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

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Haze:


--- Quote from: ark_ader on February 03, 2010, 11:32:59 am ---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.  :lol

--- End quote ---

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.


--- Quote ---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."   :banghead:

--- End quote ---

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:


--- Quote from: Haze on February 03, 2010, 11:37:10 am ---
--- Quote from: ark_ader on February 03, 2010, 11:32:59 am ---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.  :lol

--- End quote ---

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.


--- Quote ---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."   :banghead:

--- End quote ---

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.



--- End quote ---

 :laugh2:

I like you Haze you make me laugh.

Haze:


--- Quote from: ark_ader on February 03, 2010, 11:50:26 am ---
--- Quote from: Haze on February 03, 2010, 11:37:10 am ---
--- Quote from: ark_ader on February 03, 2010, 11:32:59 am ---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.  :lol

--- End quote ---

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.


--- Quote ---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."   :banghead:

--- End quote ---

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.



--- End quote ---

 :laugh2:

I like you Haze you make me laugh.

--- End quote ---

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.

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