Arcadeshop boards selling cheap.. copies/knockoffs?

[mattosborn]

is it a bootleg if it is bought from the same factory where they are made?

Yes, of course. The definition of bootleg is something sold illegally or without authorization. A "good" bootleg is one that is indistinguishable (or even identical) from the authentic one. Still a bootleg.

 

[RedWolfJC]

Grey Market vs. outright bootleg.
I guess it all depends on how you feel about these...
Grey market= bad but necessary?
Bootleg= bad and not necessary?

Side note on repro artwork, does owning an original cab give you the right to repro the art for your own use. Before you say no, there are those who feel that owning the original board gives you the right to burn new roms for the board to repair. Is there a difference? Is it OK as long as someone else doesn't profit from it?
I still think someday these legal questions will all be definitively answered, and collecting in general will never be the same.

 

[FrizzleFried]

Who called the Karma Police?

Thanks for the head-start...

 

[teckkev]

Red.. If I answered you IMO.. I would get flamed.. Who cares

IMO, if you own the cab.. repro art is aok in my book. If you own the PCB, making new roms for it is Aok in my book. Anyone that repairs pcb's has to say it is aok too

Kevin

 

[ChompingQuarters]

Grey Market vs. outright bootleg.
I guess it all depends on how you feel about these...
Grey market= bad but necessary?
Bootleg= bad and not necessary?

Side note on repro artwork, does owning an original cab give you the right to repro the art for your own use. Before you say no, there are those who feel that owning the original board gives you the right to burn new roms for the board to repair. Is there a difference? Is it OK as long as someone else doesn't profit from it?
I still think someday these legal questions will all be definitively answered, and collecting in general will never be the same.

Haaa haa ha... Only laughing because when I first restored my Ms. Pac I brought up the fact that "RESTORING" with NOS, Licensed or Illegal artwork shouldn't 100% matter (well, it does but hold on I'm getting to my point). If "I" have Ms. Pac Serial number 60,044 I think you technically "Legally" own one artwork license. However, in order to keep with my "TECHNICAL" thought process you'd need to scan and recreate EVERYTHING on your own (unless someone "GIVES" you the vector or raster files) and 100% DESTROY your original artwork (in which you replace).

Kind of like software licensing. You reauthorize your artwork (toss it in the trash) and authorize it again (with new artwork you created from scratch).

However, buying unlicensed artwork is technically Illegal (In theory).

 

[BaconSM]

Grey Market vs. outright bootleg.

Side note on repro artwork, does owning an original cab give you the right to repro the art for your own use. Before you say no, there are those who feel that owning the original board gives you the right to burn new roms for the board to repair. Is there a difference? Is it OK as long as someone else doesn't profit from it?
I still think someday these legal questions will all be definitively answered, and collecting in general will never be the same.

You just hit on the definition of grey market on the head. It can legally be argued either way and then the courts decide. Let's hope no company ever sees this small group as enough of a cramp in their revenue stream for us to find out.

 

[VectorJunkie]

Who called the Karma Police?

Exactly my botha!

 

[BaconSM]

Red.. If I answered you IMO.. I would get flamed.. Who cares

IMO, if you own the cab.. repro art is aok in my book. If you own the PCB, making new roms for it is Aok in my book. Anyone that repairs pcb's has to say it is aok too

Kevin

Your opinions are very valid and I would say that most of us completely agree with you. But I think it's worth pointing out that in a world where only the legal opinion mattered, there would be nothing but old games, NOS parts and new licensed parts and artwork. You couldn't by unlicensed repo artwork and we could even have a problem repairing old PCBs due to copyrights on particular parts.
Again, let's hope that never is an issue.

 

[cueball]

okay i have a few dumb questions..

wherein do the bugs on the board exist? are they due to the hardware or due to the ROMS? I always found it shaky that I could buy a board legally, and i must use the software that it requires to only load the ROMs for the game that it supports. I dont understand how or why it only can allow those ROMS while being 'legal'..

if the hardware/firmware/whateverware was simple to allow an individual to load ROM files from boards they own, then ANY game should be able to be loaded - as it would/should be playing from a copy of the actual board.

and answer me this.. is DKII licensed? because it is a copy of something that already existed. similar theme to the board being copied..

In many cases, ours is not a hobby to be completey unique with ideas, but innovative enough to use tools and technology to replicate and improve upon existing products.

God Save the Classics!

 

[RedWolfJC]

okay i have a few dumb questions..

I can answer some of this

I always found it shaky that I could buy a board legally, and i must use the software that it requires to only load the ROMs for the game that it supports. I dont understand how or why it only can allow those ROMS while being 'legal'..

it's technically only legal to run the public domain roms, though some people do argue that if you own the original game board, then you can run the roms for that game, but as I've said, I wouldn't bet the farm on that

if the hardware/firmware/whateverware was simple to allow an individual to load ROM files from boards they own, then ANY game should be able to be loaded - as it would/should be playing from a copy of the actual board.

this is an emulator board, and does not use Mame as it's software base. They have to program the board to work with each different romset. (I guess on a really basic level it's kind of like the way you can't take roms from a Burgertime Boardset and expect them to work on a Galaga)

and answer me this.. is DKII licensed? because it is a copy of something that already existed. similar theme to the board being copied..

As far as I know Jeff did not license it but I remember reading somewhere that Nintendo actually knows about the hack and has "unofficially" given it's blessing, or agreed to turn a blind eye... not sure if that's 100% true or not.

 

[savit4l8r]

it's technically only legal to run the public domain roms, though some people do argue that if you own the original game board, then you can run the roms for that game, but as I've said, I wouldn't bet the farm on that.

This is derived from the RIAA opinion that once you buy a (for example) CD, you have bought the "right" to transfer it over to other media for personal use. I agree that I would not bet my livelihood or future on this passing muster in a court of law, but if you say... put a 48 in 1 in a bar and maintained an archive of each and every of the 48 original game boards for each one you had on location, you would have a strong case. However, since we're not talking making big money, no one would bother to archive 48 boards in the first place and even if they did but still got a cease and desist order, they would simply cease and desist, as it is not cost effective to fight it. In short, we may never know...

 

[RedWolfJC]

This is derived from the RIAA opinion that once you buy a (for example) CD, you have bought the "right" to transfer it over to other media for personal use. I agree that I would not bet my livelihood or future on this passing muster in a court of law, but if you say... put a 48 in 1 in a bar and maintained an archive of each and every of the 48 original game boards for each one you had on location, you would have a strong case. However, since we're not talking making big money, no one would bother to archive 48 boards in the first place and even if they did but still got a cease and desist order, they would simply cease and desist, as it is not cost effective to fight it. In short, we may never know...

Yeah, that's right, there's more to it than that of course (always is with legal stuff), but there is one major flaw to that line of thinking: basically buying the 48-1 is illegal because the board is illegal (the sellers have no right to sell said product). Now the AS board kind of works around that in that it doesn't come with the roms pre-loaded. So in theory, one could dump their roms from their game boards, load them into the AS board, and possibly be ok.

At one point there was an argument about cross -platform owership that was somewhat interesting (basically if you buy the PC version of the game, do you have the right to the PS3 or Xbox versions) I seem to remember that even going to court, but I have no idea what came of it. What could be even more interesting (and related to this argument) is if they included things like having the roms on a PC CD of old arcade games like the Williams or Atari collections. If you buy that cd, can you legally load the roms onto a multiboard?

By the way, these are great discussions, ultimately we're discussing the future of this hobby.

 

[savit4l8r]

Yeah, that's right, there's more to it than that of course (always is with legal stuff), but there is one major flaw to that line of thinking: basically buying the 48-1 is illegal because the board is illegal (the sellers have no right to sell said product).

You're missing the key part of the arguement, the ownership of the original board would give you the "license" to use 1 copy in ANY format. Under said theory, the fact that the board is pirated is irrelevant. The music equivalent would be to copy to a tape or download off Napster, both of which are technically illegal, both legal if you own the original CD. I agree this is an interesting discussion and that the future and present of our hobby depends on infringement or violation of intellectual property. My point earlier was it is not that intellectual property is being violated which matters to us, it is whos intellectual property is being violated...

 

[RedWolfJC]

You're missing the key part of the arguement, the ownership of the original board would give you the "license" to use 1 copy in ANY format. Under said theory, the fact that the board is pirated is irrelevant. The music equivalent would be to copy to a tape or download off Napster, both of which are technically illegal, both legal if you own the original CD. I agree this is an interesting discussion and that the future and present of our hobby depends on infringement or violation of intellectual property. My point earlier was it is not that intellectual property is being violated which matters to us, it is whos intellectual property is being violated...

It is different because in the Napster situation, nobody is selling anything... I think a better comparison would be if you went to a flea market and bought a bootleg cd to use as a backup. Since someone is selling something that they do not have the right to sell commercially, then the board remains illegal, regardless of what the buyer owns. The problem is the original seller does not have the license to sell the product, and that makes it illegal. Go back to the artwork argument, just because you own a Pac Man, it doesn't mean you can legally purchase repro artwork from anyone other than Two-Bits. Could you legally scan and reproduce the art for your own personal use? Maybe... Could you design your own repro board (or 48-1) and use it instead of the individual boards? Probably, but it wouldn't be very practical

Here's another thought on the 48-1, for arguments sake lets say that it is ok to buy the 48-1 if you own the rights to all the roms... Say you only own the rights to 30 out of the 48 games, and you disable the games that you do not have the rights to in the menu system, is that legal, or since the roms are still on the board (even though they are disabled) would it be a violation?

Hmmm, maybe out of this discussion someone could come up with an unofficial collectors code of ethics

 

[savit4l8r]

It is different because in the Napster situation, nobody is selling anything... I think a better comparison would be if you went to a flea market and bought a bootleg cd to use as a backup. Since someone is selling something that they do not have the right to sell commercially, then the board remains illegal, regardless of what the buyer owns. The problem is the original seller does not have the license to sell the product, and that makes it illegal. Go back to the artwork argument, just because you own a Pac Man, it doesn't mean you can legally purchase repro artwork from anyone other than Two-Bits. Could you legally scan and reproduce the art for your own personal use? Maybe... Could you design your own repro board (or 48-1) and use it instead of the individual boards? Probably, but it wouldn't be very practical

I see your point now, I was missing that.

 

[shred]

Wow a little late to this thread but I would like to say a few things.

First off if people support these rip off boards it may eventually force Steven to not support his boards or even discontinue them because he is no longer selling or making a profit. No updates, no new games etc.

I am in another hobby and a few companies moved their manufacturing to china to save money. Well now allot of the stuff is made there because in order to compete other companies had to move thier manufacturing. Now there are Chinese knock offs of almost everything in the hobby and they are coming from the same factories and these items are selling way cheaper. Well in this economy guess which items are selling? Now some of the original companies are out of business or getting close.. Now what, no more innovation in the hobby. The Chinese do not design anything they just steal. American companies are cutting their own throat by moving thier manufacturing to China. So they save some manufacturing costs but end up competeing against thier own product bootleged made chaeper and selling cheaper.



Anyone know where the AS boards are made? Is it China.


Dave