Licensed Roms - mame Question

If the Op asking the question is concerned, I'd suggest he engage a Australian attorney who specializes or understands intellectual property.

Asking a bunch of foreigners isn't likely to yield results which are defensible in the Queens Court.

I agree with the other gent - the person asking is a wanker.
 
This topic comes up every now and I don't think I've ever seen a definitive answer. So, my walking around assumption is it's technically illegal but almost none of these companies are around or care and it happens a lot.

So, sure it's fine except in some really rare case where a license holder emerges and wants to take action. I would think a cease and desist would be the first action taken.

As best I can tell, there are very few folks who are worried about it but you can't say it'll never become an issue. A conservative lawyer will tell you it's illegal. A liberal one might say go ahead until someone makes a stink about it.

That's not a clear answer, but the best I've been able to surmise after years of these occasional threads.
 
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Buying an Agilent oscilloscope with base options doesn't entitle you to hack the software keys to get advanced analysis and compliance software packages.

Buying a Tesla without FSD doesn't entitle you to hack it to enable FSD.



We aren't talking about modern tech here, in the days where you need a subscription for a vacuum cleaner.

We are talking about how the world worked 40 years ago.
 
Unless they rewrote all the prior code from scratch, they really can't change licensing like that.
I remember there being some complaining about changing the license back then, but they did: https://docs.mamedev.org/license.html (GPLv2 w/ a lot of 3-clause BSD code). I don't know if that's when they changed from C to C++, and they thought changing .c to .cpp was a "rewrite"... but apparently that's what it is now. You can find old posts where it's discussed for more details.

DogP
 
Funny how Mark was actually the one doing that, if you read the above posts.

But you didn't say anything about that, did you.
But Mark DOES have experience and knowledge on the subject doesn't he. Therefore his opinion actually matters. Mark is among the top ranked TTL EEs on this site. Smart people often state certain tasks are easier than they really are. Other people make opinions without experience or knowledge.
 
This topic comes up every now and I don't think I've ever see a definitive answer. So, my walking around assumption is it's technically illegal but almost none of these companies are around or care and it happens a lot.

So, sure it's fine except in some really rare case where a license holder emerges and wants to take action. I would think a cease and desist would be the first action taken.

As best I can tell, there are very few folks who are worried about it but you can't say it'll never become an issue. A conservative lawyer will tell you it's illegal. A liberal one might say go ahead until someone makes a stink about it.

That's not a clear answer, but the best I've been able to surmise after years of these occasional threads.
From my understanding sometimes it is better to stay in the gray area. For example let's say namco sues Tesla for putting pole position code in their cars. If Tesla chose to fight namco and win that could lead to a domino effect across all 40 some year old software ip. By the way Tesla actually did put pole position code in their cars at one time and namco asked for it to be removed.
As for pcbs that would go into existing already purchased dedicated arcade machines there is a bit more ground to stand as one does have a right to repair. But that's a whole other can of worms
 
But Mark DOES have experience and knowledge on the subject doesn't he. Therefore his opinion actually matters. Mark is among the top ranked TTL EEs on this site. Smart people often state certain tasks are easier than they really are. Other people make opinions without experience or knowledge.


That doesn't change my statement. I never 'downplayed' what it takes to make a PCB. *Mark* did that. You're pivoting.

I've designed boards. I worked in high-speed test and measurement for 25 years, with signaling 1000x faster than this, making the tools that people like Mark use to test their chips and designs. (There's a reason he changed his avatar to look like mine. We're in adjacent industries.)

I just don't pump out repro arcade boards here, selling them to noobs to line my pockets. I choose to spend my time doing what the hobby *actually* needs more of, which is preservation and repair of existing hardware, and helping others learn to do the same.

Don't you have some new product announcements to go make on Facebook?
 
That doesn't change my statement. I never 'downplayed' what it takes to make a PCB. *Mark* did that. You're pivoting.

I've designed boards. I worked in high-speed test and measurement for 25 years, with signaling 1000x faster than this, making the tools that people like Mark use to test their chips and designs. (There's a reason he changed his avatar to look like mine. We're in adjacent industries.)

I just don't pump out repro arcade boards here, selling them to noobs to line my pockets. I choose to spend my time doing what the hobby *actually* needs more of, which is preservation and repair of existing hardware, and helping others learn to do the same.

Don't you have some new product announcements to go make on Facebook?
Don't need to. every time you derail one of my threads I sell more products. In fact you are the largest contributing factor to all my klov sales.
 
So im from a sleepy small town in Queensland Australia (population 45,000 people)
I have opened up an arcade bar which i built the machines with nuc pc and using roms on the cabinets, They look the part with signage, shape, light box etc and only have 3, but a customer told me they are an avid retro arcade and these are illegal as we are charging to use them (tokens)

I have been doing some research on this and what i can do, its neon impossible to get arcade games in Australia nevermind anywhere 5hrs from where i am, and looking at some solutions.
I did read one way to buy the original boards then put them in with jamma, issue i have here is that i have written software for the mame which collects details like tokens, usage, high scores which i want to show on big screens like leaderboards etc.
The other way i read was to get the original board and get an eeprom reader and dump the rom and use that, then keep the board / rom as proof i own the licence.
I plan to have more machines too.
Can anyone elaborate on these ideas or any others please. Also any suggestions where to get boards from in the world :)
Thanks in advance.
Just claim they are as legal as can be—totally true.
 
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