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Feature: Games
Play Donkey Kong, go to jail?
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CommentsThe software for most of these arcade games is not free. If you do not have a legal license for a game you are playing under MAME, you are infringing on someone's copyright. The MAME site provides downloads of two games that have been made free by their owners and which the site has permission to distribute, and another whose owners seem to have disappeared with the fall of East Germany: Gridlee, Poly-Play, and Robby Robo.
The source code for for DOS and Windows versions of MAME is freely available on its Web site under the terms of the MAME license. I find no mention of the MAME license on either the Free Software Foundation or Open Source Initiative license listings.
MESS (Multiple Emulator Super System) is a similar project to MAME, but dedicated to providing emulation for computer systems rather than arcade game hardware. Systems range from Apple to TRS-80 Model 1, from the IBM AT to the VIC-20 -- nearly 200 systems in all. MESS also uses the MAME license and -- like MAME -- prohibits its distribution on the same media with ROMs.
The XMAME/XMESS project ports the original MAME and MESS code to the X platform so that Linux and other flavors of Unix can share the joy, and uses the same license.
KnoppixMAME
The KnoppixMAME LiveCD contains a shrunken version of Knoppix -- the ISO is only about 150MB -- and runs X-MAME with a gxmame front end.
No game ROMS are included with KnoppixMAME, but there are a couple of different ways to get around that. First of all, you can create a /roms subdirectory on your hard drive and place your game ROMS there. KnoppixMAME will look for that directory for games, and gxmame, the GUI front end for MAME, will list them after you select File->Audit All Games from the command menu.
Your second choice is to enter knoppix addroms at the boot prompt to have KnoppixMAME create a new ISO for you which includes the ROMS found in the /roms directory. The advantage to having the ROMS on the CD, of course, is that they are then portable and don't have to reside on the hard drive of whatever system you are running KnoppixMAME on.
AdvanceCD
AdvanceCD, another LiveCD games distro, is part of a suite of related projects. <! what's the aim of the projects?> AdvanceMAME, AdvanceMESS, and AdvanceMENU, AdvanceSCAN, AdvanceCOMP, and AdvanceCAB round out the offerings. The goal of the Advance projects is the same as the original MAME and MESS projects: to preserve obsolete hardware and software platforms.
AdvanceMAME and AdvanceMESS are licensed via the GPL, with this special exception added to every source file:
In addition, as a special exception, Andrea Mazzoleni gives permission to link the code of this program with the MAME library (or with modified versions of MAME that use the same license as MAME), and distribute linked combinations including the two. You must obey the GNU General Public License in all respects for all of the code used other than MAME. If you modify this file, you may extend this exception to your version of the file, but you are not obligated to do so. If you do not wish to do so, delete this exception statement from your version.
The AdvanceCD download includes the three games noted earlier, which are truly free. Including these ROMS, the entire ISO is only 20 megs in size. The point is to make as much space as possible on the CD available for your games.
The download version of AdvanceCD is not in ISO format. It's done that way on purpose to make it as easy as possible for you to add your ROMs. When you've put all of your game files into the image/arcade/rom directory created when you decompress the tarball, simply run the included makecd.sh script and it creates the ISO file for you to burn to CD.
If you're too young (or have simply forgotten) how to play arcade games, the MAME FAQ provides the following tip which may help:
Remember, these are not PC re-creations, but the original games. These games always waited for a coin before they would run. With MAME, press 5 to "insert a coin" and get a "credit." To start the game, press 1 (one player) or 2 (two players). Usually, the player 1 controls are set to the arrow keys and buttons 1, 2, 3 are Left Control, Left Alt and Space, respectively. If the game doesn't respond, check the other questions regarding specific games.
Software: Available. Permission: ?
An amazing amount of work has gone into making emulators for all sorts of obsolete game and computing platforms. And I really would like to be able to play Donkey Kong now and then. But I don't know whether it would be legal for me to do so.
There are lots of places on the Internet where I can find a Donkey Kong ROM for download. Some are free, and some are commercial. But in either case, I don't know what right they have to distribute and what right I have to download and use.
One compiler of game ROMS links to a page on the U.S. Copyright Office site which states that computer programs and video games that have become obsolete get an exemption to the DMCA anti-circumvention measures prohibiting access to copyrighted works:
(3) Computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and which require the original media or hardware as a condition of access. A format shall be considered obsolete if the 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.
That's great, as far as it goes. At least the Feds won't be banging on my front door at midnight for DMCA violations. But what about Nintendo's rights under the original copyright to the game, exclusive of DMCA prohibitions? Am I infringing on them if I download and play the ROM for the original arcade version?
I wish I could tell you the answer. What's your take? Is it legal to download and play 20+-year-old arcade game ROMs?
Comments
on Play Donkey Kong, go to jail?Note: Comments are owned by the poster. We are not responsible for their content.
it isn't a copyright violation to _use_ software
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on June 07, 2004 10:34 AMIt infringes copyright to distribute or copy games without appropriate license, but once one has the software it isn't a breach of copyright to use (play) it: use is not one of the exclusive rights of copyright owners.
IANAL.
I suppose people around here know that the RIAA say that if you own a copy of, say, Deep Purple's Stormbringer on vinyl then you don't automatically have a licence to listen to it on CD - the same thing happens in games. If you own Altered Beast on the Genesis then see an arcade machine ROM for it, doesn't mean you can legally use that ROM in MAME. In principle if you want to use a MAME ROM legally then you need to own the arcade cabinet version of the game. Sucks, but that is how it is. At least in the U.K.
Re:Even though sometimes it shouldn't be, it is il
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on June 01, 2004 10:17 PMBut the DK example is still illegal unless you are distributing a valid license with the ROM. If you are, first sale applies. The license can be transferred and the new owner gets the same rights as if they were the first person to buy it. But most of these ROM sites aren't legitimate: they are distributing way more copies than they hold licenses for (not to mention many of them probably just got the image from another site).
So the main concern is copyright law, not trademarks or the DMCA. These games are so old, and they are in hardware, that there's nothing which could be claimed as a copy control device. And as the one website pointed out, there is a exemption for media which can no longer be read by other means.
Re:Even though sometimes it shouldn't be, it is il
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on June 02, 2004 01:59 AMI know, the law says "library or archive". But what do you have to do to create a library or archive in the US? As far as I know, there are no specific requirements, and any individual residing in the US is eligable to create either a library or an archive at any time.
So, as I understand it, if you have the original roms as proof that you have the copyright permission to have the programs on them, then you may have between 1 and 3 copies in whatever format you can use -- Please note that this is the US copyright law, and in no way takes into account any issues created by the DMCA legislation.
(3) Computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and which require the original media or hardware as a condition of access. A format shall be considered obsolete if the 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.--DMCA
I don't know why, but I see a loop-hole with the wording above. The ROMS become obsolete when a machine or system are no longer available (manufactured or purchaseable), correct? A system is a "procedure or process for obtaining an objective" (WordNet (r) 2.0), which is what MAME is, right? Thus, even if the original system (the hardware) is no longer available, a new system exists, negating the ROMS obsolescence. Taking into consideration that a copyright's existance might overlap the time between both systems, and the wording of the DMCA, there still may be problems with ROM usage.
this allows you to download mame + roms and play if you own the original arcade board... and that board is damaged.
btw, most classic games go for 5 - 20 bucks on ebay if you look.
StarRoms sells the rights to use roms legally for personal use (ie, you cant use them to create a legal bootleg machine). These cost 1 - 5 bucks each.
Hanaho (I believe) sells a CD with many of capcoms greatest games with their roms located on them.
So I believe you can get about 130 games running.
Sure this isn't the 2700 you can get through mame... but if people buy them, more companies will sell their products in this fashion.
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).
Less political, even under a pretty limited copyright term these things would still be restricted. A useful project for the MAME community would be to get people investigating who has the actual copyright to specific games and publish contact info for that organization if they are not available in legal formats like http://www.starroms.com/ - people should be willing to pay a reasonable price for these, and I think starroms offers that. If enough people wrote saying they wanted X game available to buy I think they would listen. People who are sitting on dead copyrights of info that is already available illegally need to keep hearing the message that making the information available legally is the ONLY sane way to defend their intellectual property. You can't stop copyright violation completely, especially in the digital age, but making information legally available for a reasonable price provides 1)a preferred avenue for people like me who want to respect copyrights even if I don't agree with all the legalisms of how they're applied and 2)eliminates the argument that it's okay to copy X because it's the only way it's available. When there are businesses doing the work of selling specific data downloads for money it is just flat-out stupid not to make all the information available.
in most cases, it's a copyright violation
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on June 01, 2004 08:45 PMhttp://www.starroms.com/
In most countries, it should be legal to buy the original Donkey Kong machine and use some technical equipment to dump the ROMs into files required for Mame.
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