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MAME ROM's etc


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Just so I'm clear:

 

Is it illegal to rip MAME DVD's?

Is it illegal to sell MAME DVD's?

Is it illegal to buy MAME DVD's?

Is it illegal to use MAME DVD's?

 

From what I have read if you have the original game ROM's everything is legit. The problem seems to be original ROM's are hard(ish) to find and way overpriced considering their vintage. If you have the original game ROM's (eg JAMMA) why would want to MAME it?

Even most JAMMA boards look like underground/no-name versions (to me anyway). It seems you may very well have hardware ROMs but they may not be a licenced product. Again how can it be possible to sell these boards?

 

To me it looks like there is growing market for home arcade and the game manufactures seem to be failing to capitalize. An Apple iTunes model would be perfect for downloading legit ROM copies / pre compiled XXXin1 DVD's.

 

Am I way of track? Sorry for rambling.....

 

Thanks for comments

Chavez (uber noob)

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The (EP)ROM's are removed from the JAMMA board and "read" using an EPROM chip reader. I have done this myself on industrial control logic boards. This information is digitally converted and stored on magnetic media. The MAME software Emulates the JAMMA hardware and the game can be played on a run of the mill PC.

 

Am I close?

 

Thanks for your response, but what about my original questions?

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Is it illegal to rip MAME DVD's? Yes

Is it illegal to sell MAME DVD's? Yes

Is it illegal to buy MAME DVD's? Yes

Is it illegal to use MAME DVD's? Yes

 

Unless you own the original PCBs of the games you wish to play, then it is illegal to have the roms.

 

That said, who is going to prosecute you? Fuck knows.

Unless you were living in the USA I wouldn't worry too much about having the roms. If you tried to do any of the things you mentioned. You won't make too many friends.

 

Oh, and welcome. Interesting 1st post.

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Watched a video about the systm guys making a mame cab. This exact question was asked. Yes, it is illegal, but what your emulating(normally) is old hardware which the companies no longer make actual boards for anymore. Many consider it to simply be abandon wear. There are some companies that do sell their roms online but they are hard to find. The concept of the itunes type store has been brought up before but alot of these companies dont seem to care anymore. Aslong as you arnt using it for money they wont really give a stuff
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Unless you own the original PCBs of the games you wish to play, then it is illegal to have the roms.

It's not that black and white.

 

In some countries you must do the copy yourself (ie: own the ROMs, and dump them to files manually). Downloading someone else's dumped ROMs is still illegal.

 

In some countries, "format shifting" (ie: taking digital media from one format [ROM, CD-ROM, whatever] and putting it on another format [rom file, mp3, whatever]) is also illegal.

 

In Australia we're a little bit of a grey area, as we have partial rules as to format shifting that came into place with the US FTA (Free Trade Agreement). It's not a full-blown DMCA, but there are now some silly rules in place that forbid certain things.

 

With that said, enforcing them is another story all together. I don't know any Aussies jailed for ripping a CD-ROM to mp3, but that doesn't mean it's been thoroughly tested in the courts.

 

Long story short, I personally wouldn't sell MAME ROMs (either in a cabinet, or on disc). These "XXXX-in-1" game boards are another question all together. You could probably successfully feign ignorance if you for any reason found yourself in trouble for selling them, and just say that the distributor sold them to you on good faith. It's dodgy, but you'd probably get away with it.

 

Put it this way: without official blessing from the copyright owner, there is no large-scale profit to be made in retro gaming. The only profits being made large scale today are done by Nintendo and Microsoft via their console download services. Everyone else is just making peanuts.

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All of that PLUS:

 

No you can't put a MAME cabinet into a take-away shop and have it collect coins for you. Even if you set it up to boot straight into the one rom that's on the machine, own the original board, dumped the roms yourself, ran a licenced copy of windows xp as the operating system and purchased everything with receipts.

 

Why?

 

Coz the makers of MAME have stipulated in their licence terms that you are forbidden to use it to make money.

 

They created it for one purpose, so that these games did not become extinct when the hardware died.

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the 48 in 1s are made in china so chances are they are not licensed ;P Thing is they would be considered similair to buying dvd's from bali. Because you can claim that you believed that they were actual bali dvds and not imitations, the cops cant get you for them
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very good answers (this is a top forum)

 

In summary then:

 

Most of what happens in the MAME (and wider JAMMA board) community seems to be illegal but due to it small scale the original licence issuing companies turn a blind eye (or don't exist anymore). I guess litigation would cost them more than they could ever hope to recoup via fines etc.

 

All I need now is two cabinets - One running MAME and the second running Chinese JAMMAS :)

 

on request , the aust govt will extradite you to the usa to face charges, even though you are an Aussie citizen, USA barks, we jump

 

i assume the 48-1 etc, is licensed

 

I did like this one.....:lol

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Coz the makers of MAME have stipulated in their licence terms that you are forbidden to use it to make money.

Bingo. Here 'tis in "print":

http://mamedev.org/legal.html

 

See the bottom of this post for an emulator that DOES allow commercial use. :)

 

I guess litigation would cost them more than they could ever hope to recoup via fines etc.

Yup. This is the problem media content creators are facing today. Suing individuals is just not profitable (in fact, it costs a lot of money for typical no reward what so ever). Previously individuals were fined simply to scare the masses, but in the day and age of BitTorrent and zero-effort file copies, the masses don't give a toss any more.

 

The only time you'll see legal action is when there's someone making a decent profit, and suing them nets you a decent gain. Given that all of the current XXXX-in-1 boards come out of China, US and Japanese copyright law (where most of the games are made) doesn't mean squat, and suing any of these fly-by-night knock off manufacturers is pointless, as they'll just claim bankruptcy, and 5 more will take their place 48 hours later.

 

As I've said time and time again, the only way to make money from media (including retro gaming) is (a) to have large-scale distribution rights (say, like XBox Live Arcade, or Wii Virtual Console in the case of retro games), and (b) to make "buying easier than stealing". Look at iTunes and Steam for two excellent, financially successful, real-world examples.

 

There was a company called Star ROMs back about 5 years ago that netted a deal with Atari to distribute their ROMs legally. Sadly the thing only lasted about 12 months, and disappeared after Atari themselves had some massive financial problems. But honestly, it was a good experiment. If anyone wants to make money out of retro gaming, developing a simple pay-for system in cahoots with a big name developer/publisher who still exists (Capcom, Irem, Midway, etc) is the way to do it.

 

Despite having a dickhead for a CEO (David Foley, you are an idiot), Ultracade did something similar a while back. They've since been bought out by Global VR, who still sell a few fully licensed retro game/emulation systems (they apparently use fully custom/proprietary emulation code that's not based on MAME):

http://www.globalvr.com/products_gac.html

 

So there's room to make money in the biz. But by the sounds of it, it's a lot of effort for a relatively niche market.

 

Oh, and remember too that there are emulators like RAINE out there that are licensed under the GPL which post no restrictions for commercial use. MAME is not the only emulator on the block!

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