Exidy went public domain?

[Jorpho]

I was looking at the public domain MAME ROMs (http://mamedev.org/roms/) recently and was surprised to see most of the Exidy library there. (No Mouse Trap, alas.)

According to the Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exidy), this boon actually dates back to earlier this year! Does someone here know the details? This sort of thing doesn't happen often, evidently.

(Seeing a release of ColecoVision CBS Victory (http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=679) would be far too much to hope for, of course.)

[Baloo]

"Mousetrap, Mousetrap, Cheese was the bait..."

Great news though! Always good to see MAME Roms go public, especially the old stuff.

[Leo_A]

Work that is in the public domain isn't covered by intellectual propery rights.

That Wikipedia article states that they were released into the public domain for free, non-commercial use. And that is legally impossible. If your intellectual property rights have expired or been forfeited, you no longer hold a valid copyright. And if you don't hold a valid copyright on the work in question, that means you can't dictate what someone else can do with it since it's now public property.

By saying it's available for "free, non-commercial use", that means it's still copyrighted but they're allowing people to freely utilize their work under their specified conditions without fear of legal action being taken.

I suspect someone, such as the Wikipedia editor, just incorrectly attached public domain to their generosity. If they were truely released into the public domain, there would be no legal barriers to any of us developing something like a classic compilation for commercial gain utilizing these properties.

[Kitsune Sniper]

Yes, these roms are definitely not public domain.

http://mamedev.org/?p=136
http://mamedev.org/?p=324

These are free for non-commercial use only. Xidy still owns the copyrights on these.

[Ed Oscuro]

Update from out of nowhere (even I'm surprised): Armed with Kitsune Sniper's work, I went ahead and updated the Wikipedia article's last paragraph with the correct and new information:

Exidy article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exidy)

To directly compare my edit with the existing topic look here (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Exidy&action=historysubmit&diff=434511472&oldid=426263630).

If anybody has any other ideas I'd be happy to look at them.

This is not the major focus of my time right now, but I figured it was worth doing!

[Zing]

"Xidy" looks ridiculous.

[Nz17]

Whatever the details are, I'm glad to see these ROM's freely available for non-commercial purposes. If you want to download them, then these are what is available as of 2020 A.D. and where they can be downloaded.


ROMs for Free Download
Thanks to the generosity of some of the original creators of the classic games that MAME® can emulate, several games have been released for free, non-commercial use. It is our hope that in the future, we will be able to add more games to this list.

Note: The ROMs on these pages have been approved for free distribution on this site only. Just because they are available here for download does not entitle you to put them on your own site, include them with your own distributions of MAME, or bundle them with your software, cabinet, or other item. To do that, you must obtain permission from the original owners.

Exidy Games
Circus
©1977 Exidy

Robot Bowl
©1977 Exidy

Car Polo
©1977 Exidy

Side Trak
©1979 Exidy

Rip Cord
©1979 Exidy

Fire One
©1979 Exidy

Crash
©1979 Exidy

Star Fire
©1979 Exidy

Targ
©1980 Exidy

Spectar
©1980 Exidy

Hard Hat
©1982 Exidy

Victory
©1982 Exidy

Teeter Torture
©1982 Exidy

Fax
©1983 Exidy

Top Gunner
©1986 Exidy

Other Games
Robby Roto
©1981 Bally/Midway

Super Tank
©1981 Video Games GmbH

Looping
©1982 Video Games GmbH

Gridlee
©1982 Videa, Inc.

Alien Arena
©1985 Duncan Brown

Source: https://www.mamedev.org/roms/

[gbpxl]

Whatever the details are, I'm glad to see these ROM's freely available for non-commercial purposes. If you want to download them, then these are what is available as of 2020 A.D. and where they can be downloaded.



Source: https://www.mamedev.org/roms/

That's awesome. I am one of those weirdos that still doesn't believe in piracy. I'll have to look into what MAME emulator is best to run these

[jb143]

I'm pretty sure these games have been released close to 20 years now... about as long as MAME has been around.

[Nz17]

MAME was first released during February 1997. Nine years later, the first ROM's it made available via its Web site were released during February 2006. Back then there were only 2 ROM's (Robby Roto and Gridlee). More ROM's were generously made available by their copyright holders gradually over the next five years until 2011 when the current set of 20 games plus their 3 variants was finally first available for download.

Really though, the idea for my posting in the first place is to bring awareness that it is cool that the companies even made any arcade games freely available at all regardless of when, how many, or the reasons, and to make people aware of this that weren't knowledgeable about it before now.

In short: Go play some free arcade games regardless of their age, retro gamers!

[gbpxl]

word.