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

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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:


--- Quote from: J.Max on February 02, 2010, 05:37:14 pm ---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.

--- End quote ---

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.)  :cry:  :banghead:  :blah:  :blah:

ark_ader:


--- Quote from: Haze on February 03, 2010, 08:02:47 am ---
--- Quote from: J.Max on February 02, 2010, 05:37:14 pm ---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.

--- End quote ---

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.



--- End quote ---

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.

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