This whole topic is a bunch of BS. Everyone who trades in emulation is in violation of trademark or copyright. The idea of a couple of representatives negotiating agreement with "Jack and Gary" is laughable. The idea that "Jack and Gary" see emulation as a threat is totally untrue. I asked Stern's marketing manager at CES2013 what they thought about emulation and he said they saw it as a "gateway to the real thing". If "Jack and Gary" see pinmame as something that decreases their IP's value, then they are wrong. If they see emulation as a an alternative to the real thing, then they don't understand the value of the real thing. Emulation does nothing but provide an interactive commercial advertising for their unique products for free. Do you think General Motors would be mad if there were opensource racing simulators of all their current production cars that an enthusiastic community developed and promoted for free? There's just something wrong with the entire MAME scene because the masters of it are afraid of punitive (and wrongful) litigation.
But none of that really matters anyway. They release their code for free. They do nothing to protect it and by law that means that ALL use of it is fair (in the legal sense of the term). Table IP owners have a right to a royalty if someone else profits from their IP. They also have a right to damages if someone damages them in their market. Neither of these things are taking place.
I expect all the Stern SAM VP tables to be available shortly.
I couldn't disagree more.
This is all fine and dandy, mate, but it doesn't change that "Gary and Jack" are the people in charge when it comes to declaring what goes with their code, because they're the owners of their respective businesses and therefore their IPs. All these arguments about whether or not emulation harms the market have been made dozens of times, but in the end it doesn't matter one bit unless you're going to personally head over to STERN HQ and work out a hard agreement, preferably with a contract, that allows us to emulate the SAM system.
They do nothing to protect it? Gottlieb disagrees: http://ipdb.org/gottlieb_cease.html
They're very well within their rights to disagree with our usage of their creations and are very well within their rights to take legal action as well, and as an operator of a website, you're always better off taking the safe route and not pissing off the people that can very well cause you a major headache and financial harm through legal action, regardless of the actual outcome. A line has been drawn before, and if that line is crossed, it might just very well be akin to the self-destruction of this site. It doesn't matter that it's "fair use" (and given that there's a decent amount of money involved in the virtual pinball scene, the courts might very well decide differently), the point is to prevent the lawsuit in the first place.
Stern publicly and freely releasing ROMs is different from Gottlieb protecting their software and manuals. Your understanding of US Intellectual Property law is incorrect. Perhaps when you get a better understanding of the terms "damage" and "harm" you will see things more like I do. As it is now, I am enjoying POTC using SAM code daily.
I'm not really sure you are understanding my argument as you seem to think I'm arguing for this website to trade in SAM tables. I am not. What I am saying is that people can do whatever they want, but when you dabble in emulation, only an extreme minority of folks are "within their rights". But this doesn't really matter because it would be foolish for any of the IP holders to establish a legal precedent defining emulation as legitimate when they can slither around in the murky waters of an unresolved legality. In all likelyhood, the courts would find that emulation (as practiced today) does not result in any harm to the IP holders which, ironically in turn, would probably lead to direct damage to IP holders.
It's hard to understand the rights of the individual when you come from a culture that is only a couple of generations removed from being subjects. Here in the US, we see things more from a perspective of individual liberty (with risks of course) tempered by the cultural understanding of being a sovereign with God-given (as opposed to state given) rights.
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