Building mame cabs for profit?

[chadtower]

Has anyone here looked into the issues involved with making MAME cabs for sale? I've seen some of them go for big bucks but I'm wondering what potential issues may be with things like copyrights of the software, what you would do about roms, etc.

[Flack]

It feels dirty all the way around to me.

First of all, MAME is meant to be given away -- I believe selling it is illegal.

Second of all, selling ROMs is DEFINITELY illegal.

Third, and this gets into "my opinion" area but ... it just feels wrong. It's like buying a hotrod that someone already customized. Half of the fun in these things is building them yourself, IMHO. If you download Starcade cartoon episodes and watch them, that's one thing, if you then sell those tapes on eBay, it's something else.

[chadtower]

It feels dirty all the way around to me.

First of all, MAME is meant to be given away -- I believe selling it is illegal.

Second of all, selling ROMs is DEFINITELY illegal.

Right, but you're describing it as if you're selling CDs only. With a good mame cab you're talking about a custom built piece of hardware. The hardware alone could run you hundreds of dollars. What I would think of selling would be a finished platform on which you run mame, not necessarily mame. That's why I'm wondering if people who DO sell cabs, sell them with mame on them, or if they sell them and then just give the people CDs, or if there is even a difference there. Or do they sell them and then say "this is where you can get mame and roms"? I know there are people out there selling mame cabs... I don't see anything legally grey about selling a cabinet designed for mame/emulation. Now, selling the roms, yes, that's obviously illegal. I'm wondering where exactly the line is and how that would be handled properly.

[Captain Wrong]

I've seen a growing number of these at Coin-Op auctions and they are saddly some of the higher priced items usually. All the ones I've seen at auctions are fully loaded with MAME and roms galore and because of that really aren't legal. Selling a cab with a PC in it hooked up and ready to go is kosher (assuming you have a proper license for the operating system.) Putting MAME in the cab and roms, illegal. Plain and simple.

I really don't think "giving" the user the ROMS for free with the purchase of the cab, or telling them where to find the stuff would pass muster in a court. Unless you are the copyright owner of the ROMs, they're not yours to give and unless the person to whom you're selling owns the boards, they're not allowed to own them anyway. The legality doesn't change just because you're bundling the ROMS with hardware or "giving" them away.

If you were looking to do this, I'd play as safe as possible and sell the hardware and leave it to the onsumer to do whatevery they want after it's out of your sight. Though I haven't seen anyone busted yet, it certaintly could happen and as more and more of the game companies are waking up to an emulation machine as a high end toy (doesn't Fry's sell one now?) people could more agressively protect their copyrights.