cant seem to grasp why mame is 'illegal' for commercial use

[jcterzin]

So I own a couple of arcade machines I use in my shop to let clients play while they wait. They are not these two games but lets say they are TMNT and MK since they are both similar and made by the same company, and I want to convert them into just the one cabinet. (assuming I got permission from the developer of the specific frontend I would use) why would it be illegal to use mame for this process and make it used for commercial play? I own the pcbs of the original games, I just changed platforms from which they run right?

edit* reading over this, I bet it doesnt make much sense. I just think it would be easy to setup up mame in one cab and emulate the games I already own.

[Havok]

Straight from the people that created Mame:

Can I put an arcade cabinet running MAME in a public location?
A. No. This this a commercial use of MAME and is prohibited by the license. Even if you don't charge money, putting a machine in a public location is "operating" an arcade machine and falls under commercial rules in most locations.

If you wanted to run both games, you would have to run a switch to the actual pcbs. since you didn't state the games, if they are jamma it wouldn't be that hard.

[Ginsu Victim]

They are not these two games but lets say they are TMNT and MK since they are both similar and made by the same company, and I want to convert them into just the one cabinet.

They're not by the same company.

[Thenasty]

buying one of those 1million to one GAMES is considered illegal too (you know which ones).

The ones you want to be all legal are the Ultracade/Hanano machines. Usually you can find this at Costo, BJ Wholesale etc.... and WWW.

[jcterzin]

your right Ginsu. my apologies to Konami for thinking that TMNT was a midway production! (blushing)

anyways, I was thinking it was an issue with the front ends. I didnt realize that the developers were actually against this. I was assuming that commercial use would have been a priority considering that finding specific dedicated cabinets with running pcbs is becoming more and more difficult for older games. How hard is it to find a good running paperboy? Its tough where I live, thats for sure. But with this program making it easy to just 'emulate' the game, that allows for it to be almost ressurected. Im just rambling, but all I am saying is that one day, 15 years from now, when I can no longer find a working CRT or isolation transformer, or whatever part I need to fix my 'true' pcb arcade machines, what will we do then? I guess just forget about the games, except for home use.

[DJ_Izumi]

anyways, I was thinking it was an issue with the front ends. I didnt realize that the developers were actually against this.

If the MAME could be used for commercial operations, then some MAME developers would be like 'Wait, if someone can make money off of this, I wanna get paid for my efforts in building it for him'.  Then it'd snowball as developers dropped out feeling they should get paid, if some got paid they'd argue over who should get paid what, or if those who only made minor contributions should get paid, and of course who made what game work which is being used while someone who made another Majong game run that no one cares about or never use get paid and... It'd be a big mess.

Everyone is a lot happier to volenteer their efforts when they know everyone else is getting paid nothing too.

[Blanka]

If it is for wait, they should be on Free play anyway. Waiting is not really a service
Guess you won't make a ton of money on it. And even if you do, putting the money in your regular service (say you're a car mech working for 35$/hour, make it 36$!) and put the games on free play will give more consumer satisfaction, and they won't notice the price increase.

And beside that you can always just do it.

"What are you gonna do? Bleed on me?"

[Blanka]

If the MAME could be used for commercial operations, then some MAME developers would be like 'Wait, if someone can make money off of this, I wanna get paid for my efforts in building it for him'.

I Thought MAME IS ALREADY used for commercial operations. I believe Taito Legends for example is nothing but MAME. The game owners will say FY to the mamedevs probably, as they cannot organise to file lawsuits against them.

On the other hand. Think of this scenario: Steve JOBS want's MAME on his iPad store (iPad is auto-rotating 4:3 screen: made for classics!). He pays the mame-org a sum of cash, they think of a nice formula to divide it over members (Nicola getting millionaire and letting go his weird Trademark), and he arranges Taito, Capcom and co send in technicians to better mame even further. Mame goes full GNU open source and the deal is that Apple makes ROMS available for commercial use without DRM in their iPad store, so each Mamer can obtain legal titles. I think it will give more people access in a decent way to our great game heritage. In the end Jobs is only interested in 30% of each ROM sold, whether it is DRM'ed or not, music, app or crap. Does not matter.

[DJ_Izumi]

I Thought MAME IS ALREADY used for commercial operations. I believe Taito Legends for example is nothing but MAME. The game owners will say FY to the mamedevs probably, as they cannot organise to file lawsuits against them.

Googling for 'MAME Taito Legends' doesn't turn up much, one thread someone links something and makes the accusation and other dismiss it.  Whatever he links to seems to be a dead link.

http://curmudgeongamer.com/2006/01/taito-legends-operation-wolf-and-pc.html

This suggests the PC version contains MAME compatable ROMS, but the ROMs being MAME compatable does't make the emulator.  Several emulators use ROMs in the same format as MAME.

On the other hand. Think of this scenario: Steve JOBS want's MAME on his iPad store (iPad is auto-rotating 4:3 screen: made for classics!). He pays the mame-org a sum of cash, they think of a nice formula to divide it over members (Nicola getting millionaire and letting go his weird Trademark), and he arranges Taito, Capcom and co send in technicians to better mame even further. Mame goes full GNU open source and the deal is that Apple makes ROMS available for commercial use without DRM in their iPad store, so each Mamer can obtain legal titles. I think it will give more people access in a decent way to our great game heritage. In the end Jobs is only interested in 30% of each ROM sold, whether it is DRM'ed or not, music, app or crap. Does not matter.

But companies like Taito, Capcom, Konami and Namco have already built working emulators for their platforms, they've been building console and PC compilations for years afterall.  Just port their own emulator technology to the iPhone.  This is what Sega's done on their own afterall, they're rumored to have made a Genesis emulator for iPhone that will feature it's own 'store' internally for buying games to run on it.

I don't see why you think Jobs would be instrumental in this at all. o.O

[Blanka]

I don't see why you think Jobs would be instrumental in this at all. o.O

Because right now he's the only one understanding content dealing in the 21st century, and how to make money of millions of small software buys. And he's perfectionist enough to keep us away from lame retro-game-pack userinterfaces and the need to have a CD in our PC for every gamepack, with their non-uniformity in design. He's has enough goodwill in the industry to get loose bare ROM licenses (except from Nintendo, they are a pain in the ass to everyone, much like Steve himself )

[DJ_Izumi]

Because right now he's the only one understanding content dealing in the 21st century, and how to make money of millions of small software buys. And he's perfectionist enough to keep us away from lame retro-game-pack userinterfaces and the need to have a CD in our PC for every gamepack, with their non-uniformity in design. He's has enough goodwill in the industry to get loose bare ROM licenses (except from Nintendo, they are a pain in the ass to everyone, much like Steve himself )

Have you not seen the vast ammount of inane and crappy apps for the iPhone?  Sure there's a lot of great apps for the iPhone but they sit atop a mountain of ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---.

[Gatt]

It's actually pretty simple,  two reasons.

1.  Copyright law prevents the use of anything owned by someone else if there's profit involved.  If Mamedev weren't vocally against it,  then the companies could sue Mamedev and win.  Being vocally against commercial use keeps them out of this problem.

2.  How would you divide up money anyways?  There's so many contributers over the years how would you quantify it at all?  It's impossible.

Mame's got alot of benefit's going for it.  It stays niche,  Mamedev makes efforts to insure it's just difficult enough not to mainstream,  and has stated it is against their terms of use to use it for commercial uses,  companies don't sue Mame,  and apparently choose to make money by sometimes harvesting Mame to create their little platform releases.  I've heard of a few instances where the games in some company's "Arcade pack!" turn out to be Mame code.

Right now,  there's a healthy balance between everyone,  certain set of rules are followed and basically everyone ignores what the other guy's doing.

Take a moment to think about it,  it's a fairly healthy symbiotic relationship that under normal circumstances would never exist in the buisness world.  Mame's an amazing piece of work on so many levels...

[Jack Burton]

The way I understand it is that the DMCA says any device or program that has the sole purpose of circumventing a copyright is illegal. 

I would say a MAME cab falls into this category pretty easily.  It doesn't matter if you owned the original board. 

[saint]

The way I understand it is that the DMCA says any device or program that has the sole purpose of circumventing a copyright is illegal. 

I would say a MAME cab falls into this category pretty easily.  It doesn't matter if you owned the original board. 

There is (or was) a clause in the DMCA that allowed technology circumventing a copyright if the original technology was obsolete and not available anymore. MAME fit into that category.

[Haze]

So I own a couple of arcade machines I use in my shop to let clients play while they wait. They are not these two games but lets say they are TMNT and MK since they are both similar and made by the same company, and I want to convert them into just the one cabinet. (assuming I got permission from the developer of the specific frontend I would use) why would it be illegal to use mame for this process and make it used for commercial play? I own the pcbs of the original games, I just changed platforms from which they run right?

edit* reading over this, I bet it doesnt make much sense. I just think it would be easy to setup up mame in one cab and emulate the games I already own.

It's quite simple.  MAME can't be used for commercial use because the MAME license state that it can't.

There are many reasons for this, one being that the development team don't want manufacturers of commercial MAME cabs with illegal ROMs turning using 'MAME facilitates and promotes this' as some kind of legal defence.  The program hasn't been designed as an engine to drive illegal commercial activities, and while it is sometimes used as such (and there are even occurances of this documented in MAME) it is completely unapproved by the development team.  MAME wants to be as far away from the commercial bootlegging operations as possible.

There could also be further complications with local laws, some places require licenses to operate PCBs, and only licensed PCBs can operate.  A PC running the same games is not the same PCB, and again further legal issues could occur for the operator which again the team have no desire to be a part of.

Also a project making money is a more attractive legal target in general for lawsuits, no matter how frivilous they are.

So MAME is quite happy operating as a non-commercial, non-profit project.

[jcterzin]

sounds like there is a ton of grey area here.

[saint]

sounds like there is a ton of grey area here.

There is zero grey area here.

1. It's against the MAME-Dev license.
2. It's against the law.

[RayB]

I guess what it boils down to is average folk dont understand what a "license" is. They are used to just installing and running programs and so long as they paid to get it, and it works, that's all that matters to them.

So to put it simply, when a person, or persons or a company creates a program, or a work of art, or a piece of music, etc, they automatically have copyright of that program. This gives them legal control over how/where their work is used. Traditionally this comes in the form of "If you pay me $X, you can use this for Y".

MAME creators decided they are not charging for MAME. It is free. But it is not a free-for-all. In exchange for $0, you can use it BUT NOT COMMERCIALLY. That's what they decided. End of story. It's their work, their rules.

[Ginsu Victim]

sounds like there is a ton of grey area here.

Here's what you don't realize:

Haze is a MAME dev.

It's not like you're talking to someone unrelated to the project just giving their opinion.

[J.Max]

This is very simple:

1. MAMEDev owns the code and trademark, in short, they own MAME.

2. They have the right to say what you can or can't do with their property.  "Open source" doesn't mean that no one owns the right to the intellectual property, it just means that anyone can contribute.  Google owns Android, and they say that you can't use it on Netbooks, therefore you can't do so. (I use this comparison because Android is also open source, I believe.)

3. They (MAMEDev) say that you can't use it commercially.

That's pretty much it in a nutshell.

[ark_ader]

Well not really straight cut as you would think it would be.

This is my opinion on the subject,

In a real world scenario a guy running a pizza parlor wants to have a few arcade games like Donkey Kong or some other obsolete game that nobody has seen or possibly played before...  ...just gets a broken cab and fires it up with MAME and some roms.  Happy days.

Unless the guy is a complete moron and puts MAME CAB on the machine, nobody would be the wiser and the guy would crank in some quarters.  If the dude puts it on free play more the better as there would be no licensing or maybe just a permit.  The mamedevs have no calling back code in MAME nor does it flash MAME IS NOT FOR COMMERCIAL USE every 5 minutes.  

Say they guy gets caught with his pants down and the MAME machine is discovered.  What then?

A warning? Jail time?   Nope.  How many local cops you know that would do anything?  

Besides its a civil issue.

Mamedev is a collective, each developer that submitted code (and there is quite a few) would have to testify.  Then comes the media circus when some company who owns the rights to Donkey Kong or whatever wakes up and sees serious money on the TV.  Guess who would be sued for breaking copy protection?  Nintendo is notorious for such behavior.  Who?  The guy in the pizza parlor?  Seriously, who?

As mentioned by Saint - the Library of Congress would be the only group that would be in the position to include or protect MAME:

The Copyright Office is conducting this rule-making proceeding mandated by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which provides that the Librarian of Congress may exempt certain classes of works from the prohibition against circumvention of technological measures that control access to copyrighted works.

The purpose of this proceeding is to determine whether there are particular classes of works as to which users are, or are likely to be, adversely affected in their ability to make non-infringing uses due to the prohibition on circumvention of access controls.  

The Notice of Inquiry in this fourth anti-circumvention rule-making requests written comments from all interested parties, including representatives of copyright owners, educational institutions, libraries and archives, scholars, researchers and members of the public, in order to elicit evidence on whether non-infringing uses of certain classes of works are, or are likely to be, adversely affected by this prohibition on the circumvention of measures that control access to copyrighted works.  http://www.copyright.gov/1201/

Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution, also kicks in here.  A real mess if the media got wind of a real scoop and you would get some Michael Moore type reporter locating all these long-gone holders of old arcade technologies (remember this is prime suing time for those with losing holdings in the entertainment business, software houses including) asking for their views.  Basically a witch-hunt.

The rest of us who have Mame collections will keep quiet.  Maybe we will see a renaissance for all these games, with Mr. Foley riding shotgun.  

I personally love what the Mamedevs have done.  They are a part of our history, and the revenue generated with all these new ports of old games are a testament to this, something which is not lost on the copyright holders.

I'm not that happy with the cracking of games in the 2000-2009+ era, as the console software houses love kicking these ports out.  I have said in the past and I will say it now: Stop bringing out new stuff and fix the old code.

What I am getting at is the stone throwing mentality that some Mamedevs have, considering they are not officially in the Library of Congress (again correct me) negates this fact and have the right to break copy protections.  

I live in a dying holiday resort town.  I'm used to seeing arcades go bust and I also see some questionable arcade machines in my journeys.  Am I responsible to report it?  Is there a Mamedev reward hotline?

That's how I see the whole Mame vs the commercial use world.  Hypocrisy?

But we are talking about those offenders who operate Mame in a commercial setting as less than 1% - (please correct me) over the millions of Mame users out there all playing robby roto - its a logical conclusion.  

Edit:
I read this again and how I see MAME operating this policy of archiving and saving history is to complete work on such game and break the code so roms could not be played.  The machine is archived but the operating code is not available to the general public only to the copyright holders or PD.

[Ginsu Victim]

In the example above, wouldn't the guy need a tax stamp on the machine? Do they inspect the machine before issuing it? I'm not sure how it all works.... 

[CheffoJeffo]

Regardless of the legalities (where I happen to agree with saint, Haze, et al), the best solution to wanting to run two games that you already have working boards for in a single cabinet, particularly JAMMA games, is just to drop in a JAMMA switcher.

It is the easiest solution and, depending on how much your time is worth, quite possibly the cheapest.

I would also point out that, depending on where you are, you may be breaking the law just by charging people to play the machine anyway ... unless you have all the required permits, tax stickers, insurance, etc.

EDIT: Ginsu got to this latter point first

So, what are the games ?

[ark_ader]

Then I had a thought.

Where do we stop with copyright infringement?

How about this scenario:

Hypothetically Ram Controls gets a call from a guy who says he has the rights to the Star Wars Yokes.  Threatens to sue if he releases the yokes unless a royalty is paid for each controller sold (like 90%) or just slaps him with a C & D.  The yokes were made for the military originally.  Who owns the copyright now?

How many arcade suppliers have made repro controls?  Cabinets?  Artwork?  PCBs?  Mods? Music? Fridge Magnets?

Where do we stop and why do we need these arcade repro items if the main work of MAME is for arcade preservation?

Yes I know I'm throwing stones now.. 

[kingbob]

So, what are the games ?

(After all this talk of legality)  Probably a couple of bootlegs.  JK

[DJ_Izumi]

Hypothetically Ram Controls gets a call from a guy who says he has the rights to the Star Wars Yokes.  Threatens to sue if he releases the yokes unless a royalty is paid for each controller sold (like 90%) or just slaps him with a C & D.

I'd point out that any patent on the controller for Star Wars expired after twenty years and is well expired by now, then tell him I won't fall for his scheme.  Because you can't copyright design of something. |:

[Malenko]

you guys are gettin a little off topic, besides some people say the yokes will never come out


While it may seem "morally right" to use MAME in leiu of an actual PCB , you cant in a commercial setting. Its not because of the DCMA or any law or lack of permits you dont have to take the argument that far, you cant because when you run MAME you agree to their license, which is "you cant use this for commercial purposes"


I have real arcade machines, I have a MAME cab, I can admit I play games I shouldnt but I play the ones I own a lot more (Im tired of dumping hundred of dollars on broken KI 1 and 2 PCBs and fighting ebay sellers over them, so I settle for MAMEd KI1/KI2)

[ark_ader]

you guys are gettin a little off topic, besides some people say the yokes will never come out


While it may seem "morally right" to use MAME in leiu of an actual PCB , you cant in a commercial setting. Its not because of the DCMA or any law or lack of permits you dont have to take the argument that far, you cant because when you run MAME you agree to their license, which is "you cant use this for commercial purposes"


I have real arcade machines, I have a MAME cab, I can admit I play games I shouldnt but I play the ones I own a lot more (Im tired of dumping hundred of dollars on broken KI 1 and 2 PCBs and fighting ebay sellers over them, so I settle for MAMEd KI1/KI2)

Yeah my bad, but it did merit a mention.

I like your point about being morally right about using MAME for a swap PCB.  But you have to look at it differently.  The PCB is protected (maybe not) with means to stop people creating copies.  Mame does not emulate the protection does it?  The protection would have to be broken or modified in order to get the game to run in MAME.  So morally doesn't come into this.  Mame just emulates the hardware or the software inside the hardware.  So if MAME is just for preserving hardware or the software inside the hardware, why has an industry spawned around it?

Why are the ROMS available?  Why are the roms being updated and not broken to prevent what the original mainboard of the PCB represented?

We know its popularity.  We all want to play the games.  That is a given.  Why not include the protection now?

Maybe a Mamedev can explain this.

Why emulate a mainboard for preservation purposes, when the process did not include the protection (if any) as was intended (or included)?

Is that why it cannot be used for commercial purposes?

http://mamelife.blogspot.com/2007/01/how-to-bruteforce-cps2.html

[J.Max]

Well not really straight cut as you would think it would be.

This is my opinion on the subject,

In a real world scenario a guy running a pizza parlor wants to have a few arcade games like Donkey Kong or some other obsolete game that nobody has seen or possibly played before...  ...just gets a broken cab and fires it up with MAME and some roms.  Happy days.

Which he shouldn't have done and is violating the MAME license.

Unless the guy is a complete moron and puts MAME CAB on the machine, nobody would be the wiser and the guy would crank in some quarters.  If the dude puts it on free play more the better as there would be no licensing or maybe just a permit.  The mamedevs have no calling back code in MAME nor does it flash MAME IS NOT FOR COMMERCIAL USE every 5 minutes.

True.  Doesn't make what he did right or legal, just unenforceable.  

Say they guy gets caught with his pants down and the MAME machine is discovered.  What then?

A warning? Jail time?   Nope.  How many local cops you know that would do anything?  

Besides its a civil issue.

Mamedev is a collective, each developer that submitted code (and there is quite a few) would have to testify.  Then comes the media circus when some company who owns the rights to Donkey Kong or whatever wakes up and sees serious money on the TV.  Guess who would be sued for breaking copy protection?  Nintendo is notorious for such behavior.  Who?  The guy in the pizza parlor?  Seriously, who?

The guy in the pizza parlor could be sued by both Nintendo (for using a ROM) and MAMEDev.  He probably wouldn't be sued by MAMEDev, but they have the legal right to do so.

As mentioned by Saint - the Library of Congress would be the only group that would be in the position to include or protect MAME:

The Copyright Office is conducting this rule-making proceeding mandated by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which provides that the Librarian of Congress may exempt certain classes of works from the prohibition against circumvention of technological measures that control access to copyrighted works.

The purpose of this proceeding is to determine whether there are particular classes of works as to which users are, or are likely to be, adversely affected in their ability to make non-infringing uses due to the prohibition on circumvention of access controls.  

The Notice of Inquiry in this fourth anti-circumvention rule-making requests written comments from all interested parties, including representatives of copyright owners, educational institutions, libraries and archives, scholars, researchers and members of the public, in order to elicit evidence on whether non-infringing uses of certain classes of works are, or are likely to be, adversely affected by this prohibition on the circumvention of measures that control access to copyrighted works.  http://www.copyright.gov/1201/

Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution, also kicks in here.  A real mess if the media got wind of a real scoop and you would get some Michael Moore type reporter locating all these long-gone holders of old arcade technologies (remember this is prime suing time for those with losing holdings in the entertainment business, software houses including) asking for their views.  Basically a witch-hunt.

The rest of us who have Mame collections will keep quiet.  Maybe we will see a renaissance for all these games, with Mr. Foley riding shotgun.  

All of this is incorrect, except the witch-hunt part.  You're right that it could turn into a circus, but more likely, it becomes one of those "weird" stories.

I personally love what the Mamedevs have done.  They are a part of our history, and the revenue generated with all these new ports of old games are a testament to this, something which is not lost on the copyright holders.

I'm not that happy with the cracking of games in the 2000-2009+ era, as the console software houses love kicking these ports out.  I have said in the past and I will say it now: Stop bringing out new stuff and fix the old code.

What I am getting at is the stone throwing mentality that some Mamedevs have, considering they are not officially in the Library of Congress (again correct me) negates this fact and have the right to break copy protections.  

I live in a dying holiday resort town.  I'm used to seeing arcades go bust and I also see some questionable arcade machines in my journeys.  Am I responsible to report it?  Is there a Mamedev reward hotline?

That's how I see the whole Mame vs the commercial use world.  Hypocrisy?

But we are talking about those offenders who operate Mame in a commercial setting as less than 1% - (please correct me) over the millions of Mame users out there all playing robby roto - its a logical conclusion.  

Is using MAME worse than using a bootleg board?  Not really.  Two wrongs don't make a right.

Edit:
I read this again and how I see MAME operating this policy of archiving and saving history is to complete work on such game and break the code so roms could not be played.  The machine is archived but the operating code is not available to the general public only to the copyright holders or PD.

Right.  MAMEDev owns the code to the emulator...they have nothing to do with the ROMs.  The emulator is perfectly legal because it's not made to circumvent digital copy protection.

[jcterzin]

the games are centipede and pacman, both original.

[Jack Burton]

I believe a good alternative to using MAME in public would be to use some public domain arcade style PC game and put it on free play.

Grid Wars would be pretty cool I think: http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.com/grid/wars.htm

I have even thought sometimes of making my own little arcade game and putting it in a cab and donating it to a college or community center.  How cool would that be?

[CheffoJeffo]

the games are centipede and pacman, both original.

So, you have two original, working classic cabinets with very different control sets and want to merge them in to a single cabinet ?

 

[Ginsu Victim]

the games are centipede and pacman, both original.

So, you have two original, working classic cabinets with very different control sets and want to merge them in to a single cabinet ?

 

+1

WTF?!?

[jcterzin]

pacman has just the joystick, and centipede has the trackball and button. I couldnt mame it so that i have just a single joystick and a single button?

[jcterzin]

what about RAINE? its freeware and says the original author abandoned it and released the source code. If I reconfigure RAINE, could anyone see legal issues with that?

[Ginsu Victim]

what about RAINE? its freeware and says the original author abandoned it and released the source code. If I reconfigure RAINE, could anyone see legal issues with that?

Centipede isn't emulated in Raine, first off. Second, it would still be a coin-op machine without a tax stamp (running pirated software, no less).

[CheffoJeffo]

So long as you have no compunction with the legality/morality -- the smart idea is to trade those two classics for a 60-in-1 and some cash. -- you get what you want, pick up some cash and you avoid doing something really offensive.

Please do be mindful that we don't destroy what we're trying to re-create.  Many classic arcade machines are rare and worth a heck of a lot more intact than altered.  Ideal candidates for this type of project are machines that have already been abused by previous owners - artwork destroyed, poorly converted, etc...  If you have a classic cabinet in good shape, you can probably sell it to a collector and get a trashed but usable cabinet in the bargain.

[saint]

The legal issue is the ROMs. You have no legal right to use the ROMs in a commercial setting, and frankly unless you've purchased the ROMs no legal right to use it in a personal setting.

[Malenko]

The legal issue is the ROMs. You have no legal right to use the ROMs in a commercial setting, and frankly unless you've purchased the ROMs no legal right to use it in a personal setting.

well its a two fold issue. Legally speaking I have the ROMs and HDs (and actual dedicated cabs to boot) to both Killer Instinct 1 and Killer Instinct 2 so I can use them in a commercial enviroment with the proper permits and what not. So long as I have the permits and the PCBs are in there its legal. Now if I pull out a PCB and pop a PC running MAME and just running the KI or KI2 game its illegal , (pretend I dumped the ROMs myself or had Hobbyroms.com dump them for me , for argument's sake) the roms have nothing to do with the legality because the MAME license trumps that. Running an Xin1 board is just illegal in so many ways, from the ROMs on it, to the fact it in itself is a violation of the MAME license,etc,etc

RAINE is actually a good point to make. If you have the actual PCBs/ROMs to a game RAINE runs, and you only run that game in the cab AND you have the permits to have the machine in a commercial setting....is it legal? I cant say I ever read the RAINE license, but if the author says no commerical use , then it puts it in the same threshold as MAME.

[SavannahLion]

, (pretend I dumped the ROMs myself or had Hobbyroms.com dump them for me , for argument's sake) the roms have nothing to do with the legality because the MAME license trumps that.

Now if I pull out a PCB and pop a PC running MAME and just running the KI or KI2 game its illegal , (pretend I dumped the ROMs myself or had Hobbyroms.com dump them for me , for argument's sake) the roms have nothing to do with the legality because the MAME license trumps that.

The rights of the ROMs (or more accurately the copyright holder) play a more significant role than you're really implying here.

No, the MAME license does not trump the ROM copyrights. Even if a team of developers get together and create a MAME-run-alike that has absolutely no license, or if MAMEDev suddenly decide to release a commercial version of MAME, it doesn't change the legal status of the ROMs in question in any shape or form. The legal status of ROMS is fairly well established through various court cases over the past twenty plus years. No amount of file sharing, trading, dumping, or pseudo-legal mumbo jumbo bull ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- about keeping ROMs for 24 hours before deleting is going to fly in any court (note, I'm in the U.S.).

(not really directed at Malenko specifically)

What it is is that it's really a legal minefield. In no particular order. You have the MAME license that specifically restricts a commercial setting. Then you have the copyright owners of the specific games in question (let's assume that all of the games in question are currently owned by someone, somewhere) to contend with. Newer games have additional DMCA protection (as annoying as it is, it is what it is). Then you have local city, county or state ordinances governing the cabinets themselves. Tax stickers aren't just randomly stuck on cabs to be scrapped of by collectors you know. They're there for a reason.

Seriously, why is the legal status of anything we do here even debated, ever? It strikes me that too many people confuse the reality of the situation with its legal situation then go around arguing the reality as an example of the law.

(I'm rambling, you can stop reading here)

In the U.S. (and Mexico) marijuana is illegal. Period. As far as the federal government of either country is concerned, it's generally not open to interpretation. It's legal in CA for medicinal mj, but it's still illegal under federal law. How stupid does one have to be not to realize this potentially important note and not to realize the potential consequence of it? I spent two weeks getting hounded by some lawyer because some dumb ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- thought his CA medicinal mj license would be valid in Mexico. Now the stupid ass is rotting in a jail because he failed to recognize the law. The drug situation in Mexico probably isn't all that different than the U.S., but that still doesn't change the fact that if you get caught by federal agents, they'll toss your ass in jail.

[ark_ader]

What I like about this thread is everyone has an opinion, but does not research before hand and post their conclusions with factual data to back it up.  It is all hearsay until you reference your information.  I also like how nobody comments on how MAME got the roms to work in the first place, when there was some form of protection when the roms were dumped prior to 2000.

http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2006/index.html

Then we have the OP asking why MAME cannot be used in a commercial setting.  Posters say because of the ROMS, but what IF the OP got permission to use the ROMS?  I really do not see how MAME which runs software to emulate actual hardware, can justify enforcing use of a commercial setting, considering that the actual purpose of the machine(s) emulated were originally used for commercial purposes.  If MAME is hiding behind the Library of Congress rulings of 2006, how does that fit with new arcade machines being manufactured with these game ROMs installed?

http://www.bmigaming.com/pacman-mspacman-galaga-home.htm

Something doesn't add up here?

http://mamedev.org/legal.html


I will reference Mr. Foley as he managed to get permission from the copyright owners to use his product.

http://web.archive.org/web/20060506022028/http://www.ultracade.com/about/11/corporate-profile

Can the MAME team show the same endorsement from Namco Bandai?

[Malenko]

wow, you totally missed my point then agreed with what I said the entire way.

I never said the MAME license trumps the legality of the ROMs. I said it doesnt matter if the ROMs are legal you cant run mame for commercial endevors becase the MAME license doesnt allow it. If I wasnt clear, my appologies.

Secondly , I was ASKING about the legality of using ROMs on software that doesnt have a license restriction. I, for example, have both KI1 and KI2 PCBs that no longer work. They are not back ups or bootlegs, they are the real deal PCBs that are beyond my repair ability (a lot of surface mount stuff). So I was just askin, if I had a PC inside a KI cab, right next to the KI PCB/HD and ran KI for the purpose of having it in a bar and I got all the valid permits and ran it on software that doest have a commercial restriction, would that be "legal"

my epeen isnt big enough for this thread

[Haze]

This is very simple:

1. MAMEDev owns the code and trademark, in short, they own MAME.

2. They have the right to say what you can or can't do with their property.  "Open source" doesn't mean that no one owns the right to the intellectual property, it just means that anyone can contribute.  Google owns Android, and they say that you can't use it on Netbooks, therefore you can't do so. (I use this comparison because Android is also open source, I believe.)

3. They (MAMEDev) say that you can't use it commercially.

That's pretty much it in a nutshell.

Yep, nothing else matters.  The license says that you can't use MAME in a commercial way, and by downloading / using MAME you are agreeing to this license, just as you are with any other piece of software.  Other emulators may have a different license which doesn't have this clause (although a lot of them take code directly from MAME anyway, so their legality could be questioned)

It doesn't matter if you have / haven't got the rights to the games, you simply don't have the right to run MAME in that way.  What Ultracade did / didn't license isn't relevant here (and is up in the air anyway I believe) because unless they were very, very naughty (which some people speculate), they weren't using MAME and therefore weren't bound by the MAME license agreement.

[Thenasty]

can't we all just get along and RESPECT MAME DEV wishes and not USE the program for commercial.

If you want to do such a thing, make your own program and get the rights for the ROM/GAMES so you can make money from it (just lke D.F.)       

[ark_ader]

This is very simple:

1. MAMEDev owns the code and trademark, in short, they own MAME.

2. They have the right to say what you can or can't do with their property.  "Open source" doesn't mean that no one owns the right to the intellectual property, it just means that anyone can contribute.  Google owns Android, and they say that you can't use it on Netbooks, therefore you can't do so. (I use this comparison because Android is also open source, I believe.)

3. They (MAMEDev) say that you can't use it commercially.

That's pretty much it in a nutshell.

Yep, nothing else matters.  The license says that you can't use MAME in a commercial way, and by downloading / using MAME you are agreeing to this license, just as you are with any other piece of software.  Other emulators may have a different license which doesn't have this clause (although a lot of them take code directly from MAME anyway, so their legality could be questioned)

It doesn't matter if you have / haven't got the rights to the games, you simply don't have the right to run MAME in that way.  What Ultracade did / didn't license isn't relevant here (and is up in the air anyway I believe) because unless they were very, very naughty (which some people speculate), they weren't using MAME and therefore weren't bound by the MAME license agreement.

It does matter and I would like Haze to reference those emulators that is using MAME code as his post suggests.  Also again I ask Haze where is the agreement from Namco Bandai saying that it allows the Mamedevs to promote namco copyrighted software to be used in MAME.  The Library of Congress ruling of 2006  which covers MAME development is under question as MAME has code that relates to arcade games that is not considered obsolete.

Actually we can look back to the first release of Mame back in 1995:


                                M A M E

                    Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator

                  by Nicola Salmoria (MC6489@mclink.it)


Here is a quick list of ther currently supported games; read on for details.


Game                     Playable?   Accurate colors?    Sound?

Pac Man                    Yes            Yes             Yes
Ms Pac Man (bootleg)       Yes            Yes             Yes
Crush Roller               Yes            No              Yes
Pengo                      Yes            Yes             Yes
Lady Bug                   Yes            Yes            Partial



Acknoledgements
---------------

First of all, thanks to Allard van der Bas (avdbas@wi.leidenuniv.nl) for
starting the Arcade Emulation Programming Repository at
http://valhalla.ph.tn.tudelft.nl/emul8
Without the Repository, I would never have even tried to write an emulator.

If you find out something useful, submit it to avdbas@wi.leidenuniv.nl,
so it will be made available to everybody on the Repository page.

Z80Em Portable Zilog Z80 Emulator Copyright (C) Marcel de Kogel 1996,1997
Allegro library by Shawn Hargreaves, 1994/96
SEAL Synthetic Audio Library API Interface Copyright (C) 1995, 1996
   Carlos Hasan. All Rights Reserved.
Video mode created using Tweak 1.6b by Robert Schmidt, who also wrote
TwkUser.c.

Very special thanks to Sergio Munoz for the precious information about
the Pengo sound hardware and colors.
Thanks to Paul Swan for the information on the Lady Bug sound hardware.
Thanks to Gary Walton for his help in making the Crush Roller colors better.



Usage
-----

MAME [name of the game to run] [options]

for example

MAME mspacman -nosound   will run Ms Pac Man without sound

options:
-vesa         use standard 640x480x256 VESA mode instead of custom video mode
-noscanlines  use alternate video mode (not availble in all games)
-nosound      turn off sound
-nojoy        don't poll joystick
-log          create a log of illegal memory accesses in ERROR.LOG


The following keys work in all emulators:

3       Insert coin
1       Start 1 player game
2       Start 2 players game
Tab     Change dip switch settings
P       Pause
F3      Reset
F11     Activate fps counter
F12     Save a screen snapshot
ESC     Exit emulator



Pac Man, Ms Pac Man
-------------------

Arrows  Move around
F1      Skip level
F2      Test mode
CTRL    Speed up cheat

Known issues:
- Blinky and Pinky seem to be shifted one pixel to the right. This is really
  annoying, but I can't seem to be able to understand why. Maybe there is an
  additional "sprite offset" register somewhere? Or did the original just
  behave this way?
  Note that we can't fix it by just moving sprites 0 and 1 one pixel to the
  left, because when Pac Man eats a power pill the sprites order is changed
  so that Pac Man is drawn over the ghosts. It becomes sprite 0, and Blinky
  becomes sprite 4.


Crush Roller
------------

Crush Roller is a hacked version of Make Trax, modified to run on a
Pac Man board.

Arrows  Move around
F1      Skip level

Known issues:
- There's the same problem with sprites as in Pac Man, but here it could be
  fixed without apparent side effects.


Pengo
-----

Arrows  Move around
CTRL    Push
F1      Skip level
F2      Test mode



Lady Bug
--------

Arrows  Move around
F1      Skip level

Known issues:
- The noise generator is not emulated yet.


I do not see anywhere that MAME prohibits commercial use.  And (namco?) Pacman runs out of the box.....

So the OP could use this version of MAME?

Please tell.

[CheffoJeffo]

It does matter[/b][/i] and I would like Haze to reference those emulators that is using MAME code as his post suggests.  Also again I ask Haze where is the agreement from Namco Bandai saying that it allows the Mamedevs to promote namco copyrighted software to be used in MAME. 

I think the point is that the MAMEDevs don't promote this ... they've actually been pretty damned clear about it.

People ---smurfette--- about how changes to MAME make some games unplayable and how the MAMEDevs don't care enough about gameplay. I expect that the reason is that they aren't at all interested promoting MAME in that manner.

Check Youtube for Aaron's talk at a recent Cal Extreme.

[ark_ader]

It does matter[/b][/i] and I would like Haze to reference those emulators that is using MAME code as his post suggests.  Also again I ask Haze where is the agreement from Namco Bandai saying that it allows the Mamedevs to promote namco copyrighted software to be used in MAME.  

I think the point is that the MAMEDevs don't promote this ... they've actually been pretty damned clear about it.

People ---smurfette--- about how changes to MAME make some games unplayable and how the MAMEDevs don't care enough about gameplay. I expect that the reason is that they aren't at all interested promoting MAME in that manner.

Check Youtube for Aaron's talk at a recent Cal Extreme.

I agree completely, and I have seen Aaron's talk at CAX.  Cool stuff.

The point for the post above shows that in the past MAME was playing the games.  That issue really is past now and at last count MAME plays over 4000 games.  But there was no referendum with regards to games that were still available to purchase (saying that someone else would code it is not enough) and the recent dumps by Guru that duplicates are probably sitting in some arcade warehouse available to buy, doesn't cover the mandate given under the rulings of the DMCA.  

So when a person like the OP wants to put a Mspacman in his pizza shack, his options is to go to Ultracade, an arcade operator or Ebay.  But with MAME on the scene the OP can divert from buying from legitimate places and get it for free.  The Mame license should restrict anyone from playing the roms, as they have no permission to do so by the copyright holders (exemptions permitting).  Namco Bandai sells MsPacman/Galaga units.  Mame should not be able to play MsPacman or Galaga.

Right?

[SavannahLion]

Secondly , I was ASKING about the legality of using ROMs on software that doesnt have a license restriction. I, for example, have both KI1 and KI2 PCBs that no longer work. They are not back ups or bootlegs, they are the real deal PCBs that are beyond my repair ability (a lot of surface mount stuff). So I was just askin, if I had a PC inside a KI cab, right next to the KI PCB/HD and ran KI for the purpose of having it in a bar and I got all the valid permits and ran it on software that doest have a commercial restriction, would that be "legal"

In a nutshell. No. The issue goes back to the copyright on the ROM in question. With copyrights in place for 70 to 120 years or so, you'll likely run into legal issues if someone cares enough to go after you. Mind you, I'm not debating the technical aspects of it. If you're actually, physically using the KI HDD with the PC and not just sitting in the cab as you imply, then that might be possible. One would have to do further research into it.

[CheffoJeffo]

So when a person like the OP wants to put a Mspacman in his pizza shack, his options is to go to Ultracade, an arcade operator or Ebay.  But with MAME on the scene the OP can divert from buying from legitimate places and get it for free.  The Mame license should restrict anyone from playing the roms, as they have no permission to do so by the copyright holders (exemptions permitting).  Namco Bandai sells MsPacman/Galaga units.  Mame should not be able to play MsPacman or Galaga.

I see your point now.

While MAMEDevs have been good in not trying to emulate current games while they are earning money for the makers and distributors, I haven't seen discussion about games that are already in MAME and then rereleased.

OTOH, the barn door is already open on this and you are missing what is, by far, the most commonly used option for a situation like this -- the xx-in-1. It is used on route far more often than conventional MAME (I say conventional since the emulation is a direct ripoff of MAME). It's illegal and in violation of the MAME license, but it is everywhere and is the cheapest and easiest alternative.

[Haze]

It does matter[/b][/i] and I would like Haze to reference those emulators that is using MAME code as his post suggests.  Also again I ask Haze where is the agreement from Namco Bandai saying that it allows the Mamedevs to promote namco copyrighted software to be used in MAME.  

I think the point is that the MAMEDevs don't promote this ... they've actually been pretty damned clear about it.

People ---smurfette--- about how changes to MAME make some games unplayable and how the MAMEDevs don't care enough about gameplay. I expect that the reason is that they aren't at all interested promoting MAME in that manner.

Check Youtube for Aaron's talk at a recent Cal Extreme.

Agreed, no promotion is going on at all.  If you look at the recent documentation that is provided with MAME you'll see this is being made perfectly clear, the examples used are all games which have been made freely available.

MAME does what it does, it's a piece of software, which if provided with the appropriate game software will attempt to emulate the hardware required for that software to run.  Promotion would be saying 'replace all your Pacman cabinets with MAME because it's better'  If anything the opposite is done, you'll find the majority of developers promoting the restoration of the original hardware, and going out their way to help people who have issues with the hardware, often using what was discovered when emulating the games as a reference.

FWIW most games aren't protected at all, and most MAME development isn't even done in the US.  Existing court cases, such as the case Sony had against various PSX emulators have always ruled in favour of emulation being legal.  MAME contains no material which could be considered under copyright of anybody except the development team, it simply knows what to do with the game software if provided.

Anyway, this is separate from the issue being discussed which was simply 'Why can't MAME be used in a commercial setting' for which the answer is simply because the license that comes with MAME states that you can't.  If you believe a significantly older version does not have such a clause then maybe (pending verification with the author who holds the copyright on it) such a version could be used but all recent distributions have an explicit license agreement which states they can't be used for commercial purposes.  

So when a person like the OP wants to put a Mspacman in his pizza shack, his options is to go to Ultracade, an arcade operator or Ebay.  But with MAME on the scene the OP can divert from buying from legitimate places and get it for free.  The Mame license should restrict anyone from playing the roms, as they have no permission to do so by the copyright holders (exemptions permitting).  Namco Bandai sells MsPacman/Galaga units.  Mame should not be able to play MsPacman or Galaga.

If they want a legal option to operate MSPacman on location the only options they have is finding an official MSPacman board on ebay (not a bootleg) or one of the newer models.  Ultracade I can't recommend at all due to the ongoing legal issues.  MAME they definitely can't run if they want to operate it legally regardless of any permissions from Namco because the MAME license states as much, so no, the OP can't revert to getting it for free if they want to operate it legally, and if they don't care about the legality of it they have plenty of other options.  (Chinese xx-in-1 bootleg boards, FGPA based boards, MAME, Ultracade etc.)  This doesn't make MAME illegal, but the use of it in such a situation would be.  It's like a knife, you can use it for cutting meat, or you can stab somebody with it.  The other options like the xx-in-1 (and depending on the outcome of the court case Ultracade ) would definitely be illegal from the start as they're actively distributing and promoting the units as coming with games, and distributing the games without permission.  MAME isn't doing this.

The primary goal of the project, is, as it's always been, to figure out how things work and document them in the form of source code which can reproduce the behavior of the original hardware to a high degree of accuracy.  The license and trademark restrictions applied help reaffirm this goal.  If you want to operate a machine commercially then by all means use the information in MAME to restore the original hardware, or, if there are reissues of the games available on different hardware, buy and operate those.  Also if you want to be absolutely sure that you're running legal original software, MAME recognizes a good number of known bootlegs, so if your 'original' hardware is identified as a bootleg you might want to reconsider the legality of it and not operate it on location.  MAME isn't promoting or encouraging any other use and when used properly can be a very useful tool with many legitimate uses.

[ark_ader]

It does matter[/b][/i] and I would like Haze to reference those emulators that is using MAME code as his post suggests.  Also again I ask Haze where is the agreement from Namco Bandai saying that it allows the Mamedevs to promote namco copyrighted software to be used in MAME.  

I think the point is that the MAMEDevs don't promote this ... they've actually been pretty damned clear about it.

People ---smurfette--- about how changes to MAME make some games unplayable and how the MAMEDevs don't care enough about gameplay. I expect that the reason is that they aren't at all interested promoting MAME in that manner.

Check Youtube for Aaron's talk at a recent Cal Extreme.

Agreed, no promotion is going on at all.  If you look at the recent documentation that is provided with MAME you'll see this is being made perfectly clear, the examples used are all games which have been made freely available.

MAME does what it does, it's a piece of software, which if provided with the appropriate game software will attempt to emulate the hardware required for that software to run.  Promotion would be saying 'replace all your Pacman cabinets with MAME because it's better'  If anything the opposite is done, you'll find the majority of developers promoting the restoration of the original hardware, and going out their way to help people who have issues with the hardware, often using what was discovered when emulating the games as a reference.

FWIW most games aren't protected at all, and most MAME development isn't even done in the US.  Existing court cases, such as the case Sony had against various PSX emulators have always ruled in favour of emulation being legal.  MAME contains no material which could be considered under copyright of anybody except the development team, it simply knows what to do with the game software if provided.

Anyway, this is separate from the issue being discussed which was simply 'Why can't MAME be used in a commercial setting' for which the answer is simply because the license that comes with MAME states that you can't.  If you believe a significantly older version does not have such a clause then maybe (pending verification with the author who holds the copyright on it) such a version could be used but all recent distributions have an explicit license agreement which states they can't be used for commercial purposes.  

You have not answered any of my questions put to you, have you?

Looks like you are ducking the issue on those replies.  I'm interested in the Namco Bandai question. 

[Haze]

It does matter[/b][/i] and I would like Haze to reference those emulators that is using MAME code as his post suggests.  Also again I ask Haze where is the agreement from Namco Bandai saying that it allows the Mamedevs to promote namco copyrighted software to be used in MAME.  

I think the point is that the MAMEDevs don't promote this ... they've actually been pretty damned clear about it.

People ---smurfette--- about how changes to MAME make some games unplayable and how the MAMEDevs don't care enough about gameplay. I expect that the reason is that they aren't at all interested promoting MAME in that manner.

Check Youtube for Aaron's talk at a recent Cal Extreme.

Agreed, no promotion is going on at all.  If you look at the recent documentation that is provided with MAME you'll see this is being made perfectly clear, the examples used are all games which have been made freely available.

MAME does what it does, it's a piece of software, which if provided with the appropriate game software will attempt to emulate the hardware required for that software to run.  Promotion would be saying 'replace all your Pacman cabinets with MAME because it's better'  If anything the opposite is done, you'll find the majority of developers promoting the restoration of the original hardware, and going out their way to help people who have issues with the hardware, often using what was discovered when emulating the games as a reference.

FWIW most games aren't protected at all, and most MAME development isn't even done in the US.  Existing court cases, such as the case Sony had against various PSX emulators have always ruled in favour of emulation being legal.  MAME contains no material which could be considered under copyright of anybody except the development team, it simply knows what to do with the game software if provided.

Anyway, this is separate from the issue being discussed which was simply 'Why can't MAME be used in a commercial setting' for which the answer is simply because the license that comes with MAME states that you can't.  If you believe a significantly older version does not have such a clause then maybe (pending verification with the author who holds the copyright on it) such a version could be used but all recent distributions have an explicit license agreement which states they can't be used for commercial purposes. 

You have not answered any of my questions put to you, have you?

I don't care to, they have no sound backing at all.

[ark_ader]

Thank you for that.  

And thanks for updating your previous post to reflect your change of heart.  So with that change you fail to mention game operators who have MsPacman units available for purchase.  Does the Mame program deny Namco Bandai revenue for these machines, purely because you cannot use MAME in a commercial venture or does it promote it due to exposure?  It looks that way doesn't it?

I'll ask Haze a simple straight forward question and call it a day:

Breaking encryption in games that MAME supports (like CPS2) from various Mamedevs - Does that give you license to perform these actions purely based on preservation of arcade games, and if so, where does MAME sit on the legality of such actions, with regard to the DMCA rulings?

[CheffoJeffo]

If they want a legal option to operate MSPacman on location the only options they have is finding an official MSPacman board on ebay (not a bootleg) or one of the newer models.  Ultracade I can't recommend at all due to the ongoing legal issues.  MAME they definitely can't run if they want to operate it legally regardless of any permissions from Namco because the MAME license states as much, so no, the OP can't revert to getting it for free if they want to operate it legally, and if they don't care about the legality of it they have plenty of other options.  (Chinese xx-in-1 bootleg boards, FGPA based boards, MAME, Ultracade etc.)  This doesn't make MAME illegal, but the use of it in such a situation would be.  It's like a knife, you can use it for cutting meat, or you can stab somebody with it.  The other options like the xx-in-1 (and depending on the outcome of the court case Ultracade ) would definitely be illegal from the start as they're actively distributing and promoting the units as coming with games, and distributing the games without permission.  MAME isn't doing this.

An excellent summary

The primary goal of the project, is, as it's always been, to figure out how things work and document them in the form of source code which can reproduce the behavior of the original hardware to a high degree of accuracy.  The license and trademark restrictions applied help reaffirm this goal.  If you want to operate a machine commercially then by all means use the information in MAME to restore the original hardware, or, if there are reissues of the games available on different hardware, buy and operate those.  MAME isn't promoting or encouraging any other use.

And, a worthy goal that is more beneficial to some of us "purists" than we often admit. I know that I have benefited from the work done by MAMEDevs in fixing broken boardsets and am using MAME to figure out how some boardsets work while trying to figure out what is wrong with them (haven't succeeded yet, but I am learning).

 

[versapak]

ark_ader:

Your argument is that because MAME gives people the ability to play games illegally (without permission of copyright holder) that they have no standing to say how MAME itself is used?

Are manufacturers of CD/DVD burners responsible for piracy that takes place with their product?

What about hard drive manufacturers? MP3 players?


Okay that is all hardware...

What about Windows Media Player? I can watch pirated movies and music to my hearts content with that software.

Does MS have no rightful claim in how that software is used because of that?


Maybe I just have your argument wrong, but it seems you are just arguing a point that is pointless.

[saint]

Probably a good time to repost this link

http://arcadecontrols.com/BYOAC-and-MAME.shtml

[Haze]

Thank you for that.  

And thanks for updating your previous post to reflect your change of heart.  So with that change you fail to mention game operators who have MsPacman units available for purchase.  Does the Mame program deny Namco Bandai revenue for these machines, purely because you cannot use MAME in a commercial venture or does it promote it due to exposure?  It looks that way doesn't it?

This doesn't make sense, so if this isn't the answer you're expecting then I don't know what you want to hear?  Once the game unit has been sold by Namco in the first place, they earn no more money from it.  Namco may earn money from further direct sales of the units.  If people want further units they must buy them from an operator selling them used, or Namco / a Namco partner.  Those are their legal options.  MAME doesn't even come into this, because MAME can't be used as a direct replacement.  If said operator doesn't care about the law they have plenty of options other than MAME.  The only revenue MAME is denying is that of people trying to sell it as a replacement for the real thing due to perodic crackdowns on people selling such machines on eBay etc.

The number of bootleg MsPacman PCBs far outweighs the number of illegal commercial MAME cabs, and probably even original MsPacman PCBs anyway.  If anything MAME can help an operator identify their MsPacman as a bootleg, and therefore may encourage them to replace it with an original, again, it's a useful tool.

I'll ask Haze a simple straight forward question and call it a day:

Breaking encryption in games that MAME supports (like CPS2) from various Mamedevs - Does that give you license to perform these actions purely based on preservation of arcade games, and if so, where does MAME sit on the legality of such actions, with regard to the DMCA rulings?

CPS2 encryption was worked on by devs in Finland, Spain and Italy.  The DMCA doesn't apply and wasn't even a consideration for those working on it.  MAME documents what is required for interoperability with the original software, and to use it you must still have the original software which isn't supplied with MAME.

[ark_ader]

ark_ader:

Your argument is that because MAME gives people the ability to play games illegally (without permission of copyright holder) that they have no standing to say how MAME itself is used?

Are manufacturers of CD/DVD burners responsible for piracy that takes place with their product?

What about hard drive manufacturers? MP3 players?


Okay that is all hardware...



What about Windows Media Player? I can watch pirated movies and music to my hearts content with that software.

Does MS have no rightful claim in how that software is used because of that?


Maybe I just have your argument wrong, but it seems you are just arguing a point that is pointless.

No its a very good point you are making and off topic but I will respond to it.

Mame is software that reproduces the same hardware found in old arcade machines - which preserves the game software from becoming lost.  Thus if a company wishes to release their software roms (Exidy for example) users can play the games as intended as a nice side effect. 

Manufacturers of CD/DVD/BR/Cassette/4 Track etc make products to record media on.  Primarily YOUR MEDIA THAT YOU CREATE, not somebody else's.  Data backup, images large file sizes of personall data included.

Mp3s - for online music from a distribution outlet like iTunes or YOUR OWN MEDIA THAT YOU CREATE.

What you do with this media is up to you and you alone.  Nobody makes these decisions for you.  You are responsible for your actions.

So your post is incredibly important as it demonstrates that we have the capacity to copy anything, but we also have the ability to choose if we want to or not. Or if we should or not.  Mamedevs always had the option to either allow game roms to function or not.

Incidentally Daphne now requests that you provide a purchased version of Dragon's Lair DVD before it allows you to download a better/working copy for it's emulator.  Something I bet is beneficial to Digital Leisure.  Kudos to them.

Mame is nothing but a normal (yet interesting) program without the ROMS.  Nobody forces you to get all the ROMS.

Films the same argument - nobody forces you to watch pirated movies.  You can buy them when they come out on DVD.

Very important observation! 

[jcterzin]

can't we all just get along and RESPECT MAME DEV wishes and not USE the program for commercial.
If you want to do such a thing, make your own program and get the rights for the ROM/GAMES so you can make money from it (just lke D.F.)

That is the aim im going for at this point. After all of these posts, I'm planning on respecting the wishes of the MAMEdev's. I do have a couple of friends that are interested in helping me write our own emulation code to play these roms (yes, I will get legal ones and permission). We plan on trying to work from the ground up but if the code they use (I imagine it will be in C programming language) is kinda like the mame one due to the fact that they both use the same code language... where does that stand? It would be nice if we could re-write RAINE a bit to get the roms to work, but its my programmer friends not I that know how to program.

And if anyone cares to help make an emulator that you can use for commercial, Im sure they wouldn't mind the help.

[ark_ader]

CPS2 encryption was worked on by devs in Finland, Spain and Italy.  The DMCA doesn't apply and wasn't even a consideration for those working on it.  MAME documents what is required for interoperability with the original software, and to use it you must still have the original software which isn't supplied with MAME.

For you information:

Italy

http://www.wipo.int/clea/en/text_html.jsp?lang=en&id=2475

Finland

http://www.wipo.int/clea/en/details.jsp?id=1512

Spain

http://www.wipo.int/clea/en/details.jsp?id=1373

Everybody and his brother

http://www.wipo.int/directory/en/urls.jsp

Be nice if you sticky this please Saint.

[CheffoJeffo]

This is somewhat offtopic, but I would like to mention and thank the folks who own old arcade IP that have been good about releasing to the public domain and/or reasonable in licensing. The example that comes foremost to my mind is Mean Hamster Software who bought the rights to Exidy's games and have released a bunch of them for free personal use in MAME, as well as licensing some others for use in multi-game kits, in particular the upcoming Exidy 440 Multikit, which includes 10 of Exidy's fantastic shooters (can you tell that I am eager to get mine!).

Now, can we get back to talking the OP out of destroying working classics ? 

[Haze]

What you do with this media is up to you and you alone.  Nobody makes these decisions for you.  You are responsible for your actions.

So your post is incredibly important as it demonstrates that we have the capacity to copy anything, but we also have the ability to choose if we want to or not. Or if we should or not.  Mamedevs always had the option to either allow game roms to function or not.

Unless there is a specific request not to emulate something then this isn't really a choice for Mamedev to make, it's one the user must make.

The development team just work to the best of their ability to document and understand things.  What you get is the collective knowledge of the developers in the form of a single source package, nothing more, nothing less.

The license agreement with Windows has various clauses too, such as it can't be used in mission critical setting IIRC (nuclear plants etc.) so Windows Media Player would be bound by those conditions in the same way that MAME is bound by a non-commercial use only clause.

MP3 players / WMP isn't going to start blacklisting MP3s just because they have some known warez group tag in them even, nor are they going to force the use of DRM protected music any time soon.  The responsibility for this is in the hands of the user, who must ensure that they use the product in a way which complies with the Windows license agreement as well as copies of the media they've legally made, or purchased themselves for use with it.  This is just the same as with MAME where the user has to ensure they use the program within the terms of both the MAME license, and for software which they own / have the right to use in the emulator.

There are significant non-infringing uses for both pieces of software, which many users here can tell you about, and that is often an important factor in any legal case.

MAME is even very often used by the manufacturers of the original games or licensed 3rd parties as a reference when doing new ports etc. and the development team maintain a good relationship with the games industry with many of them, including myself, being employed within it.  The majority of people I've encountered have a great deal of respect for the software, and can see why having their own classics available at the touch of a button is of a huge benefit, even if they can't officially legaly endorse it by releasing their games.

[J.Max]

CPS2 encryption was worked on by devs in Finland, Spain and Italy.  The DMCA doesn't apply and wasn't even a consideration for those working on it.  MAME documents what is required for interoperability with the original software, and to use it you must still have the original software which isn't supplied with MAME.

For you information:

Italy

http://www.wipo.int/clea/en/text_html.jsp?lang=en&id=2475

Finland

http://www.wipo.int/clea/en/details.jsp?id=1512

Spain

http://www.wipo.int/clea/en/details.jsp?id=1373

Everybody and his brother

http://www.wipo.int/directory/en/urls.jsp

Be nice if you sticky this please Saint.

These are copyright offices and copyright laws.  No copyright law in the world is broken by MAME because it doesn't contain any proprietary code - that's in the ROMs.  We've established this.  Do you have any legal training?  Or are you trolling?

[ark_ader]

I said I wasn't going to respond in this thread after Haze, but after that gem of a response about Finland, Spain and Italy. 

I'm not trolling.  I said that to myself earlier today with regards to some responses in this thread: looks like you are trolling.

Legal training? Some.  Enough to ask the right questions.  The problem is I do not get the right answers. Ducking and diving is what I get.

J Max please please please reference your comments.

"No copyright law in the world is broken by MAME because it doesn't contain any proprietary code - that's in the ROMs."   

[Ginsu Victim]

I do have a couple of friends that are interested in helping me write our own emulation code to play these roms (yes, I will get legal ones and permission).

Legal roms (for Pac-man and Centipede) and permission? Yeah.....good luck with that.

Again, check your local tax codes. You probably can't do it legally anyway.

[Haze]

I said I wasn't going to respond in this thread after Haze, but after that gem of a response about Finland, Spain and Italy.  

Well my point is that if you have issues with the individual developers, you'll have to take it up with them.  Nobody else can answer for you, and throwing around only US laws for an international project driven by individual developers makes no sense at all.

I'm not trolling.  I said that to myself earlier today with regards to some responses in this thread: looks like you are trolling.

Legal training? Some.  Enough to ask the right questions.  The problem is I do not get the right answers. Ducking and diving is what I get.

J Max please please please reference your comments.

"No copyright law in the world is broken by MAME because it doesn't contain any proprietary code - that's in the ROMs."  

If you believe otherwise, please start a legal challenge against the team because it seems that you're as guilty as ducking and diving as anybody else.   legal@mamedev.org or similar should do the trick IIRC.

Nobody has taken action so far, and I don't believe anybody thinks it would be in their best interests to.  History has always fallen on the side of the emulation developers.  You're starting to sound as spineless as Foley and his associates who seemed to want to do their best to discredit MAME and have it declared illegal without actually putting any action behind their words other than trying to trademark something that wasn't his and then getting caught up in a nice little legal battle of his own.  The project is 11 years old, and so far hasn't faced a single legal challenge, but the way you're speaking makes it sound like you think everybody involved should be sued into oblivion, the project killed stone dead, and that the industry as a whole would see a great benefit from that.  I don't think anybody else agrees with you?

[ark_ader]

I said I wasn't going to respond in this thread after Haze, but after that gem of a response about Finland, Spain and Italy.  

Well my point is that if you have issues with the individual developers, you'll have to take it up with them.  Nobody else can answer for you, and throwing around only US laws for an international project driven by individual developers makes no sense at all.

I'm not trolling.  I said that to myself earlier today with regards to some responses in this thread: looks like you are trolling.

Legal training? Some.  Enough to ask the right questions.  The problem is I do not get the right answers. Ducking and diving is what I get.

J Max please please please reference your comments.

"No copyright law in the world is broken by MAME because it doesn't contain any proprietary code - that's in the ROMs."  

If you believe otherwise, please start a legal challenge against the team.  Nobody has so far, and I don't believe anybody thinks it would be in their best interests to.  History has always fallen on the side of the emulation developers.  You're starting to sound as spineless as Foley and his associates.

 

I like you Haze you make me laugh.

[Haze]

I said I wasn't going to respond in this thread after Haze, but after that gem of a response about Finland, Spain and Italy.  

Well my point is that if you have issues with the individual developers, you'll have to take it up with them.  Nobody else can answer for you, and throwing around only US laws for an international project driven by individual developers makes no sense at all.

I'm not trolling.  I said that to myself earlier today with regards to some responses in this thread: looks like you are trolling.

Legal training? Some.  Enough to ask the right questions.  The problem is I do not get the right answers. Ducking and diving is what I get.

J Max please please please reference your comments.

"No copyright law in the world is broken by MAME because it doesn't contain any proprietary code - that's in the ROMs."  

If you believe otherwise, please start a legal challenge against the team.  Nobody has so far, and I don't believe anybody thinks it would be in their best interests to.  History has always fallen on the side of the emulation developers.  You're starting to sound as spineless as Foley and his associates.

 

I like you Haze you make me laugh.

That's ok, you're the one who seems to think you have something to prove here, and the only way you're going to do that is by actually invoking some sort of legal action.  Everybody else is happy with things as they stand.

The world needs a destroyer of emulators..  I know I was given that title once when I finished off emulating everything Raine supported in MAME*, but really, just think about it, you could destroy the entire MAME project in one single swoop if you win, you'd be famous, the REAL destroyed of emulators, you'd be some kind of savior to the games industry and the world would shower you in magical rainbows and star drops.

* and likewise for some of the changes I decided to make to MAME in the past.

[J.Max]

OK, I do have legal training (University of Arizona 1999), and lets look at some precedents:  (I should state that I am not a lawyer, as I have never taken the Bar exam because I decided on another career path.)

I should have clarified my statement about MAME - it DOES contain proprietary code, but not proprietary code relevant to the ROM sets, only proprietary and owned by MAMEDev.

Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc Vs Connectix Coporation  - The courts ruled that as long as a BIOS encryption was reverse-engineered and not simply copied and stolen, it was legal.  This should cover your assertions about the legality of the CPS2 encryption, and more importantly, it was upheld on appeal AFTER the DMCA went into effect.  (And is therefore a different situation than Sega vs Accolade.)  From the ruling:

"Some works are closer to the core of intended copyright protection than others. Sony's BIOS lay at a distance from the core because it contains unprotected aspects that cannot be examined without copying. The court of appeal therefore accorded it a lower degree of protection than more traditional literary works."

http://web.archive.org/web/20070228070634/http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/ca9/newopinions.nsf/0/66b3a352ea33712988256952007578c2?OpenDocument


Sega vs Accolade - Accolade lost this case, but the court upheld that disassembly of code is permitted under the fair use rule if the primary reason is to get to the parts of the code that are not copyrighted.  Again, this goes to your assertion about the CPS2 code.  In addition, this goes to why MAME can't be used for commercial purposes and why that is written into the license.  (Accolade lost the case because their primary reason for doing so was to circumvent the copy protection for profit.  This is also how MAME can be work as a non-profit entity, and why you can't sell it.)

http://digital-law-online.info/cases/24PQ2D1561.htm


Here's another nice article (from the U of Iowa law journal) which explains things a bit further:

http://www.uiowa.edu/~cyberlaw/cls01/yi3.html

They accepted Connectix's defense, which entailed the following use of the Fair Use doctrine:

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include--

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

You can find the references at the article's site.


All of this boils down to: emulators are legal because they are protected by reverse engineering laws and laws governing the use of commercial copyrights.  That's also the reason why they put "non-commercial" use clauses in the license, because "for profit" opens them up to a HUGE amount of civil lawsuits.

[ark_ader]

Seriously all I wanted to know was about the commercial side of things, and I got carried away. 

I cannot afford any legal challenge, as it is not my fight I have no vested interest and as you say nobody has even bothered.

I thought you were being cute with the international side of things, but I have seen the effects of mass emulation and it does effect software houses and benefits them too.

Perhaps I should be more mindful of the bigger issue and to learn when to quit.

[J.Max]

I said I wasn't going to respond in this thread after Haze, but after that gem of a response about Finland, Spain and Italy.  

Well my point is that if you have issues with the individual developers, you'll have to take it up with them.  Nobody else can answer for you, and throwing around only US laws for an international project driven by individual developers makes no sense at all.

I'm not trolling.  I said that to myself earlier today with regards to some responses in this thread: looks like you are trolling.

Legal training? Some.  Enough to ask the right questions.  The problem is I do not get the right answers. Ducking and diving is what I get.

J Max please please please reference your comments.

"No copyright law in the world is broken by MAME because it doesn't contain any proprietary code - that's in the ROMs."  

If you believe otherwise, please start a legal challenge against the team.  Nobody has so far, and I don't believe anybody thinks it would be in their best interests to.  History has always fallen on the side of the emulation developers.  You're starting to sound as spineless as Foley and his associates.

 

I like you Haze you make me laugh.

That's ok, you're the one who seems to think you have something to prove here, and the only way you're going to do that is by actually invoking some sort of legal action.  Everybody else is happy with things as they stand.

The world needs a destroyer of emulators..  I know I was given that title once when I finished off emulating everything Raine supported in MAME*, but really, just think about it, you could destroy the entire MAME project in one single swoop if you win, you'd be famous, the REAL destroyed of emulators, you'd be some kind of savior to the games industry and the world would shower you in magical rainbows and star drops.

* and likewise for some of the changes I decided to make to MAME in the past.

Nah, he has no legal interest in doing so.  It would be dismissed immediately.  You can't just sue to sue.

[Haze]

Seriously all I wanted to know was about the commercial side of things, and I got carried away.  

I cannot afford any legal challenge, as it is not my fight I have no vested interest and as you say nobody has even bothered.

I thought you were being cute with the international side of things, but I have seen the effects of mass emulation and it does effect software houses and benefits them too.

Perhaps I should be more mindful of the bigger issue and to learn when to quit.

I think that would help, because there is always a bigger picture.  In terms of industry development the games that MAME emulate are part of our heritage and always a valuable reference and without emulators a lot of the games that are out today wouldn't be the same games they are.  With emulators people can see the mistakes made in former games, or revisit old ideas bringing them to a modern stage.  Without emulators those games and ideas can be lost and forgotten, and yes, that even includes things released on platforms such as CPS2.

From a hardware point of view I've already given several examples of where MAME helps people with original hardware.

There is no clear cut 'MAME is doing wrong' legal argument to be had anywhere and sales of classic games on XBLA etc. are still good, despite emulators being available.  Without existing emulators those ports / emulators would have been more expensive to develop, and the continued interest in retrogaming has kept the titles popular enough to still sell rather than being forgotten and falling into obscurity.

Look at sometihng like Shenmue on the Dreamcast, they included some retro titles in their ingame arcade.  I have it on good authority (but from a confidential source) that the reason they couldn't include some of their games was because those games weren't emulated, so they had no reference to how their protection devices worked, and because their roms were encrypted simply couldn't run them.  These days that wouldn't be a problem because the Sega hardware (and associated protection) is now emulated properly and because of that they would be able to pick up a copy of MAME, see the game running, and figure out the relevant parts from the source.  This would not only saving them time and money, but actually make what they wanted to do possible.

If you take the view that MAME is simply a program that allows you to pirate arcade games then it's easy to try building up an argument like the one you have, but really, despite a lot of people using MAME in that way it's a much bigger project with a much more important role in the history of arcade hardware, and the games that ran on it.

[Haze]

Nah, he has no legal interest in doing so.  It would be dismissed immediately.  You can't just sue to sue.

he could attempt to stir up some interest in doing so if he really wanted, much as people did with Ultracade once it was revealed that some of their stuff wasn't licensed.  For all I know he could have been trolling on behalf of a company anyway.

[Blanka]

The license says that you can't use MAME in a commercial way, and by downloading / using MAME you are agreeing to this license

Guess that is a EULA. And as far as I know, nobody has ever been sued with succes over violating a EULA in Europe. Just because judges work on reasonability, and reading a EULA is definitely not a common thing to do.

[J.Max]

The license says that you can't use MAME in a commercial way, and by downloading / using MAME you are agreeing to this license

Guess that is a EULA. And as far as I know, nobody has ever been sued with succes over violating a EULA in Europe. Just because judges work on reasonability, and reading a EULA is definitely not a common thing to do.

It's really, really complicated in the US, but the GNU Public License has been enforced in court many, many times in the US and Europe.

MySQL AB v. Progress NuSphere (2002, US)

netfilters/iptables v. Sitecom Germany (2004, this was in Germany)

gpl-violations.org vs. D-Link (2005, also in Germany)

Free Software Foundation v Cisco Inc (2007, US)

[Haze]

The license says that you can't use MAME in a commercial way, and by downloading / using MAME you are agreeing to this license

Guess that is a EULA. And as far as I know, nobody has ever been sued with succes over violating a EULA in Europe. Just because judges work on reasonability, and reading a EULA is definitely not a common thing to do.

It's really, really complicated in the US, but the GNU Public License has been enforced in court many, many times in the US and Europe.

MySQL AB v. Progress NuSphere (2002, US)

netfilters/iptables v. Sitecom Germany (2004, this was in Germany)

gpl-violations.org vs. D-Link (2005, also in Germany)

Free Software Foundation v Cisco Inc (2007, US)

Yeah, the MAME license is derived from the BSD license, but with a non-commercial clause.  It should be on sound legal ground.

[J.Max]

The license says that you can't use MAME in a commercial way, and by downloading / using MAME you are agreeing to this license

Guess that is a EULA. And as far as I know, nobody has ever been sued with succes over violating a EULA in Europe. Just because judges work on reasonability, and reading a EULA is definitely not a common thing to do.

It's really, really complicated in the US, but the GNU Public License has been enforced in court many, many times in the US and Europe.

MySQL AB v. Progress NuSphere (2002, US)

netfilters/iptables v. Sitecom Germany (2004, this was in Germany)

gpl-violations.org vs. D-Link (2005, also in Germany)

Free Software Foundation v Cisco Inc (2007, US)

Yeah, the MAME license is derived from the BSD license, but with a non-commercial clause.  It should be on sound legal ground.

Plenty strong.  What I can't grasp is why people think that MAMEDev hasn't done their homework in regards to the law.  It is a very large project, it's been going on for 15 years, and it's already been through one legal challenge.  MAME is a far cry from being one guy coding in his basement or something...and even the ones that are one guy in a garage know to use a software license.

[ark_ader]

Nah, he has no legal interest in doing so.  It would be dismissed immediately.  You can't just sue to sue.

he could attempt to stir up some interest in doing so if he really wanted, much as people did with Ultracade once it was revealed that some of their stuff wasn't licensed.  For all I know he could have been trolling on behalf of a company anyway.

That was not my intention I am researching for my college assignment.

Associating me with Foley was a bit much.  I thought you were losing it there.   

The assignment is based on reverse software engineering and its commercial impacts.

I was asking probing questions and collecting information. 

Sometimes being combative assists research, thus my persistant tone.  I was lucky I got an Ex Mame Dev Cor-ordinator and I zeroed in. 

Aaron does not respond to my emails.

Very close to what Haze was suggesting though.

It did not occur to me to contact Haze directly.

Lesson learned.

[Haze]

Nah, he has no legal interest in doing so.  It would be dismissed immediately.  You can't just sue to sue.

he could attempt to stir up some interest in doing so if he really wanted, much as people did with Ultracade once it was revealed that some of their stuff wasn't licensed.  For all I know he could have been trolling on behalf of a company anyway.

That was not my intention I am researching for my college assignment.

Associating me with Foley was a bit much.  I thought you were losing it there.  

The assignment is based on reverse software engineering and its commercial impacts.

I was asking probing questions and collecting information.  

Sometimes being combative assists research, thus my persistant tone.  I was lucky I got an Ex Mame Dev Cor-ordinator and I zeroed in.  

Aaron does not respond to my emails.

Aaron.. yeah, he often doesn't respond.  I still think he's a pretty useless co-ordinator as he won't put his foot down on issues and prefers to take the easy route out when problems arise, but that's just my opinion.  Nobody seems to want to cross him for the risk of getting kicked off the team, as I was in the end.  Good luck with your project, as with any it's important to look at all sides, and dig deeper than your initial thoughts and opinions.

I still contribute to the project because I think it's a worthwhile cause, and will eventually be valued by all, even if I have issues with the people involed right now.  Once MESS get their s**t sorted out (which is happening) I think that can play the same role for Consoles and to a lesser degree (because it's a significantly harder task) Computers.

[FrizzleFried]

...alright Ark Foley... what's your endgame?

[jcterzin]

man, forget I asked! I feel like fists are about to be thrown. I'm not trying to step on toes, I just want to let people play arcade games!

...alright Ark Foley... what's your endgame?

straight from the mouth of Jack Bauer, yes?

[Ginsu Victim]

When I first asked about the tax sticker, that's all I did. ASKED. I said in that post that I didn't know how that worked. I was looking to be enlightened on the topic.

[J.Max]

Nobody has sued us over it != it's legal


But considering the complete lack of response from the copyright holders, I doubt they care.  Not being able to get a tax sticker because your cabinet has a computer in it?  Are you kidding me?  Some of the responses on this thread have been hilarious.

That's why Nintendo sues everyone and everything...if you don't enforce a copyright, it becomes null and void after a certain period of time, regardless of the original copyright date.

Yes, some of the responses are pretty odd, to say the least...

[CheffoJeffo]

Well, my point about the tax sticker is that he is far more likely to get caught without a tax sticker than he is having an illegal game (there are no MAME police, but there sure are tax enforcement folks!). I see 48-in-1 and 60-in-1 cabinets on route with tax stickers all the time, so I don't expect getting one to be too much of a problem. If he doesn't care about the tax sticker, why the hell would he care about using MAME ?

EDIT: It occurred to me that I should mention that there was a shipment of cocktail cabinets, presumably with xx-in-1 boards, seized by US Customs agents some months ago. Not particularly germane to the discussion at hand, but apparently, there are some folks watching. I don't know whatever happened to those cabinets -- anybody know ?

And why are you all missing the really disturbing part of this -- dude wants to butcher working classics !

WTF is wrong with you people ?

 

[Ginsu Victim]

Well, my point about the tax sticker is that he is far more likely to get caught without a tax sticker than he is having an illegal game (there are no MAME police, but there sure are tax enforcement folks!). I see 48-in-1 and 60-in-1 cabinets on route with tax stickers all the time, so I don't expect getting one to be too much of a problem. If he doesn't care about the tax sticker, why the hell would he care about using MAME ?

And why are you all missing the really disturbing part of this -- dude wants to butcher working classics !

WTF is wrong with you people ?

 

QFT.

[CheffoJeffo]

man, forget I asked! I feel like fists are about to be thrown. I'm not trying to step on toes, I just want to let people play arcade games!

It happens every time the issue is raised -- everybody feels like they know more than anybody else. You get the folks who shout "EMULATION IS LEGAL" at the top of their lungs, but are silent on the matter of the 5600 ROMs that they are using without license. Then you get the "Nintendo sues everybody" folks who don't realize that Nintendo doesn't actually sue everybody (and, in some cases, doesn't even hold the right to). Throw in the "Stop disrepecting the MAMEDevs" folks and some guacamole and you have a nice little fiesta.

The simple truth of the matter is that, other than BYOACer PatentDoc, I haven't seen a post on this subject from anybody with any bonafide credentials.

And I don't really care ... everybody has their own personal level of comfort with where they draw the line.

I have games that aren't licensed (SYSFPGA MultiWilliams, 48-in-1, 60-in-1) and are in violation of the MAME license (48-in-1 and a 60-in-1). I have repro artwork that I know isn't licensed.

But, I really do care about classic arcade cabinets, particularly working classic arcade cabinets. Please don't MAME a working classic.

Do what I suggested and trade for a suitable cabinet and use that for whichever multigame option you choose.

[Blanka]

It's really, really complicated in the US, but the GNU Public License has been enforced in court many, many times in the US and Europe.

MySQL AB v. Progress NuSphere (2002, US)

netfilters/iptables v. Sitecom Germany (2004, this was in Germany)

gpl-violations.org vs. D-Link (2005, also in Germany)

Free Software Foundation v Cisco Inc (2007, US)

That are no EULA cases, but copyright cases. Very, very different. Sueing a single user for violating an EULA is very obscure in law.

Nobody has sued us over it != it's legal

But it does not make the arbitrary "rules", some bunch of people choose to set up, very strong either. We're not signing contracts before using Mame. What if you make a license for your customers in a shop that says they don't get any warranty and no refunds? That does not make your license the one to judge against! If there is law over a license means the license is checked against state law or common sense. So far the MAME license has not been tested in real world, and might be nothing more than a way to keep away problems with game-producers.

The simple thing is, you and me, and thus the mame-team, can't say what is legal and what is not. They can tell that they want you to believe it is legal, but as long as there's no jurisprudence or government made law, it's worth nothing. Law is that simple.

But, I really do care about classic arcade cabinets, particularly working classic arcade cabinets. Please don't MAME a working classic.

[ark_ader]

man, forget I asked! I feel like fists are about to be thrown. I'm not trying to step on toes, I just want to let people play arcade games!

...alright Ark Foley... what's your endgame?

straight from the mouth of Jack Bauer, yes?

If anyone it would be me who was stepping on toes, but I have a motive.  

I think what drew me into this discussion was the title of the thread.  Using mame in a setup would not get you thrown in Jail.

Yet I am no closer to my original question regarding the Library of Congress, DMCA and encryption hacking.  

With the issue regarding Foley....well I'm not wanting to rub that lamp.  

BTW I found this thread rather amusing considering.....
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=99813.0

[J.Max]

man, forget I asked! I feel like fists are about to be thrown. I'm not trying to step on toes, I just want to let people play arcade games!

...alright Ark Foley... what's your endgame?

straight from the mouth of Jack Bauer, yes?

If anyone it would be me who was stepping on toes, but I have a motive.  

I think what drew me into this discussion was the title of the thread.  Using mame in a setup would not get you thrown in Jail.

Yet I am no closer to my original question regarding the Library of Congress, DMCA and encryption hacking.  

Not sure what isn't clear...I posted three cases that dealt with exactly that subject.

The Library of Congress rulings are not relevant.

[RayB]

I will reference Mr. Foley as he managed to get permission from the copyright owners to use his product.

http://web.archive.org/web/20060506022028/http://www.ultracade.com/about/11/corporate-profile

Can the MAME team show the same endorsement from Namco Bandai?

Dude, just quit now. The above is alleged to be fraudulent. Ultracade is the perfect example of what happens when you DON'T have licenses and go about making a name for yourself and profit off copyright and trademark infringement.

jeez louise. Im shocked everyone forgot about this.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24691

[RayB]

And the idea you can lose copyright by not enforcing it is bull. That is true of TRADEMARKS. Because otherwise companies would trademark all sorts of names and not use them, but "lock up" all the good names.

Ark, you're the guy who thought you could copyright a mechanical device, so why are you so vocal in this matter? How about you sit back and learn something.

[J.Max]

That's why Nintendo sues everyone and everything...

You MUST be joking.  People were selling Game Doctors in GamePro in the 90s.  The only DS flashcart they went after was the R4, years after the market had moved on.  You can still get them anywhere for less than $20.  There were mall kiosks all over the country selling XXX-in-1 joysticks with dozens of NES roms on them.  They haven't bothered to shut down the Donkey Kong 2 guy.  At any point in time, there's at least a dozen people selling XX-in-1 JAMMA boards on e-bay.

And on and on and on....

Nintendo was just the best example that I could think of at the time.  You're right about that, obviously...I just couldn't think of any other company suing (or even sending out C&Ds).  Maybe Incredible Technology is a better example?

[J.Max]

And the idea you can lose copyright by not enforcing it is bull. That is true of TRADEMARKS. Because otherwise companies would trademark all sorts of names and not use them, but "lock up" all the good names.

Ark, you're the guy who thought you could copyright a mechanical device, so why are you so vocal in this matter? How about you sit back and learn something.

Correct, strictly speaking.  I'm too tired to look up the names, but there have been some cases where a company went some time without enforcing a copyright, and the rights to said intellectual property were considered public domain.  I'll have to look them up, but if I remember correctly, they involved radio broadcasts from the 30s.  I'm pretty sure there's precedent on those, but it's been a long day...

[scept1c]

yeah, waiting games should be on free play imo

[Blanka]

And the idea you can lose copyright by not enforcing it is bull. That is true of TRADEMARKS.

That's not true for trademarks either. If you have a trademark, and not enforce it, but you pay the fee, your trademark stays valid forever. Others can file a similar name though, but they can't sue you if you start using it again.

[jcterzin]

the problem with free play is getting people off of them. I emailed SEGA earlier today about using their Out Run pcb as a rom, as I have that game too. We shall see what they say. If they dont care then its just a matter of MAME... or a way around MAME.

[Haze]

Nintendo was just the best example that I could think of at the time.  You're right about that, obviously...I just couldn't think of any other company suing (or even sending out C&Ds).  Maybe Incredible Technology is a better example?

Actually Namco are pretty aggressive, they've shut down Pacman art sites, and other fan sites in the past, and taken up issue with Foley / Ultracade, yet they've always left MAME alone..

While it's true that not being sued isn't proof that MAME is legal it's pretty good indication of what people feel the likely outcome would be, and how worthwhile / beneficial to the company concerned and industry as a whole such actions would be.  Likewise, at least in the US you should refer to the list of cases that were posted in this thread.

The stance of the development team on the issue is clear, the project has goals, honorable ones, and as long as they stick to them this will be recognized and a healthy relationship will remain.

[ark_ader]

And the idea you can lose copyright by not enforcing it is bull. That is true of TRADEMARKS. Because otherwise companies would trademark all sorts of names and not use them, but "lock up" all the good names.

Ark, you're the guy who thought you could copyright a mechanical device, so why are you so vocal in this matter? How about you sit back and learn something.

Well not exactly those yokes have printed artwork on them which is owned by Atari.  Someone could have a product similar for the military (as it was once indicated that the military was using a similar device) so the yoke comment was just that a gag to make light of the situation.

I'm a researcher at the moment so I will ask all sorts of questions.  The one regarding cracking encryption and those who were behind it was outside of the USA out of reach of DMCA Jurisdiction.  Thus the posts of those countries that were already covered and the acts of breaking such copyright.
http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#patent  That site shows pretty much what is covered and explains copyright.

I just wanted to know if the Mamedavs thought that breaking such encryption was against a code of conduct, and how such actions impacted the companies affected, if any.  Then I got shown the legal email address.  Obviously there must be an clause regarding the preservation of software (The Library Of Congress exception of the DMCA) and copyright law.  Maybe in the future you will have to have something in writing from the government.

What would be interesting to see, is the gross sales of console and portable game software titles that feature retro arcade games, and how well they sold after the year 2000.  That would be a good indicator.  Also if MAME was ever available as a commercial product, would implications would there be?  As in the original post regarded.

This is an interesting thread, I have learnt much by it.

[J.Max]

One thing I've wondered about...there are a lot of "classic game compilations" out there which are available commercially.  Now, surely there are only so many ways to emulate a given piece of hardware, so do any of them contain reverse engineered versions of MAME code?

I've often wondered if the dirty little secret of the retrogaming revival is that the commercial stuff is on the backs of the (freeware) emulator programmers.  I know that Sega licensed one of them (I think it was Dgen) to get their Dreamcast Genesis compilation out there, and Haze has said in this thread that he suspects that some comapnies have used MAME decryptions (which is part of the "preservation" aspect of MAME).

Look at sometihng like Shenmue on the Dreamcast, they included some retro titles in their ingame arcade.  I have it on good authority (but from a confidential source) that the reason they couldn't include some of their games was because those games weren't emulated, so they had no reference to how their protection devices worked, and because their roms were encrypted simply couldn't run them.  These days that wouldn't be a problem because the Sega hardware (and associated protection) is now emulated properly and because of that they would be able to pick up a copy of MAME, see the game running, and figure out the relevant parts from the source.  This would not only saving them time and money, but actually make what they wanted to do possible.

[RayB]

And the idea you can lose copyright by not enforcing it is bull. That is true of TRADEMARKS.

That's not true for trademarks either. If you have a trademark, and not enforce it, but you pay the fee, your trademark stays valid forever. Others can file a similar name though, but they can't sue you if you start using it again.

It is.

"Trademarks rights must be maintained through actual lawful use of the trademark. These rights will cease if a mark is not actively used for a period of time, normally 5 years in most jurisdictions. In the case of a trademark registration, failure to actively use the mark in the lawful course of trade, or to enforce the registration in the event of infringement, may also expose the registration itself to become liable for an application for the removal from the register after a certain period of time on the grounds of "non-use". It is not necessary for a trademark owner to take enforcement action against all infringement if it can be shown that the owner perceived the infringement to be minor and inconsequential. "

In the U.S., failure to use a trademark for this period of time, aside from the corresponding impact on product quality, will result in abandonment of the mark, whereby any party may use the mark. An abandoned mark is not irrevocably in the public domain, but may instead be re-registered by any party which has re-established exclusive and active use, and must be associated or linked with the original mark owner. If a court rules that a trademark has become "generic" through common use (such that the mark no longer performs the essential trademark function and the average consumer no longer considers that exclusive rights attach to it), the corresponding registration may also be ruled invalid.

[Blanka]

It is.

Guess we have a EU/US difference here.
And if it is, keeping up a website with the brand is not that big of a deal .

[riley454]

Stock up on every version of MAME and every ROM you can get your hands on guys, because the longer this discussion this goes on through a public forum, the further the license and copyright issues will spread on many other sites exponentially.

The programmers, developers, owners of copyrights etc, from the 70s, 80s or 90s that gave up on their product as technology changes increased dramatically so drastically through home consoles and arcade gaming, might start looking for revenue streams from the current interest in their products that were once discarded in their "we made our money - lets move on" bin.

I find it hard to see that Taito/Namco etc are likely to take legal action on the local pizza shop for charging people to play Pacman or Galaga on a MAME based cabinet. Hard to justify the legal costs of loss of income from a guy earning an uncertain few dollars a week from the machine in his shop!

As far as I can gather this same pizza shop owner will unlikely be sued by mamedev even though he is breaking his license agreement with them.

An even worse and more drastic scenario....

Somehow Taito/Namco etc etc(all those same companies past and present) take mass legal action to globally outlaw emulation in order to sell their "arcade" home console, on the back of the growing market for retro arcade games in their original form.

Keep the peace everyone. Very few people are losing anything from what mamedev has created. The creators/developers etc of 'Paperboy' for example gave up a long time ago of making any more money from their product. The harder and louder this arguement becomes, the sooner some sleeping giants will be wakened. Enjoy what mamedev has offered and those that have helped you re-live the old games, and spread the word positively.

[Blanka]

In a few years the chinese take over the world and copyright no longer exists. Just wait. The future for Mame and roms is bright!

[CheffoJeffo]

In a few years the chinese take over the world and copyright no longer exists. Just wait. The future for Mame and roms is bright!

 

[ark_ader]

Stock up on every version of MAME and every ROM you can get your hands on guys, because the longer this discussion this goes on through a public forum, the further the license and copyright issues will spread on many other sites exponentially.

The programmers, developers, owners of copyrights etc, from the 70s, 80s or 90s that gave up on their product as technology changes increased dramatically so drastically through home consoles and arcade gaming, might start looking for revenue streams from the current interest in their products that were once discarded in their "we made our money - lets move on" bin.

I find it hard to see that Taito/Namco etc are likely to take legal action on the local pizza shop for charging people to play Pacman or Galaga on a MAME based cabinet. Hard to justify the legal costs of loss of income from a guy earning an uncertain few dollars a week from the machine in his shop!

As far as I can gather this same pizza shop owner will unlikely be sued by mamedev even though he is breaking his license agreement with them.

An even worse and more drastic scenario....

Somehow Taito/Namco etc etc(all those same companies past and present) take mass legal action to globally outlaw emulation in order to sell their "arcade" home console, on the back of the growing market for retro arcade games in their original form.

Keep the peace everyone. Very few people are losing anything from what mamedev has created. The creators/developers etc of 'Paperboy' for example gave up a long time ago of making any more money from their product. The harder and louder this arguement becomes, the sooner some sleeping giants will be wakened. Enjoy what mamedev has offered and those that have helped you re-live the old games, and spread the word positively.

References where you make this argument is where?

Look at Dragon's Lair.  How many formats/ports has this game ran on?  How many variants of the theme?  Has this title's strength in popularity created any new software from the creators?  Has the delivery of an emulator like Daphne hurt sales?  Has it has encouraged games sales from Digital Leisure?

http://www.dragons-lair-project.com/games/related/ports.asp

What has the appeal been behind the new software release of Daphne?  Has this emulation software changed?  What benefits are there between the previous versions and its current form?  What distinguishes Daphne from Mame considering the direction of the eventual emulation of this title?

Can you contact an arcade distributor and buy a new Dragon's Lair 25th Anniversary Edition arcade machine?

Look at Pacman.  Can the same argument be reached?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man

Has the delivery of Pacman from Mame hurt sales?  Is Pacman considered obsolete? 

Can you contact an arcade distributor and buy a Pacman machine? 
Do you think we will see a Pacman 30th anniversary edition cabinet?
http://namcoarcade.com/

Lots of questions to ask.

I like your points you have made though, which is definitely food for thought.  But I understand that this subject will continue to be argued for a long time as it is a very interesting and intriguing .  It boils down to one small point.  Mame cannot be used for commercial purposes.  It took me a while to completely understand this position.


Something interesting I found while I was researching:
http://www.dreamauthentics.com/article-25.htm

[Haze]

References where you make this argument is where?

Look at Dragon's Lair.  How many formats/ports has this game ran on?  How many variants of the theme?  Has this title's strength in popularity created any new software from the creators?  Has the delivery of an emulator like Daphne hurt sales?  Has it has encouraged games sales from Digital Leisure?

http://www.dragons-lair-project.com/games/related/ports.asp

What has the appeal been behind the new software release of Daphne?  Has this emulation software changed?  What benefits are there between the previous versions and its current form?  What distinguishes Daphne from Mame considering the direction of the eventual emulation of this title?

Can you contact an arcade distributor and buy a new Dragon's Lair 25th Anniversary Edition arcade machine?

If MAME emulates Dragon's Lair, then it will require video sourced from an original Laserdisc, at a far inferior quality to the current offerings (because Laserdiscs degrade, are old technology and definitely not high definition), and a far larger file size (20-30gb)  It will also have far higher CPU requirements.

Given the level of availability of Dragons Lair (you can buy a copy that you can play on a standard DVD player) I can't see emulation making the slightest bit of difference.  I'm not sure if you can currently purchase (new) arcade machines of it, because I think Digital Leisure mainly focus on home ports and the used hardware is getting on a bit.  I'm also not convinced it would even do well in an arcade these days, it's become more of a novelty game which actually offers no gameplay at all.

Daphne has some deal with Digital Leisure to use their files, via some DRM system, to run the game if you own a copy of the remake.  MAME is an open project, which isn't tied to any single platform, and uses original material, not remastered material so won't take that route.  This is where you can clearly see the difference between the goals of 'giving the user the best possibly play experience' and 'documenting how the original thing worked in an open way'.  The MAME experience will be worse in every way compared to any of the current versions, but it will be faithful to the arcade.  The MAME form will have no practical value to anybody except those who care about seeing it done properly.
 

Look at Pacman.  Can the same argument be reached?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man

Has the delivery of Pacman from Mame hurt sales?  Is Pacman considered obsolete?  

Can you contact an arcade distributor and buy a Pacman machine?  
Do you think we will see a Pacman 30th anniversary edition cabinet?
http://namcoarcade.com/

Pacman, yes, you can buy new versions, but it's important to note from the hardware / documentation point of view these are entirely different beasts than the original Pacman PCBs.  You can't take the roms off one of them and run it on an original 1980s Pacman board!

I think it's proven beyond any doubt that Pacman will continue to sell regardless of ports, and regardless of emulation evidenced by the fact that Namco do keep coming up with new versions of it.  It's an iconic game that people will continue to play, and continue to pay for, and continue to port to new systems.

I think what you're seeing here is that if a game was good enough, and didn't age badly, it will continue to sell even if people already have an overwhelming choice of platforms on which to run the game.  I can't really think of any system that doesn't have a version of Pacman, be it an official one, or a clone, yet the game still remains popular enough for Namco to release new versions.

The original hardware is most definitely obsolete, which is what MAME documents, it was obsolete back in 1997 when it was the first platform MAME emulated, but the number of ports and new versions made hasn't changed at all.

One of the nice plus points of MAME here is that we can also document the things that Namco can't officially endorse, the games that did cause them legal issues back in the day, eg. the Piranha hack which was sold as a new game, but was actually just a hacked up version of Pacman.  Technically it's an illegal game, Namco can't include it in any of their new ports, the company that hacked it can't, and so without MAME that fact of history would be lost.  MAME isn't doing anything wrong by documenting this, because the bad parts of history are still parts of history.

I'd be very surprised if we didn't see 40th, 50th, 60th and even 100th anniversary Pacman machines, they'll continue to sell, and MAME will continue to document the different pieces hardware they run on in good time (as long as it's possible to do so, if they become dumb terminals running online flash games, it becomes impossible)

[CheffoJeffo]

Stock up on every version of MAME and every ROM you can get your hands on guys, because the longer this discussion this goes on through a public forum, the further the license and copyright issues will spread on many other sites exponentially.

I'll get right on that !

These are all startling insights. It's not like the topic hasn't been discussed to death for over a decade ... 

[danny_galaga]

I believe copyright lasts for the lifetime of the holder plus 70 years. Don't know how that translates with companies. Regardless, a copyright holder can do what they want with that right- enforce it, don't enforce it, pimp it out for advertising. Unless they sell the rights, they don't have to do anything to keep them.

My two cents 

[Hoopz]

Stock up on every version of MAME and every ROM you can get your hands on guys, because the longer this discussion this goes on through a public forum, the further the license and copyright issues will spread on many other sites exponentially.

It's not like the topic hasn't been discussed to death for over a decade ... 

I was going to bring that point up myself.  This topic gets posted every few months and it follows the same general path of:

Why is/are Mame/emulation/roms legal/illegal
Discussion of DCMA
Intent of Mame and Mamedevs v. needs of end users
Obligatory post by Saint showing that BYOAC loves Mamedevs  
Original PCBs v. roms
Discussion of legal aspects from everyone except a legal expert in this particular area
What Nintendo, Atari, Mattel, Namco, or ______ do to protect their copyrights
Discussion of copyright law v. patents v. trademarks
General bickering
Discussion that DCMA doesn't apply to those outside the US

Someone needs to sticky one of these damn threads so that people can continue the same arguments ad nauseum without starting new threads.

[Haze]

Oh, and if you're looking for some interesting discussion it's probably also worth researching the legal tangles surrounding various other games.

I know people would LOVE to see things like WWF Wrestlefest released on XBLA, but I get the impression that it would simply be impossible.

The WWF aren't even allowed to use their logo in old clips they broadcast, the various Wrestlers own the rights to their images, and I doubt Technos had a life-time right to manufacturer games using those images.   Technos also went out of business in 1996, and the rights to their various games ended up all over the place.

This situation almost ensures that anybody wanting to do a legal port / rerelease of this game now would find themselves in potentially deep legal issues, or simply find it an impossible task, and while emulation authors can't endose copyright infringement, once all the PCBs are dead then even if you do own an original your only way to play it is going to be through some interoperability software, ie an emulator such as MAME.

This legal tangle surrounds a lot of arcade games and the ownership is often not clear.  People trying to contact rights owners over the games included with Ultracade found the same thing.  I still find Ultracade including several bootleg games (as if they had no copyright on them) rather curious too, but not surprising.  Goal '92, owned by Seibu because it's a bootleg of Seibu Cup Soccer, but with significant hacks and broken gameplay due to poor attempts to work around the copy protection, and Dynamic Dice, which is clearly a bootleg, although what appears to be the same game with a different title and more likely manufacturer did show up recently on eBay.  Quite how you license a bootleg I don't know, but given the recent legal case, maybe there is more to it than first meets the eye.

Anyway I'd definitely look at what portion of emulated games can be traced to a single definite owner now, and would actually be eligable for re-release because it's a complicated issue, especially if you are trying to cover a subject such as lost sales due to emulation, and it really is a minefield, and one that MAME doesn't wish to become involved with, again, coming back to why we simply specify no commercial use.

[ark_ader]

References where you make this argument is where?

Look at Dragon's Lair.  How many formats/ports has this game ran on?  How many variants of the theme?  Has this title's strength in popularity created any new software from the creators?  Has the delivery of an emulator like Daphne hurt sales?  Has it has encouraged games sales from Digital Leisure?

http://www.dragons-lair-project.com/games/related/ports.asp

What has the appeal been behind the new software release of Daphne?  Has this emulation software changed?  What benefits are there between the previous versions and its current form?  What distinguishes Daphne from Mame considering the direction of the eventual emulation of this title?

Can you contact an arcade distributor and buy a new Dragon's Lair 25th Anniversary Edition arcade machine?

If MAME emulates Dragon's Lair, then it will require video sourced from an original Laserdisc, at a far inferior quality to the current offerings (because Laserdiscs degrade, are old technology and definitely not high definition), and a far larger file size (20-30gb)  It will also have far higher CPU requirements.

Given the level of availability of Dragons Lair (you can buy a copy that you can play on a standard DVD player) I can't see emulation making the slightest bit of difference.  I'm not sure if you can currently purchase (new) arcade machines of it, because I think Digital Leisure mainly focus on home ports and the used hardware is getting on a bit.  I'm also not convinced it would even do well in an arcade these days, it's become more of a novelty game which actually offers no gameplay at all.

Daphne has some deal with Digital Leisure to use their files, via some DRM system, to run the game if you own a copy of the remake.  MAME is an open project, which isn't tied to any single platform, and uses original material, not remastered material so won't take that route.  This is where you can clearly see the difference between the goals of 'giving the user the best possibly play experience' and 'documenting how the original thing worked in an open way'.  The MAME experience will be worse in every way compared to any of the current versions, but it will be faithful to the arcade.  The MAME form will have no practical value to anybody except those who care about seeing it done properly.
 

Look at Pacman.  Can the same argument be reached?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man

Has the delivery of Pacman from Mame hurt sales?  Is Pacman considered obsolete?  

Can you contact an arcade distributor and buy a Pacman machine?  
Do you think we will see a Pacman 30th anniversary edition cabinet?
http://namcoarcade.com/

Pacman, yes, you can buy new versions, but it's important to note from the hardware / documentation point of view these are entirely different beasts than the original Pacman PCBs.  You can't take the roms off one of them and run it on an original 1980s Pacman board!

I think it's proven beyond any doubt that Pacman will continue to sell regardless of ports, and regardless of emulation evidenced by the fact that Namco do keep coming up with new versions of it.  It's an iconic game that people will continue to play, and continue to pay for, and continue to port to new systems.

I think what you're seeing here is that if a game was good enough, and didn't age badly, it will continue to sell even if people already have an overwhelming choice of platforms on which to run the game.  I can't really think of any system that doesn't have a version of Pacman, be it an official one, or a clone, yet the game still remains popular enough for Namco to release new versions.

The original hardware is most definitely obsolete, which is what MAME documents, it was obsolete back in 1997 when it was the first platform MAME emulated, but the number of ports and new versions made hasn't changed at all.

One of the nice plus points of MAME here is that we can also document the things that Namco can't officially endorse, the games that did cause them legal issues back in the day, eg. the Piranha hack which was sold as a new game, but was actually just a hacked up version of Pacman.  Technically it's an illegal game, Namco can't include it in any of their new ports, the company that hacked it can't, and so without MAME that fact of history would be lost.  MAME isn't doing anything wrong by documenting this, because the bad parts of history are still parts of history.

I'd be very surprised if we didn't see 40th, 50th, 60th and even 100th anniversary Pacman machines, they'll continue to sell, and MAME will continue to document the different pieces hardware they run on in good time (as long as it's possible to do so, if they become dumb terminals running online flash games, it becomes impossible)

I agree with everything you posted so far, and I do not want to seem like I am laboring the point, but I do have three questions I would like Haze to answer as these will be my last questions on this thread, as it stems from the date when Haze was Coordinator of MAME.

When a MAME developer submits code emulating/documenting the hardware of a Arcade PCB.  When does that developer get permission to break the encryption of the said game in order to test the dumped software for accuracy?  Granted not all ROM code is encrypted.  Does the developer or the Coordinator contact (or make attempts to contact) the copyright holder for permission?

What happens to the ROM code that is dumped from the mainboard of the PCB?  Does those mainboard(s) go to a holding repository or agency?  Do these mainboards or ROMS ever get sold on?  And if so does the ROM dumped data get destroyed once the testing of that said PCB is 100% emulated?

When did the MAMEdevs contact the Library of Congress to submit an application to become a partner of digital preservation. If this has not transpired, is this a goal of the MAMEdevs to register to this body, considering the benefits on offer? 
http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/

[Haze]

I agree with everything you posted so far, and I do not want to seem like I am laboring the point, but I do have three questions I would like Haze to answer as these will be my last questions on this thread, as it stems from the date when Haze was Coordinator of MAME.

When a MAME developer submits code emulating/documenting the hardware of a Arcade PCB.  When does that developer get permission to break the encryption of the said game in order to test the dumped software for accuracy?  Granted not all ROM code is encrypted.  Does the developer or the Coordinator contact (or make attempts to contact) the copyright holder for permission?

There is no feeling that the law necessitates such permission, and cases such as the ones posted here to do with reverse engineering the Sony bios add weight to this.  MAME is not developed using stolen information, it is pure reverse engineering, which thus far has held up as legal.  The developers do not feel there is a copyright issue here so don't see the need to take any further action.  MAME is a document of how things work.  Again, you appear to disagree with this, but the answer isn't going to change.  The team are confident in their legal position otherwise they simply wouldn't bother at all.

What happens to the ROM code that is dumped from the mainboard of the PCB?  Does those mainboard(s) go to a holding repository or agency?  Do these mainboards or ROMS ever get sold on?  And if so does the ROM dumped data get destroyed once the testing of that said PCB is 100% emulated?

When did the MAMEdevs contact the Library of Congress to submit an application to become a partner of digital preservation. If this has not transpired, is this a goal of the MAMEdevs to register to this body, considering the benefits on offer?  
http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/

The developers work with the board owners, often with the board on loan from them.  What the board owners do with their boards and the roms they dumped from them is entirely their business and responsibility, and not under the control of the core development team who actually work on the code.

With the Library of Congress stuff again you're bringing US-centric details into play, the majority of MAME develoment does not happen in the US, I haven't looked into it.  Maybe other developers have, but personally I prefer to just get on with doing what I know how to do.  MAME isn't a political statement, and my time is better spent on figuring things out, and documenting them.  I feel that the team has done a good job in it's current form, without the need for involving official organizations, which may only add pressure and political issues to the development cycle.

[FrizzleFried]

The WWF aren't even allowed to use their logo in old clips they broadcast...

The company had also been ordered by the Lords to stop using the old WWF Attitude logo on any of its properties and to censor all past references to WWF, as they no longer owned the trademark to the initials WWF in 'specified circumstances'.[17] Despite litigation, WWE is still permitted use of the original WWF logo, which was used from 1984 through 1997, as well as the "New WWF Generation" logo, which was used from 1994 through 1998. Furthermore, the company may still make use of the full "World Wrestling Federation" and "World Wrestling Federation Entertainment" names without consequence.

...it was only the "WWF Attitude" logo they can't broadcast...

[Haze]

The WWF aren't even allowed to use their logo in old clips they broadcast...

The company had also been ordered by the Lords to stop using the old WWF Attitude logo on any of its properties and to censor all past references to WWF, as they no longer owned the trademark to the initials WWF in 'specified circumstances'.[17] Despite litigation, WWE is still permitted use of the original WWF logo, which was used from 1984 through 1997, as well as the "New WWF Generation" logo, which was used from 1994 through 1998. Furthermore, the company may still make use of the full "World Wrestling Federation" and "World Wrestling Federation Entertainment" names without consequence.

...it was only the "WWF Attitude" logo they can't broadcast...

Interesting, I don't pay much attention to it but at least when I caught a show last year and they were showing some old footage everywhere the gold logo (the same one used in the games) appeared it was blured out, be it on the ring, signs people had in the crowd, or the branding in the corner (where it was blured and replaced with the new WWE logo)  They even dubbed the speech whenever WWF was mentioned.  It was pathetic, and actually reminded me of why projects like MAME are good, because we don't attempt to change history.

Still I imagine that licenses for the Wrestlers will still cause issues, there are several film tie-ins which suffer from the same problem, the company only had a license to sell / manufacturer games for a limited period.

[FrizzleFried]

...strange... I just found this... (why am I even looking?  Boredom I guess?)

Abandonment of the initialism did not end the two organizations' legal conflict. Later in 2002, the World Wide Fund for Nature petitioned the court for $360 million in damages, but the wrestling company prevailed. A subsequent request to overturn by the World Wide Fund for Nature was dismissed by the English Court of Appeals on June 28, 2007. In 2003, World Wrestling Entertainment won a limited decision which permitted them to continue marketing certain pre-existing products with the abandoned WWF logo. However, the wrestling company was obliged to issue newly-branded merchandise such as apparel, action figures, video games, and DVDs with the "WWE" initials. Additionally, the court order required the company to remove both spoken and visual references to "WWF" in its library of video footage (which spans several decades) outside of the United Kingdom.

So it looks like you were right Haze.

[Haze]

...strange... I just found this... (why am I even looking?  Boredom I guess?)

Abandonment of the initialism did not end the two organizations' legal conflict. Later in 2002, the World Wide Fund for Nature petitioned the court for $360 million in damages, but the wrestling company prevailed. A subsequent request to overturn by the World Wide Fund for Nature was dismissed by the English Court of Appeals on June 28, 2007. In 2003, World Wrestling Entertainment won a limited decision which permitted them to continue marketing certain pre-existing products with the abandoned WWF logo. However, the wrestling company was obliged to issue newly-branded merchandise such as apparel, action figures, video games, and DVDs with the "WWE" initials. Additionally, the court order required the company to remove both spoken and visual references to "WWF" in its library of video footage (which spans several decades) outside of the United Kingdom.

So it looks like you were right Haze.

and of course you also have cases like Stargate, which now can only be released as 'Defender 2'

so without MAME rightfully documenting the game as Stargate, or with the added political pressure of some official organization, who may feel they need to change history too.....

Pretty much demonstrates why MAME is best doing things the way it does now.  There are no outside influences other than the raw facts.

If we had to ask for permission to emulate Stargate, and the only response was 'we're not allowed call it Stargate anymore, please only support it as Defender 2' then MAME would be doing a pretty bad job of actually documenting arcade history, wouldn't it?  The integrity of the historical facts MAME presents is by far one of the most important things about the project.  Thankfully, we don't, because there's nothing illegal about MAME doing what it does.

[Ginsu Victim]

I love how the World Wildlife Fund waited until Vince's company had a lot of post-Attitude era money until they sued. It's not like the two hadn't co-existed for over 20 years at that point (World Wildlife Fund founded in 1961, Worldwide Wrestling Federation changed to World Wrestling Federation in 1980 when Vince Jr took over)

[DJ_Izumi]

I love how the World Wildlife Fund waited until Vince's company had a lot of post-Attitude era money until they sued. It's not like the two hadn't co-existed for over 20 years at that point (World Wildlife Fund founded in 1961, Worldwide Wrestling Federation changed to World Wrestling Federation in 1980 when Vince Jr took over)

Wikipedia says they only sued in 2000 over a legal agreement they made in 1994 for the organizations to co-exist and said that the WWF (Wrestling) violated the agreement.

[Ginsu Victim]

Well I didn't read any of that ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---. Can't I just throw in my uninformed two cents?

By the time they sued, I wasn't watching anymore anyway.

Oh, and wikipedia said Rodney Mullen invented the kickflip in 1993, so you can't trust wikipedia anyway.

[Haze]

This legal tangle surrounds a lot of arcade games and the ownership is often not clear.  People trying to contact rights owners over the games included with Ultracade found the same thing.  I still find Ultracade including several bootleg games (as if they had no copyright on them) rather curious too, but not surprising.  Goal '92, owned by Seibu because it's a bootleg of Seibu Cup Soccer, but with significant hacks and broken gameplay due to poor attempts to work around the copy protection, and Dynamic Dice, which is clearly a bootleg, although what appears to be the same game with a different title and more likely manufacturer did show up recently on eBay.  Quite how you license a bootleg I don't know, but given the recent legal case, maybe there is more to it than first meets the eye.

Oh, and another thing for you to mull over here.

Even in cases where the manufacturer of the multi-game cabinets allegedly have licenses for their games they're still turning to MAME.

As stated above, Goal '92 is a hack / bootleg of Seibu Cup Soccer.

The original Seibu Cup Soccer isn't emulated in MAME because the protection isn't understood, it's rather complex.

You would have thought, that with an original license from Seibu (Ultracade did have one, right?) that they would have access to either the game sources, or information about the protection, and as a result would have been able emulate the original Seibu Cup Soccer for their pack, rather than including a game which is nothing more than a bootleg, doesn't contain any original Seibu logos because the bootleggers stripped them out, and has a ton of bugs because the bootleggers did an awful job of working around the protection.

Alternatively David Foley / Ultracade could have attempted to reverse engineer the hardware themselves and emulate the original.  Did they?  No.  They relied on the information that MAME had already discovered, and simply emulated the same bootleg supported by MAME that 'works'.  (I'm not claiming there is anything wrong with this as we state that the information is free to use, even if the implementation isn't)

So even with what are meant to be legitimately licensed games it is quite clear that the MAME developers are doing the majority of the work in discovering how these things work, demonstrated by this case and the clear lack of effort in actually supporting the original game.

This isn't the only example, plenty of times people have reported to us that Ultracade has the same emulation bugs as MAME in several of their games (several of the Capcom titles IIRC), pointing clearly that MAME is being used at the very least as a definitive reference for how they work; other emulators which aren't based on the information in MAME have their own sets of bugs, because they've been reverse engineered and figured out by different people, who came to different conclusions so it's quite clear what their reference is because no 2 people think in exactly the same way.

Of course, some people have simply concluded that this means Ultracade is MAME, but there is insufficient evidence to support such a claim at this time, and you would get the same outcome if you simply used all the information in MAME without checking it yourself which assuming the guys behind Ultracade are of good integrity is probably what was done.

With this in mind I ask you how money money projects like MAME have saved for people offering legitimate ports / cabinets, MAME has a team with probably 20 'active' developers doing actual programming at any one time, as well as plenty of others who help with their hardware knowledge and other skills, and a fair number who are on the team but no longer really contribute.  The project has been around for 13 years, so I ask you to figure out the number of hours that have gone into the project, how much the developers of the project would have been paid if it was an actual commercial project, etc.  It might not look much, but 10 lines of code in MAME can have taken months of work to figure out.  Also factor in the sheer amount of money the developers have spent on PCBs for testing etc. and the great lengths even non-developers have gone to aquire things like that Goal '92 bootleg and you have an insane number of man-hours that have gone into the project.

This is all work that people producing products like Ultracade no longer have to do, because the facts have been worked out, and presented in the source.  While they're not permitted to simply copy the source they have an incredible amount of work available to them for reference.  When people want to make legal use of MAME in this way we're happy, it means that the legal retro packs are more viable to develop.  Ultracade already struggled for money, and had to sell their product for what most people felt were extortionate prices (which they claim are due to the license costs)  If you factor in the additional development costs of something like MAME, and the information contained within it I have a feeling it would overshadow the rest of the development costs and push their prices to a level that nobody could afford.

If you look at Taito Legends you'll see some familiar names http://www.mobygames.com/game/taito-legends
Bryan McPhail, Jarek Burczynski, and Nicola Salmoria are all long-term contributors to MAME, and the knowledge they figured out when working on MAME could be applied to this retro pack, thus reducing development costs.  This one I can assure you is fully licensed by Taito and isn't using MAME code, but is using knowledge from MAME.

So, how much money is having projects like MAME around *saving* people who want to do legitimate ports, and also to what degree does it actually make such packs possible in the first place?  Would such packs be viable if the manufacturers had to reverse engineer all the hardware themselves?  Many of the pre-emulation retro packs were actually closer to ports than actual emulation which naturally have a higher development time, greater potential for game changing bugs, and a less authentic experience.

You could argue that it also makes it easier for people making illegitimate products, yes, but at the same time, would there be as many legal options if it wasn't for emulation?

Personally I believe that illegitimate products would still exist even without emulation.  They would probably simply be in a different form, cheap knock-offs that look like the original games / products but aren't (see products like the Chintendo Vii which is marketed as if it was a genuine Nintendo Wii, mimicing all of Nintendo's advertising material etc)

I also believe that we'd see less legitimate ports because the newer titles that are emulated in more modern packs are several magnitudes more complex than those found in the older pre-emulation packs, and without the work done by MAME it would be much harder to produce them and a lot of them would either have a greatly reduced set of titles or simply never get the green light for production because it's quite clear, from the examples I've given that MAME is doing all the ground work, otherwise Ultracade would be using their license to run Seibu Cup Soccer (which they must have licensed), not the bootleg Goal '92.

Also keep in mind that the MAME development team have put in all this work, in their own time, with no expectation of being paid for their actual MAME work.

[ark_ader]

Haze, it isn't that we do not enjoy what MAME has given, (I am not sure Saint's book would not have had the popularity which MAME has brought) that is echoed a million times throughout the world.  So many platforms enjoy MAME from computers to hand-held devices.  Games that we loved are wonderfully presented, right on our desktops.  Documentation and examples for those future developers who will benefit from the many programmers out there is just completely amazing.  It is not clear why MAME cannot be used for commercial use.

Is MAME a self-imposed repository for information like the Library Of Congress designation (apologies Haze but mame.net and mamedev.org is registered in the USA)?  Is MAME considered public domain or does it have agreements with other entities like Ultracade?  Do companies connected to archived product have a legal right to use such code in their commercial endeavors?

My questions are to be deemed hypthetical (and I'm not asking Haze to answer.  I'm just throwing this out here for general discussion), but in a world where MAME is compared to the MP3 player, perhaps MAME should become a commercial entity.  If we all paid to use MAME it would at least provide funds for more PCB purchases.

Haze mentioned Ultarcade and how game packs had mirrored behaviors like in MAME.

Alternatively David Foley / Ultracade could have attempted to reverse engineer the hardware themselves and emulate the original.  Did they?  No.  They relied on the information that MAME had already discovered, and simply emulated the same bootleg supported by MAME that 'works'.  (I'm not claiming there is anything wrong with this as we state that the information is free to use, even if the implementation isn't)

So even with what are meant to be legitimately licensed games it is quite clear that the MAME developers are doing the majority of the work in discovering how these things work, demonstrated by this case and the clear lack of effort in actually supporting the original game.

This isn't the only example, plenty of times people have reported to us that Ultracade has the same emulation bugs as MAME in several of their games (several of the Capcom titles IIRC), pointing clearly that MAME is being used at the very least as a definitive reference for how they work; other emulators which aren't based on the information in MAME have their own sets of bugs, because they've been reverse engineered and figured out by different people, who came to different conclusions so it's quite clear what their reference is because no 2 people think in exactly the same way.

Of course, some people have simply concluded that this means Ultracade is MAME, but there is insufficient evidence to support such a claim at this time, and you would get the same outcome if you simply used all the information in MAME without checking it yourself which assuming the guys behind Ultracade are of good integrity is probably what was done.

This is extremely interesting, and maybe all the questions will be answered when the Foley/Ultracade issue goes to court.  If it all ends up in tears, will there be any knock on effect for the emulation community as a whole?

[Haze]

Haze, it isn't that we do not enjoy what MAME has given, (I am not sure Saint's book would not have had the popularity which MAME has brought) that is echoed a million times throughout the world.  So many platforms enjoy MAME from computers to hand-held devices.  Games that we loved are wonderfully presented, right on our desktops.  Documentation and examples for those future developers who will benefit from the many programmers out there is just completely amazing.  It is not clear why MAME cannot be used for commercial use.

As outlined elsewhere in this thread, there is a significant difference between things being done for profit, and non-profit.  MAME is non-commercial, and non-profit, and we wish it to remain that way.  I believe that by stating people can use the information freely we're being fair; the value of MAME is in the information, not the code.  You could probably reimplement everything in MAME in a fraction of the time it took to discover everything.  I believe the current arrangement to be balanced and fair, it means there is no pressure on the developers, and at the same time gives people an incredibly useful reference when they need it.

Is MAME a self-imposed repository for information like the Library Of Congress designation (apologies Haze but mame.net and mamedev.org is registered in the USA)?  Is MAME considered public domain or does it have agreements with other entities like Ultracade?  Do companies connected to archived product have a legal right to use such code in their commercial endeavors?

My questions are to be deemed hypthetical (and I'm not asking Haze to answer.  I'm just throwing this out here for general discussion), but in a world where MAME is compared to the MP3 player, perhaps MAME should become a commercial entity.  If we all paid to use MAME it would at least provide funds for more PCB purchases.

Aaron is in the US and registered the site etc.  That doesn't really reflect development.  Honestly I don't see why MAME should be a commercial entity, or be available for commercial use, it just adds further complications which get in the way of development; this isn't our jobs, it isn't meant to be.  You can hypothesise as much as you want, I simply see no REAL benefit.

Haze mentioned Ultarcade and how game packs had mirrored behaviors like in MAME.

Alternatively David Foley / Ultracade could have attempted to reverse engineer the hardware themselves and emulate the original.  Did they?  No.  They relied on the information that MAME had already discovered, and simply emulated the same bootleg supported by MAME that 'works'.  (I'm not claiming there is anything wrong with this as we state that the information is free to use, even if the implementation isn't)

So even with what are meant to be legitimately licensed games it is quite clear that the MAME developers are doing the majority of the work in discovering how these things work, demonstrated by this case and the clear lack of effort in actually supporting the original game.

This isn't the only example, plenty of times people have reported to us that Ultracade has the same emulation bugs as MAME in several of their games (several of the Capcom titles IIRC), pointing clearly that MAME is being used at the very least as a definitive reference for how they work; other emulators which aren't based on the information in MAME have their own sets of bugs, because they've been reverse engineered and figured out by different people, who came to different conclusions so it's quite clear what their reference is because no 2 people think in exactly the same way.

Of course, some people have simply concluded that this means Ultracade is MAME, but there is insufficient evidence to support such a claim at this time, and you would get the same outcome if you simply used all the information in MAME without checking it yourself which assuming the guys behind Ultracade are of good integrity is probably what was done.

This is extremely interesting, and maybe all the questions will be answered when the Foley/Ultracade issue goes to court.  If it all ends up in tears, will there be any knock on effect for the emulation community as a whole?

The cases seem very specific, I doubt we'll find out what license there was with Seibu over Seibu Cup Soccer / Goal '92, and unless somebody pulls Ultracade apart and finds that it IS Mame then their source code is never going to be available for reference either, so I doubt the current legal case will reveal all that much.

Naturally various people on the MAME team are disappointed that doubts have been raised over the legaility of Ultracade, as it's always been a useful product to point people at when they want a legal option for fully licensed multi-game, non-mame cabinets, and until the legal situation is cleared up we can't recommend purchasing the units at all as there is every chance they might be declared just as illegal and unlicensed as running a MAME cab with unlicensed roms.

Will there be a knock on effect?  I doubt it.  The developers will continue to do what the developers do.  If one day MAME emulates Ultracade, there will be comments indicating that it was / wasn't licensed, and it becomes part of history like everything else.  The 0-day warezing of those Taito PC based arcade games is more likely to have negative effects on emulation and arcade scene as a whole because those are new games that Taito are actively marketing.  That has nothing to do with MAME, and isn't condoned by anybody on the team tho.  It always amazes me when people approach the team / developers about cracking the latest arcade games, then get angry / surprised when we say we're not interested. 

[ark_ader]

OK, I do have legal training (University of Arizona 1999), and lets look at some precedents:  (I should state that I am not a lawyer, as I have never taken the Bar exam because I decided on another career path.)

I should have clarified my statement about MAME - it DOES contain proprietary code, but not proprietary code relevant to the ROM sets, only proprietary and owned by MAMEDev.

Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc Vs Connectix Coporation  - The courts ruled that as long as a BIOS encryption was reverse-engineered and not simply copied and stolen, it was legal.  This should cover your assertions about the legality of the CPS2 encryption, and more importantly, it was upheld on appeal AFTER the DMCA went into effect.  (And is therefore a different situation than Sega vs Accolade.)  From the ruling:

"Some works are closer to the core of intended copyright protection than others. Sony's BIOS lay at a distance from the core because it contains unprotected aspects that cannot be examined without copying. The court of appeal therefore accorded it a lower degree of protection than more traditional literary works."

http://web.archive.org/web/20070228070634/http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/ca9/newopinions.nsf/0/66b3a352ea33712988256952007578c2?OpenDocument


Sega vs Accolade - Accolade lost this case, but the court upheld that disassembly of code is permitted under the fair use rule if the primary reason is to get to the parts of the code that are not copyrighted.  Again, this goes to your assertion about the CPS2 code.  In addition, this goes to why MAME can't be used for commercial purposes and why that is written into the license.  (Accolade lost the case because their primary reason for doing so was to circumvent the copy protection for profit.  This is also how MAME can be work as a non-profit entity, and why you can't sell it.)

http://digital-law-online.info/cases/24PQ2D1561.htm


Here's another nice article (from the U of Iowa law journal) which explains things a bit further:

http://www.uiowa.edu/~cyberlaw/cls01/yi3.html

They accepted Connectix's defense, which entailed the following use of the Fair Use doctrine:

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include--

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

You can find the references at the article's site.


All of this boils down to: emulators are legal because they are protected by reverse engineering laws and laws governing the use of commercial copyrights.  That's also the reason why they put "non-commercial" use clauses in the license, because "for profit" opens them up to a HUGE amount of civil lawsuits.

I have been reviewing my college assignment based on the implications of reverse engineering and the DMCA and I was puzzled by the Sony vs Connectix ruling when I found (during my researching) that because the ruling falls under fair use, the DMCA doesn't consider fair use as an exception, thus bringing the court ruling into question.

"Sony Sues Connectix and Bleem
Sony has used DMCA to sue competitors who created emulation software that permits gamers to play PlayStation console games on PCs. In 1999, Sony sued Connectix, the maker of the Virtual Game Station, a PlayStation emulator for Macintosh computers. Sony also sued Bleem, the leading vendor of PlayStation emulator software for Windows PCs.

In both cases, Sony claimed that competitors had violated the DMCA by engaging in unlawful circumvention, even though the development of interoperable software has been recognized by the courts as a fair use under copyright law. Because courts have suggested that the DMCA trumps fair use, however, the DMCA has become a new legal weapon with which to threaten those who rely on reverse engineering to create competing products.

Neither Connectix nor Bleem were able to bear the high costs of litigation against Sony and pulled their products off the market. No similar emulation products have been introduced, effectively forcing gamers to use Sony console hardware if they want to play the PlayStation games they have purchased."  Link

So under the previous posting that considered reverse engineering as an exception and siting the Sony vs Connectix have won, why can I not find a commercial PSX emulator?  Thus another reason why Mame is not for commercial use.  Would Mame then be classed as a competing product if it was made available commercially?

So you have rulings by the courts that say it is legal to reverse engineer a product, then you have the DMCA challenging it.

I find this whole legal process involving reverse engineering completely baffling!

[Ginsu Victim]

[Haze]

So under the previous posting that considered reverse engineering as an exception and siting the Sony vs Connectix have won, why can I not find a commercial PSX emulator?  Thus another reason why Mame is not for commercial use.  Would Mame then be classed as a competing product if it was made available commercially?

Why can't you find a (current) commercial PSX emulator?

probably because nobody cares enough about the PSX anymore, and there is no demand for one, thus nobody has made one?

As for the (current) modern systems, they're several times more complex, and the emulators are significantly more demanding than a PSX emulator was back in the day, also in the case of the GC / Wii the discs can't be read in a PC, for the PS3 not many people have bluray drives (and it's not really viable to emulate on a PC)  Even the free PS2 emulators are very demanding, and have low compatibility.  For the 360, again the hardware is too complex to consider emulating, going back a bit further you have the original Xbox which is basically PC-like hardware, but despite that making it sound easy to emulate it's quite the opposite.  For other older systems like the Dreamcast, again you've got the issue that the discs were GD-Roms, and don't work on a PC.

The PSX was a special case at that time, it had a lot of exclusive games that weren't available on the PC, it was viable to emulate on a modest system at the time, and the discs would work in a PC with no messing about other than the actual emulator.

Emulation is more of a hobbist thing anyway, commercial ones are few and far between.  You will find some that are non-free but offer demo versions and can be purchased from the authors but for the most part unless you're licensing some games, you don't really have much worth selling unless it runs games directly from the original media, as the PSX emus like the ones in these cases did at the time.  Commercial products in general have to be polished, easy to use, all-in-1 solutions.  Emulation is for the most part a technical issue that, unless the emulators are prepackaged in a friendly compilation (like the Taito Classics stuff) they don't really make for a good commercial product anyway.  Selling a dreamcast emulator with instructions on how the user can wire up a dreamcast GD-ROM to read the discs isn't really going to appeal to a commercial audience, who will wonder why they can't just use the Dreamcast!  It does appeal to hobbyists tho.

But yeah, show somebody a PSX game now and they'll wonder why it looks so bad.... Early 3D doesn't age well even if you tart it up in an emu.  Nobody *wants* a commercial PSX emulator.  Not even Sony seem to care that much about backwards compatibility anymore (only the first generation of PS3s supported the PS2 games in hardware, and support went downhill from there)  They'll sell some of their old classics (a very limited choice) on the PSN store, but I don't know if they're emulated or ported, and beyond that there simply isn't a market.  Heck all my original PSX discs are falling apart!  Those black-backed discs seem to have a shorter life than standard discs from the period..  I wouldn't want to work on the support line for a commercial PSX emulator if people were trying to use it with discs in this condition.


  

[RayB]

@Ark: The purpose of Bleem was to play PS1 games on a PC, at a time when the PS1 was still for sale.  DMCA has exceptions to the circumvention clauses for the purposes of archiving, or otherwise legitimate use of obsolete software/hardware.

But even so, I think you need to dig deeper in the Bleem case, because as I remember it... part of Sony's alegation was that the only way they could have made Bleem actually work was by use of a particular "bios" software. Thus, having a copy of this bios in Bleem made it a copyright infringement.

[Malenko]

What does bleem have to do with MAME?
 

[ark_ader]

Why can't you find a (current) commercial PSX emulator?

probably because nobody cares enough about the PSX anymore, and there is no demand for one, thus nobody has made one?

Can someone find me a commercial PSX emulator?

Question is, if Connectix had more cash would they have been able to defeat the DMCA, instead of pulling the product off the shelf?

This was interesting as it makes the case for MAME much more clearer.

This was before DMCA, so again, if Sega jumped up and bit a developer who [hypothetically] created a free emulator of the Megadrive/Genesis, would fair use still hold water today?
 

What does bleem have to do with MAME?
 

Have you read the whole thread or just chiming in? 

[Malenko]

this isnt my first reply to the thread, so that should answer your question. This thread is about " why mame is 'illegal' for commercial use" so what does bleem have to do with MAME?  MAME emulates outdated hardware, Bleem emulated hardware that was still being sold in stores, so they have no parallel other then the fact they are emulators. Bleem was created to make money, MAME was not.

Im just not sure why you thinking bring up Accolade VS Sega, which I believe had something to do with them using sega's start up code in unlicensed carts, means anything. No one in here is a copyright lawyer (that I know of) and beyond that  the meat of the MAME devs are in different countries around the world so US laws wouldnt apply.

the DMCA means dick anywhere else in the world.

[ark_ader]

the DMCA means dick anywhere else in the world.

So you have been reading this thread.....

What does Bleem have to do with Mame?  Well it was referenced in a previous post by someone who thought it was important.

You tell me. 

[Malenko]

the DMCA means dick anywhere else in the world.

So you have been reading this thread.....

What does Bleem have to do with Mame?  Well it was referenced in a previous post by someone who thought it was important.

You tell me. 

yeap back on page 2, jmax brought it up and closed the point all in the same post. Bleem reverse engineered the COPYRIGHTED sony BIOS for commercial gains, MAME reverse engineered the CPS2 non-copyright decryption for non commercial gains. Again, no parallel.

cantcha just let this thread die Ark_CHADer? beating a dead horse isnt going to change anything. you just keep bringin up the DCMA even though it doesnt apply, and you bring up the lack of commercial PSX emultors but dismiss the free ones (not withstanding the fact they arent in demand either)

I think since Im bothering to reply I'm part of the problem, so I'll stop

[ark_ader]

You just keep bringing up the DMCA even though it doesn't apply

Really?  Where did you find that?

Looks like we do have legal eagles in our midst.

[Malenko]

You just keep bringing up the DMCA even though it doesn't apply

Really?  Where did you find that?

Looks like we do have legal eagles in our midst.

noooo Im an IT guy who does art work and construction to get by.

you seem to be the legal eagle, so please in stupid retard laymens terms explain to me how a US copyright law is legal precidense in Norway, Finland, Spain, etc Keep in mind, the DMCA is not the EUCD and while it was based on 2 treaties of WIPO , WIPO cannot and does not enforce it outside of US soil. The closest thing Ive found in my minutes and minutes of searching, is Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested when he was on US soil (ie he was not extradited) he was in jail for about a month, released in exchange for his testimony and on December 18, 2002 following a two-week trial in San Jose, California, a jury found that Elcomsoft (his employer) had not wilfully violated the U.S. law.

So instead of me proving why the DMCA doesnt apply , why dont you tell me why it does?

Also, you win, I posted again.

Also, I believe this thread should be moved to politic and religion, where I'll never have to see it again.

[DJ_Izumi]

Really?  Where did you find that?

Looks like we do have legal eagles in our midst.

US Laws don't apply outside of the United States.  Even things like the Berne Convention are pretty clear that only local copyright laws apply even for out of nation works.  For example, in the United States copyright is maintained for 75 years after death of the creator before becoming public domain.  In the Canada it's 50 years.  So here in Canada everything the Disney produced untill 1966 will become public domain in 2016.  In the case of corporations, it's the death of the majority share holder or owner + 50 years, and Walt died in 66.  Whoever took over after him, his death + 50 years will be the next mile stone.  Unless Canadian law changes before then, in six years a lot of Disney works will become public domain and there isn't a single thing anyone in the United States can legally do about it to a Canadian.

Though the general idea of copyright is pretty universal between all industrialized nations and that is summed up as 'Don't copy my ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- till I've been dead for at least 50 years.' with various exceptions between the nations.

[RayB]

DJ, you're right only to an extent. The US and US corporations have done much to heavily push and pursuade other countries to revise their copyright laws and adapt to one more in line with US DMCA. Plenty of countries have been more than happy to hop on board if it means opening or expanding business ties with the US. Australia for example caved not too long ago. Nintendo just won a half million dollar judgement against an Australian seller of Nintendo DS "R4" carts as a result.

The US has pressured Canada in the same way, but we keep shooting down the proposed revisions because they ask to go too far. Major US companies, like the music and movie industries retaliated by releasing propaganda last year that Canada is some how the biggest source of movie piracy. (Was quickly proven wrong, but damage done.)  But big corporations run america, so they keep pushing, and now the US's approach to solving this "problem" of Canada is to push it again in secret. The secret's out though:
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4510/125/

[SophT]

I Thought MAME IS ALREADY used for commercial operations. I believe Taito Legends for example is nothing but MAME. The game owners will say FY to the mamedevs probably, as they cannot organise to file lawsuits against them.

On the other hand. Think of this scenario: Steve JOBS want's MAME on his iPad store (iPad is auto-rotating 4:3 screen: made for classics!). He pays the mame-org a sum of cash, they think of a nice formula to divide it over members (Nicola getting millionaire and letting go his weird Trademark), and he arranges Taito, Capcom and co send in technicians to better mame even further. Mame goes full GNU open source and the deal is that Apple makes ROMS available for commercial use without DRM in their iPad store, so each Mamer can obtain legal titles. I think it will give more people access in a decent way to our great game heritage. In the end Jobs is only interested in 30% of each ROM sold, whether it is DRM'ed or not, music, app or crap. Does not matter.

Well, IANAL, but after reading through this entire thread I would like to object to the assertion that the iPad was "made for classics!".  That's pure speculation, and I would dare say near "fan-boy", and I would like it stricken from the thread.  Furthermore the poster alleges that Apple would sell legally licensed roms through its iTunes store without DRM- an assertion that has no precedent.  In fact let the records show that iTunes originally sold only DRM music, and continues to sell DRM tv and movies, and has plans for DRM books shortly.

In conclusion, Apple, Jobs, and the iPad can suck it (within the scope of a MAME port to the iPad, it doesn't even have buttons, hardly ideal!)



just trying to lighten the mood...

[J.Max]

This was before DMCA, so again, if Sega jumped up and bit a developer who [hypothetically] created a free emulator of the Megadrive/Genesis, would fair use still hold water today?

Good question...I don't know the answer.  I would GUESS that since most emulators don't include BIOS files (including MAME) that it would still hold up, DMCA or no DMCA. 

[SavannahLion]

Just to bring to attention. A recent change in the landscape of IP issues. I'm not going to bother interpreting what this means for everyone. Since only about half the people are really only listening/reading/understanding what's being said, everyone else seems to have an opinion loosely based on preconceived notions.

In any case, a task force was recently assembled by major IP players which notably excludes any consumer advocate groups. While the task force is comprised almost entirely of the video and music entertainment sectors, what happens with this group can potentially reach beyond its defined scope and affect other industries (namely gaming).

What I find interesting about the task force is it was assembled with the explicit intention to "tackle international piracy." Given that some countries (eg Canada) resist pressures to skew IP rights, this might lead to some interesting pressures and political gambits.

http://techdailydose.nationaljournal.com/2010/02/justice-creates-ip-task-force.php

[Haze]

Can someone find me a commercial PSX emulator?

Question is, if Connectix had more cash would they have been able to defeat the DMCA, instead of pulling the product off the shelf?

Bleem and Connectix VGS were the two commercial PSX emulators.

In the case of Bleem (the Dreamcast version that ran a single game I think) I remember people working in the local games store saying that Sony were putting a lot of pressure on them to not sell it*.  Trying to compete against dirty tactics and lawsuits is hard, no matter how frivolous they are.

To the best of my knowledge there are no other commercial PSX emulators, there is no demand for them, and no real money to be made.  2 commercial emulators is more than most systems have!

* Just as Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo etc. do these days, insisting games are only available on the actual release date, even if the store has them long before.  Break their 'rules', and find yourself with no release day copies to sell at all.  (How is this legal?)

[SavannahLion]

* Just as Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo etc. do these days, insisting games are only available on the actual release date, even if the store has them long before.  Break their 'rules', and find yourself with no release day copies to sell at all.  (How is this legal?)

It's been yonkers since I had to deal with it, but it's actually not restricted to just video games. Movies and music have the same potential restrictions. I do know that stores that presale their restricted merchandise before release can and do get pinged with fines. I bought the DVD release of Star Wars IV,V,VI months before their scheduled release. It dawned me two days later that I could go back, buy up every one of their stock and sell it on eBay for a pretty penny. Went back and the store already pulled them off the shelves and stuck them back in the store room (I could see them through the door). I heard later from one of the employees they ended up getting "fined" for each one they sold before the release date.

Point being, people have told me it's written into law somewhere, but no one has ever been able to cite the code. I suspect it has more to do with contractual obligations rather than any specific law.  Only laws I know of restricting the sale of games in this manner exists in Japan.

[Hoopz]

Point being, people have told me it's written into law somewhere, but no one has ever been able to cite the code. I suspect it has more to do with contractual obligations rather than any specific law.  Only laws I know of restricting the sale of games in this manner exists in Japan.

Yes, it's a contract between the distributor and the retail stores.  The distributor says if you want to sell ABC at your store, you have to follow the guidelines to the letter.  The Harry Potter books are a classic example.  If you are going to sell them, you have to meet all of the guidelines and follow all of the rules.

[Haze]

Point being, people have told me it's written into law somewhere, but no one has ever been able to cite the code. I suspect it has more to do with contractual obligations rather than any specific law.  Only laws I know of restricting the sale of games in this manner exists in Japan.

Yes, it's a contract between the distributor and the retail stores.  The distributor says if you want to sell ABC at your store, you have to follow the guidelines to the letter.  The Harry Potter books are a classic example.  If you are going to sell them, you have to meet all of the guidelines and follow all of the rules.

I thought there were laws that would make such contracts illegal in the first place as it's restricting trade etc?  Anyway, that's moving off-topic.  My point was simply that games companies like to use dirty tactics, and even if you have a legal product, they can make it difficult for you to sell it by placing pressure on retailers.

[ark_ader]

So instead of me proving why the DMCA doesnt apply , why dont you tell me why it does?

I decided I won't go near it as I am satisfied on the conclusions from the work I already researched.  It is up to the individual to make up his or her own conclusions.  Again I suggest that a valid argument brought to this thread, should come with a valid reference to the source material researched.

We have comments from Haze whom has spent his valuable his time to bring new ideas into the discussion, and being an ex-Mamedev coordinator, I welcome his point of view, and thank him for his contributions.   

I'm interested in the DMCA and how it can go against fair use once a court has determined so, after considerable cost from each party affected.

How I came to this conclusion:

Hypothetically let's say a person called Jack has a game that they have purchased (Lets say an Acorn Electron Game - Twin Kingdom Valley) and Jack cannot play it anymore because his Electron died.  Jack cannot buy an Electron anymore (hypothetically) but Jack is a budding coder and wants to port it to the PC for his own use.  Unfortunately the game cannot be accessed via an emulator because it has copy protection (it did) so Jack bypass(es) the protection to get at the source code - safe in the knowledge that where fair use comes into play, Jack is covered.

Bug Byte finds out (if they are still around?) and sues Jack for copyright infringement.  Eventually Jack wins due to fair use but the DMCA gets Jack for breaking the copy protection. 

Did Bug Byte sell the game in the US?

When does the game come under US jurisdiction?

Would the DMCA come into play if Jack lived in the USA? 

That is what I am researching at the moment.

It is very interesting.

[Haze]

Hypothetically let's say a person called Jack has a game that they have purchased (Lets say an Acorn Electron Game - Twin Kingdom Valley) and Jack cannot play it anymore because his Electron died.  Jack cannot buy an Electron anymore (hypothetically) but Jack is a budding coder and wants to port it to the PC for his own use.  Unfortunately the game cannot be accessed via an emulator because it has copy protection (it did) so Jack bypass(es) the protection to get at the source code - safe in the knowledge that where fair use comes into play, Jack is covered.

Bypassing copy protection does not give you the 'source code'  The source code is what gets compiled or assembled to create the distributed binary.

The DMCA has various problems, and until it's tested in specific cases it's impossible to tell you exactly what the ruling would be.  What actually *counts* as protection?  The game 'Pairs Love' which is supported in MAME has protection.  When it was first emulated it just worked, the MAME cpu core didn't emulate the exceptions which the protection routine triggered when the protection check failed.  The 'protection' was so weak and badly implemented it may as well have not existed, and nobody even noticed it until some bug fixes were made to the CPU core and it actually started triggering the exceptions, prior to that it worked fine!  Even after that, the only 'protection' was returning a magic number from a certain read.  It's actually hard to know if it really is protection, because you could defeat it without trying by putting a random number generator in and resetting a few times (which is a pretty normal thing to do during development for unknown inputs anyway)  Likewise, sometimes you'll get sound / graphic roms where the data is in an odd order, but it's easy to see what the order should be.  You could call that some kind of encryption / scrambling if you wanted, but on the other hand it could just simply be due to the way the pcb was designed, shorter traces to save money / simplify the design.

Also take the old game 'Civilization' it has a copy protection scheme which involved you having to tell the game which technology came before/after another one.  I 'circumvented' that by remembering all of them, and I'd also made a chart of the technology advances for my own gameplaying reference anyway.  Would me remembering all the combinations be illegal under the DMCA?  Would my chart have been illegal?  Would guides on GameFAQs explaining the technology chain be illegal?  Most of it was just common sense, and knowledge, is that illegal?  It was just facts about how the game worked which also happened to be used as protection.  MAME contains facts about how the hardware works derived from reverse engineering, and isn't much different to this example in reality, it's stuff that's been figured out and learnt as part of, in the case of the game, playing, in the case of MAME, researching.

It's not the only game.. With my original Amiga copy of Pinball Fantasies, there was a word based protection system.. about 1/5th of the time the word was something simple, like 'ball', so on the disc I wrote 'just keep typing ball until it works' because it was far easier than trying to count lines and words in the manual, I guess I 'circumvented' that protection system too just through normal use of the game, and solving a problem (why should I look through the manual when I know that more often than not the word is 'ball'?).  Do you honestly think anybody could possibly rule against that if it happened today?

You can attempt to apply the DMCA to anything and everything if you really want, and you can come up with some pretty comical examples.  I consider your emulation example to be just as ludicrous as the above ones.

The DMCA has clauses for interoperatibility, which is exactly what emulation is, it allows the original software and data to interact with different software / data, but again it's not entirely clear.  Your character Jack could quite easily claim he was doing what he did in the name of interoperatibility.  There are reasons a lot of people claim it's a 'broken' law, and reasons why it so often gets abused.  Again, the only real way you're going to find out is to test it, and I think companies are only likely to want to test it in cases where they think they'll get a favorable outcome and there is significant money involved as to avoid setting precedents which could blow a hole in the entire thing.