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

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J.Max:

--- Quote from: Haze on February 03, 2010, 11:53:02 am ---
--- 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.



--- End quote ---

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

Haze:

--- Quote from: ark_ader on February 03, 2010, 12:10:22 pm ---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.

--- End quote ---

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:

--- Quote from: J.Max on February 03, 2010, 12:16:02 pm ---Nah, he has no legal interest in doing so.  It would be dismissed immediately.  You can't just sue to sue.

--- End quote ---

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:

--- Quote from: Haze on February 03, 2010, 08:02:47 am ---The license says that you can't use MAME in a commercial way, and by downloading / using MAME you are agreeing to this license
--- End quote ---

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:

--- Quote from: Blanka on February 03, 2010, 12:57:15 pm ---
--- Quote from: Haze on February 03, 2010, 08:02:47 am ---The license says that you can't use MAME in a commercial way, and by downloading / using MAME you are agreeing to this license
--- End quote ---

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.

--- End quote ---

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)

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