7 Dec
2003
7 Dec
'03
7:50 a.m.
On Dec 7, 19:29, Witchy wrote:
But the arcades would possibly own the games anyway,
and therefore
are
legally allowed to use the ROMs in MAME.
A few of them, perhaps, but I suspect a lot of copyright holders might
get upset about that. If you're thinking about the exemption granted
for obsolete games, it only applies where "machine or system necessary
to render perceptible a work stored in that format is no longer
manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the commercial
marketplace." If someone manufactures and sells machines, especially
for use in arcades, the exemption does not apply. It probably doesn't
apply in Europe anyway -- it's an exemption to the United States
Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
There is also the issue that you're not allowed to distribute ROM
images with MAME, so you'd need some way of distributing the images
separately.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York