering the artifact or process is often lawful as long as it is obtained legitimately. ----------------------------------------------------------------- DMCA - Exemptions The main purpose of the DMCA was to include digital media under copyright laws and also include laws against circumvention of "DRM". However there are exceptions to the rule: Lot's of citations online... pick your prefered one, but the main exemption applicable here is (as of 2006): 2. Computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and that require the original media or hardware as a condition of access, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of preservation or archival reproduction of published digital works by a library or archive. A format shall be considered obsolete if the machine or system necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that format is no longer manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace. Exactly on target for what we're discussing here, although almost a moot point considering that the DMCA is applicable to the USA only. ----------------------------------------------------------------- More... Familiar with Sony VS Connectix? More interesting than that single case is the fact that the company's business was almost entirely based on emulation for commercial profit. They made Virtual PC for the Mac as well as the Playstation emulator. Founded in 1988 they didn't close doors until 2003. If you read up on their history HERE you see that Sony ended up having to BUY OUT the rights to the emulator in order to stop it as the courts would not rule in Sony's favor. Microsoft BOUGHT the rights to Virtual PC (and continues to market it). If these things were so obviously "illegal", Sony would not have had to resort to a buy-out, and Microsoft would have been able to sue or bully the company into surrendering the software. ----------------------------------------------------------------- In conclusion........... I don't know how emulation skirts patent issues. But I hope all this information settles the argument. An emulator is kind of like a bong. Perfectly legal to buy one in most places, but the content you use it for is not. |
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