Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on June 02, 2004 01:57 PM
Copyright subsists for life + 70yrs in the author. It's something like life + 50yrs for works pre-76 or something like that. So that means, you violate the exclusive right of the author of the rom to reproduce it, when you download it, so long as the author is still alive, or if he is dead, 70yrs have not passed.
Any excemptions you find in the DMCA don't do jack for the right of reproduction. All they allow you to do is "hack" the rom to decrypt it if you DO IN FACT own the original board. But since this is not the case in 99% of the rom downloads, the DMCA does nothing here.
Furthermore, as Mame begins to emulate even newer roms, I can see a napster type scenario coming about where Mame becomes outlawed by some act. Yes, MAME does have legit uses, but just like Napster 99% of the people using MAME are not using it for legit uses (i.e., they do not own the original arcade board).
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Posted by: Anonymous Coward on June 02, 2004 01:57 PMAny excemptions you find in the DMCA don't do jack for the right of reproduction. All they allow you to do is "hack" the rom to decrypt it if you DO IN FACT own the original board. But since this is not the case in 99% of the rom downloads, the DMCA does nothing here.
Furthermore, as Mame begins to emulate even newer roms, I can see a napster type scenario coming about where Mame becomes outlawed by some act. Yes, MAME does have legit uses, but just like Napster 99% of the people using MAME are not using it for legit uses (i.e., they do not own the original arcade board).
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