MAME machine legalities

[Havok]

Hey Jimmy,

If you had read my link - dumping roms and copying bios is considered "fair use" and legal for the purposes of reverse engineering - as long as they do not use the same exact code, as of 1999. So, maybe Mame was illegal when it first started, but it's all good now...

Errmmm..


I mean you're right...

 

[Hoopz]

Just so I understand, pinballjim is also saying reverse engineering is illegal? 

Maybe he should go look up where Compaq got it's name...

[BobA]

Let us all recognize Pinballjim for his contributions to this thread.

[shardian]

As for:

  It gets iffy with Gottlieb/Premier data - you are supposed to get in touch with an authorized reseller. 

Gottlieb IP is owned and enforced. The owner allows www.pbresource.com to be the authorized seller of Gottlieb stuff. It is awesome that Stern allows the roms to be used. I guess they realize that the rom is but a tiny part of all that goes into a machine.

[DaOld Man]

With insurance, electricity, taxes and licenses you need to clear about $200/game per year just to break even on them.  That doesn't even begin to pay yourself or rent.

Hmmm at 25 cents a game,... would have to have some real popular games, or maybe re-introduce the young'ens to the old classics..
I think I will start this as a new thread.
All this talk about legalities makes me want to get drunk and smash something...
LOL

[Zebidee]

Discussing these legal points can be a bit like picking lint out of your navel.  Pretty pointless in the end, and can leave you with a sore feeling in your guts if you do it too much.

This are several shades of grey about this evolving area of  law, so one cannot talk in absolutes.  I can say pretty confidently that noone really cares what we do with mame & roms as a hobby/personal use thing, so long as we aren't putting coin mechs on them and putting them at the local store.  Once you start making a commercial enterprise out of it, the shades of grey start getting dark pretty quick.

There are many protections in place for consumers (in most mature jurisdictions), and who would the company sue?  What would be the point?  But once you move into commercialisation, different laws apply and you could find yourself sued by a company, just to affirm a legal right.

Don't forget that we as a community can play a role in how such laws develop, as our views and how we use the software etc. will ultimately have an influence on how we get treated legally.  In case that sounds complicated, here is the simple version:   Let's just be cool about it all, don't make too much fuss, and don't do anything overtly commercial to create a REASON for there to be a legal issue to contest.   

[Green Giant]

I feel like you completely skipped over my post jim cause you had no arguments against it.

I will stand by it again and say mame is perfectly legal.  The mame devs are not supporting the download of illegally dumped roms, therefore they have commited to crime in building an arcade emulator.  The DMCA clearly protects them from attack by any lawyers.  I am not standing up for modchips or anything that is current, but mame is perfectly legal, in the US.

[Zebidee]

Babe in the woods....

Please leave me out of your pre-teenage fantasies.

If I'm a babe in the wood then you ain't even a sparkle in your grand-daddy's eye.

Time to move on from this topic.  I'm getting bored.

[shardian]

The mame devs are not supporting the download of illegally dumped roms, therefore they have commited to crime in building an arcade emulator.  The DMCA clearly protects them from attack by any lawyers.  I am not standing up for modchips or anything that is current, but mame is perfectly legal, in the US.

Now I'm not pointing any fingers, but don't you think it is a bit coincidental that the MAME guys dumped all of the rom sets in order to make the games work in MAME, and there is also a complete set of roms available for download that matches that list. I mean, just pointing that out.

[Green Giant]

The mame devs are not supporting the download of illegally dumped roms, therefore they have commited to crime in building an arcade emulator.  The DMCA clearly protects them from attack by any lawyers.  I am not standing up for modchips or anything that is current, but mame is perfectly legal, in the US.

Now I'm pointing any fingers, but don't you think it is a bit coincidental that the MAME guys dumped all of the rom sets in order to make the games work in MAME, and there is also a complete set of roms available for download that matches that list. I mean, just pointing that out.

Even thats pretty sketchy for bringing any fines against them.  The law states that the product must be readily available for purchase, and ebay does not count as readily available.  If every old company was to start producing new cabs with the classic games in them, then there would be legal complications. 

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.  Another portion of the law states that if there are perfectly legal roms, the ones the mame devs have on their site, then the software to play them is legal since it can be used in a perfectly legal manner.  This is the main argument protecting the xbox modchip scene since there is an all original linux bios that does not break microsoft copyrighted games.

It might seem coincidental to any normal civilian, but in the eyes of the court that does not matter, they are obeying all current laws.

[Zebidee]

End of Discussion

Promise?  Last time you said this you kept crapping on anyway.

[RayB]

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

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.
 

[Green Giant]

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. 

It also doesn't matter if an emulator can do legal things if parts of the software are illegal.

CPS emulation = illegal

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.

End of Discussion

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).

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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".

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

[SavannahLion]

I don't know how emulation skirts patent issues. But I hope all this information settles the argument.

I can probably answer that... or at least I can try to offer in a few clues.

A patent specifically prevents a person (moi for instance) from copying a particular invention and selling it. It also prevents a person from making, using or importing said invention.

The key point here is copying. A proper software emulator isn't technically a copy of (in our discussion) an arcade PCB, it's probably more accurately described as a derivative work (if at all). This point was proven and protected with Atari vs Coleco when Atari sued Coleco for patent violations on their emulator.

If you read most patent languages, you'll notice that they're intentionally broad in scope for this exact reason. The patent author often tries to capture as wide as possible of an idea to facilitate enforcement while still being as specific as possible to satisfy the requirements of the patent office. The problem is that patents are intended to cover physical ideas, computer hardware for instance. Copyrights are used to protect, "works of art," or in our context, software. The laws governing both are different.

To put it succinctly, you can't succesfully sue a person for creating an emulator that emulates physical hardware.

[Zebidee]

Wow!  Conrgats over the last few posts RayB, GG, SL - you guys have pretty comprehensively laid out the major US legal issues!  Good research there too.  Looks like PJ actually generated some worthwhile discussion here after all! 

[Hawk Daddy]

Just get the legal multi game productions.  Namco has the mario brothers, dk, the ms pacman, galaga, and I'm sure that are a couple others, just fill it up with those types, and then also put in some racing like need for speed, or daytona is always a favorite.

Hawk