42 replies to this topic

[StooB]

I'm no stranger to downloading MAME roms and playing old games, but we all tick YES to 'Are you legally allowed to play this game' etc... but what exactly are the legalities of downloading ROMs, making virtual tables and distributing files? If you go on www.ipdb.org all the ROMs are there so they are readily avaliable.

What's the deal?

Cheers

[Bob5453]

The deal is you can either enjoy them and play some pinball like the rest of the bad boys do in their spare time or you can question your moralities and not check the box and do something for your community like being a scout master in your spare time .

Your choice.

[settingsons]

Also I think the virtual pinball hobby is not likely to take away money from companies like Stern but generate revenue. Virtual Pinball is more likely to introduce new generations to pinball, and revitalise the interest of the oldies - the end result hopefully being that people go and seek out real pinball and put some money in the machines.

I have seen this - my 10 and 11 year old boys love pinball, their first experience being our virtual cab. Most of their friends love to play the cabinet and I know they have since played real pinball at a shopping complex with a cinema which has a cabinet in the foyer. I know that every time we go there we always end up playing a game each (or three) on the Avator machine and that is something that wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for VP and the ability to play ROM tables.

All this maybe why Stern don't mind their work being copied 3 years after a table is released. Just imagine 100 years from now - the only way to play 'King and Queens' or 'Terminator 2' will be in a virtual form - historical preservation

[CuriousDan]

Hopefully, the companies that produced pins and who still are in business will not mind to have their machines emulated...

[StooB]

Just imagine 100 years from now - the only way to play 'King and Queens' or 'Terminator 2' will be in a virtual form - historical preservation

My thoughts entirely!

[wildman]

The deal is you can either enjoy them and play some pinball like the rest of the bad boys do in their spare time or you can question your moralities and not check the box and do something for your community like being a scout master in your spare time .

Your choice.

I got nothin

[zebulon]

The deal is you can either enjoy them and play some pinball like the rest of the bad boys do in their spare time or you can question your moralities and not check the box and do something for your community like being a scout master in your spare time .

Your choice.

I got nothin

me neither

[NHA]

The deal is you can either enjoy them and play some pinball like the rest of the bad boys do in their spare time or you can question your moralities and not check the box and do something for your community like being a scout master in your spare time .

Your choice.

I got nothin

me neither

I'm a Scoutmaster and am "almost done" with my VP cab so I can play all these wonderfull creations! So I guess I fall in both categories. I know I personally wouldn't have played nearly as much "real" pinball locally if I never found this forum and VP. Even made it to Pin-a-go-go and Pacific Pin Expo to experience many of these classics.

[yogiholzer]

There's some agreement, so they let us do, so there's no problem at all.

[faralos]

being a former Scoutmaster it's not really about morals at all
I don't have any illegal torrents or anything
but I still click on that button and play with no worries!
it is really up to how YOU feel about it
let me ask you this, as a scoutmaster do you ever go past the speed limit while driving?
Do you feel guilty when you break the law that way?
kind of the same thing here as long as you 'stay in lane' no one will notice what you do
it's when you make a big stink out of it yeah someone may stand up and take notice

Edited by faralos, 26 November 2011 - 01:49 PM.

[Darkfall]

Like everything, it all comes down to money.

We honour the 3 year rule, so we're not intruding on the time when their new products make the bulk of their money, and after the 3 years, they're thinking that exposure to the masses is a good thing - some people may decide to purchase the real product or seek it out to play it and generate additional sales indirectly.

If virtual pinball suddenly started to become a real business and a company like Stern decided it wanted to be in the business of developing virtual machines, we'd suddenly be in their revenue path and things would change in a hurry. Right now, we're not threatening their existing business model, so we coexist peacefully - with the notion that we're technically in violation of copyright law when we click "yes" when we legally shouldn't, and thus they have legal recourse if they should ever need it.

You can get away with just about anything, if you're not in anyone's path to money *grin*.

[maceman]

...Another thing is this:

Did you know that books cannot be copyrighted? Only the layout and format can be. I can't get into great detail here, but I run a website that houses many many books..... I had a conversation with someone I know in the UK with a similar type site because i found some of his information being sold by google books. When i brought it to his attention, he told me the story of how he went through a legal process and was told that they cannot scan and sell something he had, but they could indeed take the info, re-set everything in a new font/format/layout and re-sell it. I am not sure if this only meant public domain stuff or anything at all, but regardless, it made me think about copyright more and what exactly a person can or cannot copyright....

If this principle is indeed true, then with Pinball, I would say the fact that the authors are 'repackaging' the original tables in a new format means they actually own copyright on VP tables, and not the other way around. In otherwords, we would be breaching copyright if we were making real pinball tables, but a simulation gives the authors the copyright over the digital version.
I am only speaking of the tables at this point, as i don't know about the roms. Since we are using the roms in the same format as the OG,it could technically be the breaking point, but again only if someone made a stink.
I am not a lawyer, this is just my opinion of things i have learned from others....

Maceman

Edited by maceman, 26 November 2011 - 07:43 PM.

[destruk]

Well, it's not true.

[CuriousDan]

Like everything, it all comes down to money.

If virtual pinball suddenly started to become a real business and a company like Stern decided it wanted to be in the business of developing virtual machines...

Luckily that has not happened yet, but Stern machines will be emulated in Pinball Arcade. Hopefully nobody in here will get the idea of recreating Ripley's.

[maceman]

Well, it's not true.

Was this directed at my post? If so, kinda vague response, no?

I am not sure what isn't true as you didn't say... but i can add another thing...is that companies like google and amazon can take your book('product'), and sell it and keep the difference in markup. I just ran a test on a book who i knew the author of, now dead, but his 'copyright is held by a company in the UK i know. I see it for sale on both amazon and google. This is one of several books i asked them about...so,yes, it is true!

Same with music and I have little say over it.... and this i know for sure since that is my business....

If you do a search on any of my albums, you will find them on hundreds of stores worldwide, many i never heard of. There are lots of people selling for higher prices,which i don't like at all. I know what i agreed to with the various distribution channels... but not this.

Who gave permission for that? However, they are breaking no current laws.

Maceman


EDIT: Here is some additional info that would apply to pinball:

"Copyright does not cover ideas and information themselves, only the form or manner in which they are expressed. For example, the copyright to a Mickey Mouse cartoon restricts others from making copies of the cartoon or creating derivative works based on Disney's particular anthropomorphic mouse, but doesn't prohibit the creation of other works about anthropomorphic mice in general, so long as they're different enough to not be judged copies of Disney's. In many jurisdictions, copyright law makes exceptions to these restrictions when the work is copied for the purpose of commentary or other related uses (See Fair Use, Fair Dealing). Meanwhile, other laws may impose additional restrictions that copyright does not — such as trademarks and patents."

{{^^^ I think what happened to JP's Spiderman table is a good example which closely matches what has happened to me and others....}}}

So because no one here is benefiting monetarily, it would potentially fall under the "Fair Use"category:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Use

Edited by maceman, 26 November 2011 - 09:23 PM.

[blur]

about legality of roms on internet - they are perfectly legal to distribute because there are some people out there that own real pinball machines and they have the right to keep rom backup on disk just in case

so since there are some legal users out there roms on web are legal

what is not legal is downloading it and using it if you don't own rights for it
so your download and your use is illegal but you can also put it on web site and spread it and that would be legal

but i think nobody looks at these ooooold roms vp and mame use since all those companies are long dead or they do something else today - so actually vp and mame are the only thing that keeps them alive and gives them free advertising

and for vp roms there are some agreements with companies that own rights to roms to use them freely on vp (though i don't know if there is such agreement why it would be big deal if you use roms in fp?)

[CuriousDan]

Maceman, are you willing to take those (nice sounding) arguments to court? Wonder what mr. Fentz will do if a cease and desist letter arrives.

[blur]

maybe maceman is right - you can't put copyright on idea of spiderman - you can make another one - but it has to be different - so if you make another one that looks the same - it is illegal

also if you make pinball that looks and feels exactly the same it is also illegal

except if industry tolerates it

[maceman]

...again, I am not claiming what is right or wrong here... I am just giving you guys a real life practical example of what can happen and how copyright is a very very shaky legal proceeding.. I have shown how in 3 instances (my own,a colleague,and JP) people who 'thought' perhaps they were covered by so-called copyright got stomped upon....

..and the case with JP should prove I am correct in my assessment.

@ blur, I think your statements are correct, except for this part which could be explain better perhaps:

"what is not legal is downloading it and using it if you don't own rights for it"

I think this is the whole argument here, that is, whether or not it is illegal to do so or not. Let me explain....

First of all, as others have stated in this thread, it depends on profits. Any sort of rom protection was put into place by various manufacturers in order to avoid their SALES from diminishing. The claim here is that VP is not benefiting financially, thus, there is no issue or breach unless you have some proof to show us?.

I think it will become clearer if you read this regarding rom copyright:

Copy protection mechanisms

"While ROM images are often used as a means of preserving the history of computer games, they are also often used to facilitate the unauthorized copying and redistribution of modern games. Seeing this as potentially reducing sales of their products, many game companies have incorporated features into newer games which are designed to prevent copying, while still allowing the original game to be played. For instance, the Nintendo GameCube used non-standard 8 cm DVD-like optical media which for a long time prevented games from being copied to PCs. It was not until a security hole was found in Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II that GameCube games could be successfully copied to a PC, using the Gamecube itself to read the discs.

SNK also employed a protection on their Neo Geo games starting with The King of Fighters in 1999 which used an encryption algorithm on the graphics ROMs which prevented them from being played in an emulator. Many thought that this would mark the end of Neo Geo emulation. However, as early as 2000, hackers found a way to decrypt and dump the ROMs successfully, making them playable once again in any Neo Geo emulator.

Another company which used to protect their arcade games was Capcom which is known for its CPS-2 arcade board. This contained a heavy copy protection algorithm which was not broken until 7 years after the system's release in 1993. The original crack by the CPS2Shock Team was not a true emulation of the protection because it used XOR tables to bypass the original encryption and allow the game to play in an emulator. Their stated intent was to wait until CPS-2 games were no longer profitable to release the decryption method (three years after the last game release). The full decryption algorithm was cracked in 2007 by Nicola Salmoria, Andreas Naive and Charles MacDonald of the MAME development team.

Another copy protection technique used in cartridge-games was to have the game attempt to write to ROM. On an authentic cartridge this would fail or cause an exception, however, emulators would often allow the write to succeed. Pirate cartridges also often used writable chips instead of ROM. By reading the value back to see whether the write succeeded, the game could tell whether it was running from an authentic cartridge. Alternatively, the game may simply attempt to overwrite critical program instructions, which if successful renders it unplayable.

Some games, such as Game Boy games, also had other hardware such as memory bank controllers connected to the cartridge bus. The game would send data to this hardware by attempting to write it to specific areas of ROM; thus, if the ROM were writable, this process would corrupt data.

Capcom's latest arcade board is the CPS-3. This was resistant to emulation attempts until June 2007, when the encryption method was reverse-engineered by Andreas Naive. It is currently implemented by MAME and a variant of the CPS-2 emulator Nebula."

Edited by maceman, 26 November 2011 - 11:37 PM.

[maxfx4u]

http://www2.macleans...k-the-internet/

Edited by maxfx4u, 27 November 2011 - 12:07 AM.