I guess it comes down to experience in these matters. I have tried to show real life examples of true cases (including my own), but you seemed to have bypassed that.
Real life experiences make no difference to a court. I can get away with speeding, but if a cop is there pointing his radar gun at me and writes me a ticket I'm 'guilty'. And whether I get caught or not, it's still 'wrong' no matter how you look at it from an ethical point of view.
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I asked for a specific answer where i was 'wrong', yet you give none. I strive very hard in all i do to research before i speak or write, yet you are fast to condemn people you don't even know...and publicly deface on a forum(calling me a liar)?? WOW.... Your words are empty words with no proof. Show me exact proof if you are so confident in what you say. I am open to seeing something i may have missed, but i have been in this area for many many years and i do not see your points...and yes,i am very familiar with the paper you linked....it says nothing different that what i have said....unless you can show me.
You too don't like reading.
Specific example -
"Did you know that books cannot be copyrighted?"
Well duh, why does most every book ever sold have a copyright date on it? Why have people gotten prosecuted for illegally copying material out of copyrighted books? Your rant and rave here shows you deserve criticism of your idiocy if you truly believe books can't be copyrighted?
Here is the official US Government Copyright Registration form -
http://www.copyright...ms/formco2d.pdf"Literary Work" if you didn't know, would be a 'BOOK'.
Specific example of prosecution for copying a copyrighted book - which you said can't be copyrighted:
http://www.michigand...ization-projectThey copied books without permission from the copyright holder and they got themselves a lawsuit, because it is against the law to copy a book which has copyright protection.
As for Google -
Google does not claim copyright on scans of PUBLIC DOMAIN BOOKS
http://www.google.co...k...a8567&hl=enYou can ONLY publish books on Google Books that you hold the copyright to -
http://books.google....eA_NhK62ftMrg8AIf there are copyrighted books on Google Books being sold illegally you can send them a DMCA to have them remove the content, if you own the copyright to that book.
Obviously, your 'partner in crime' has been skirting by just as you think you can too - immune from prosecution, or just lucky.
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You also misunderstand things. With JP, I am not talking about JP getting into trouble for his spiderman table, but the other way around. I was speaking about the issue he had with someone ripping off his table and what he could or can't do about it. He made an OG spiderman table, someone overseas tookhis design and repackaged it for MONEY. I was speaking of his dilemma, not the other way around....
My point is, Stern paid for and licensed the intellectual property to the Spiderman pinball game they sell. I don't know what his individual rights are with regard to piracy/resale of stolen intellectual property he used in his game. I'm not a lawyer. But I do know Bifuca is including Visual Pinball and Visual PinMAME in their product, and they are also including copyrighted roms. So we've been setting up a case to get them to at least remove the items that we have direct control over -
VP and
VPM. If the IP holders of the roms, or art, or music/sounds in question wanted to prosecute, they have to do that themselves.
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You cannot use generalized examples of copyright in every case. Most examples on the net or elsewhere deal with taking a product and emulating it on a different machine. So for the example of a mame rom, it is crystal clear because owners of those games have declared very plainly on their sites that they do not want their roms emulated on another system.
With pinball it is quite different. Making a table that looks like a real table is no different that drawing a picture of batman and sticking it on your wall. You will not be in trouble for making a likeness for your own uses. If you went and mass marketed it, then that would be a different story.
Maybe you should look at the license agreement for 'pinball roms' -
http://www.planetary...e_Addams_Family1. License. The software installed through this process (the "Software") and any related documentation provided to you are licensed to you by Williams Electronics Games, Inc. or its affiliates ("Williams"), subject to the terms and conditions in this License Agreement. Williams retains title to the Software and related documentation. This license allows you to use the Software only in the specific pinball games manufactured by Williams and marketed under the WILLIAMS or BALLY trademark for which the Software is intended ("Pinball Games"). To do this, you are permitted to transfer the Software into a Flash ROM device in the Pinball Game. Other than the copy of the Software installed for you during this process, one (1) archival copy thereof, and the Flash ROM copies for installation into the Pinball Games, you may make no copies of the Software. You may not transfer or sublicense your license rights in the Software to another party or distribute copies of the Software, except that you may install Flash ROM copies of the Software into Pinball Games owned by others as part of servicing such Pinball Games, provided the owners of the Pinball Games read and agree to accept the terms and conditions of this License Agreement and provided you do not charge an additional fee for the provision of the Flash ROM copy of the Software. Under no circumstances may you sell copies of the Software, including Flash ROM copies. You may not publish the Software.
2. Restrictions. The Software contains copyrighted material, trade secrets and other proprietary material. You may not decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble or otherwise reduce the Software to a human-perceivable form. You may not modify, network, rent, lease, loan, or create derivative works based upon the Software in whole or in part. You may not electronically transmit the Software from one computer to another over a network.
Sounds like point 1 there says they ONLY want the roms to be used in a REAL LIFE licensed/sold physical pinball machine - no multi-game cabinets, no computers, no iPhones, no emulators. You also are prohibited from running Scared Stiff roms in a STTNG game. If you own the required machine, then you are permitted (by this license) to have one archival copy, to be used ONLY for archival purposes or you can use it to loading onto another machine that you are repairing.
I'm sure Noah either has permission to host the roms, or the IP holder doesn't care enough to prosecute. David Foley said he licensed the gottlieb roms for us to host. So either that is correct or they don't care to prosecute. But the license should clear up whatever misconception you think on the subject.
Quick link to myths about copyright -
http://www.lrc.colum...ight-myths.html"If I don't charge for it, it's not a violation."
False. Whether you charge can affect the damages awarded in court, but that's main difference under the law. It's still a violation if you give it away -- and there can still be serious damages if you hurt the commercial value of the property. There is a USA exception for personal copying of music, which is not a violation, though courts seem to have said that doesn't include widescale anonymous personal copying as Napster. If the work has no commercial value, the violation is mostly technical and is unlikely to result in legal action. Fair use determinations (see below) do sometimes depend on the involvement of money.
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If you read Nintendo's copyright disclaimers(http://www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp#copyrights), you will see that they are very adamant against using their roms. That is obvious. If someone bypasses buying their equipment to play their games, it is stealing. They even go further to say that even if money is not involved it is illegal, because alot of their product resurface and is sellable (ie. virtual console games on Wii)...again MONEY!!!
Copyright law states that it is NOT illegal to make an archive of your own owned software, but it is illegal to download a rom EVEN IF you own the OG software
(ie. "Therefore, whether you have an authentic game or not, or whether you have possession of a Nintendo ROM for a limited amount of time, i.e. 24 hours, it is illegal to download and play a Nintendo ROM from the Internet."...a quote from nintendo's site).
OOH! You managed to get one thing right! YAAY!
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This doesn't answer the question of pinball emulation. According to law, even if you owned the OG pinball table, it would be illegal to download the rom, that is, if your reasoning were correct in regards to pinball roms, which i believe it is not.
The license terms take precedence over the federal copyright law. The above license from williams permits downloading the code for games you own, and games you service.
For the rest of your argument in this discussion - if we have permission to host the roms, then we have permission to host the roms. If you do not own the machine then you are not supposed to download the roms unless you fall into a fair-use exemption. But if nobody prosecutes, then it's nothing to worry about even if it's illegal.
In order for the whole piracy/copyright problem to be settled, once and for all, the enforcers are still going about it the wrong way. They go around shutting down websites, prosecuting a few big heavy hitters, seizing domains of torrent trackers, going after individual distribution systems in a haphazard, clumsy, inefficient fashion. They've always prosecuted violators in this way - which doesn't fix anything. People will just move to another format, another system, a different website, or resort to other means like in-person copying to get what they want. If they ever truly desired to make a difference, they would leave these distribution sites up - in fact, set up some of their own 'honeypots' for a few years and allow everyone to break the law. On their piracy centers, log every download, every IP visitor, with dates and times and information - and then a year or two later prosecute every last one of the criminals with serious fines and penalties and jail time. Or simply use the torrent trackers to prosecute the uploaders - even that would be more successful than shutting down the site itself. Use google to find pirated movies - let google help you instead of sending a request to remove the link to the page - because if you simply do that then people will go to Yahoo, or Excite, or ftpsearch or newsgroups to find the same thing. Why don't they prosecute Thailand or China or Russia for this stuff?
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