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

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DJ_Izumi:


--- Quote from: Blanka on February 02, 2010, 04:06:13 am ---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 ;) )
--- End quote ---

??? 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:


--- Quote from: Jack Burton on February 02, 2010, 06:33:09 am ---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. 



--- End quote ---

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:


--- Quote from: jcterzin on February 01, 2010, 09:06:05 pm ---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.

--- End quote ---

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.


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