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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 05, 2010, 08:25:06 am ---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?

--- End quote ---

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.
 

--- Quote from: ark_ader on February 05, 2010, 08:25:06 am ---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/

--- End quote ---

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:

--- Quote from: riley454 on February 05, 2010, 05:34:14 am ---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.

--- End quote ---

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  ;D

Hoopz:

--- Quote from: CheffoJeffo on February 05, 2010, 09:10:18 am ---
--- Quote from: riley454 on February 05, 2010, 05:34:14 am ---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.

--- End quote ---
It's not like the topic hasn't been discussed to death for over a decade ...  ::)

--- End quote ---
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.

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