New DMCA Exemptions.....Mame in the clear?

[zektor]

http://www.copyright.gov/1201/

It certainly appears so. Read #3 on the list. Good news indeed!

[Retsudo]

I would say it's good news. :D

[Anonymous]

Wow, that is a huge bit of news there Zektor! I wonder what the legality is of selling mame machines with ROMs on them now? Is it considered public domain, which you cannot sell as your own, but you can sell as a compilation, ala the "3000 books on CD" sellers on ebay?

[zektor]

Wow, that is a huge bit of news there Zektor! I wonder what the legality is of selling mame machines with ROMs on them now? Is it considered public domain, which you cannot sell as your own, but you can sell as a compilation, ala the "3000 books on CD" sellers on ebay?


Hmm, good question. I wouldn't try to sell Mame machines just yet, but that's just me. I would say that this definitely means sharing and emulating of MANY romfiles is legal now as far as I am reading here.

You know, I was just thinking. I couldn't imagine selling the roms themselves would be legal now, but selling a machine that has roms included just may. Same with CD compilations. I occasionally make backups of Mame roms and such for people who need them, and I basically charge for the CD's, postage, and my time...not for the roms themselves. This may also be legal. That is if the roms in question abide by these new guide lines.

[Jorpho]

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.

This isn't over yet. JAMMA cabinets are still widely available in the commercial marketplace. That is probably enough.

[kingpong]

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.

This isn't over yet. JAMMA cabinets are still widely available in the commercial marketplace. That is probably enough.

Nah, JAMMA just means a bunch of wires and connectors, and that hardly constitutes the system needed to run a piece of software. One could perhaps argue that the "work" of an arcade game includes the hardware on which the software runs (if the hardware is unique to that game), but that flies in the face of the intent of this exemption - allowing software to run on a device other than the original, obsolete device to prevent the performance of the work from being lost when no more original devices are available.

I don't know why anyone would think this changes anything about the legality of ROM distribution. At best this is support to the claim of the legality of emulation, and stronger support toward the legality of circumventing access control schema (encryption, BIOS, etc) on obsolete devices. The software itself is stil protected by all existing copyright laws; it is merely the means of acccessing or executing that software that has been opened in cases where the original means of access or execution are not available/viable.

[zektor]

This DOES change the legality of certain roms being distributed. And Gamepro apparently thinks so as well, so I'm not alone on this one:

http://www.gamepro.com/gamepro/domestic/games/news/31559.shtml

[Retsudo]

True on some roms. As long as the publishers dont release those old games as bundles like Williams electronics is about to do with Williams Classics coming out this month. But Im sure there are thousands of games out there that prolly never show their face again on a console or in arcades.

[kingpong]

Gamepro is wrong. Gamepro says:
The exemption applies to games that require the original hardware as a condition of access, and if the game is "no longer manufactured or reasonably available in the commercial marketplace."

The copyright office says:
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.

Gamepro incorrectly involves the availability of the "game". It is not the availability/support of the game that matters, but that of the hardware on which the game is played. They're way off base to start with. And again, there is absolutely nothing in the ruling that changes the restrictions on the distribution of ROMs. The key thing to remember with this ruling is that the only thing it applies to is the circumvention of access controls on copyrighted works. Read all of the other documents there on the copyright page, including all the discussion of the decision and the full text of the DMCA, and the boundaries of this ruling are pretty clear.

So for what ROMs does this change the legality of distribution? You still can't give me a ROM, but I can now legally decrypt a ROM I already have.

[zektor]

"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."


A "format". This would be the game(s) in question, "shall be considered obsolete" if the hardware that is used to basically make the game play is no longer manufactured or available commercially. I would say that these particular games in question, the obsolete titles, are freely distributable according to this representation.

[Jorpho]

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.

This isn't over yet. JAMMA cabinets are still widely available in the commercial marketplace. That is probably enough.

Nah, JAMMA just means a bunch of wires and connectors, and that hardly constitutes the system needed to run a piece of software. One could perhaps argue that the "work" of an arcade game includes the hardware on which the software runs (if the hardware is unique to that game), but that flies in the face of the intent of this exemption - allowing software to run on a device other than the original, obsolete device to prevent the performance of the work from being lost when no more original devices are available.

Well, the software is distributed in the form of PCBs. And to "render perceptible" the software, you plug the PCB into a JAMMA cabinet. And JAMMA cabinets are still widely available.

[kingpong]

"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."


A "format". This would be the game(s) in question, "shall be considered obsolete" if the hardware that is used to basically make the game play is no longer manufactured or available commercially. I would say that these particular games in question, the obsolete titles, are freely distributable according to this representation.

Sigh... how many times do we have to go through this? This exemption in no way changes anything about the distribution of the game - it is about being able to, for example, circumvent the encryption of a game so it can be stored/accessed on other hardware. Practically every other paragraph on that site states that it is about circumventing access controls. For example,

"On October 28, 2003, the Librarian of Congress, on the recommendation of the Register of Copyrights, announced the classes of works subject to the exemption from the prohibition against circumvention of technological measures that control access to copyrighted works."

You have to keep in mind that it was not the DMCA that said you couldn't download ROMs, but rather the ordinary, everyday copyright law that says that, and it didn't change. What DMCA did was make it illegal to work around the access controls in a piece of work that you legally owned.

Going back to your take on the matter, your interpretation of "format" is far too broad. The "format" is not the work, but the medium on which the game is stored. Seeing as how you equate the "format" to the game, let's substitute "game" for "format" in the text of exemption #3:

"Computer programs and video games distributed in games that have become obsolete and which require the original media or hardware as a condition of access. A game shall be considered obsolete if the machine or system necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that game is no longer manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace."

Now that just doesn't make sense at all. This ruling only makes sense with the following assumptions:
1) Machine = System = Hardware that runs the software
2) Format = How the data is stored (ROM chip, floppy disk, punch card)
3) Program = Game = Work = Copyrighted Work

And amazingly enough, with those assumptions the ruling fits the boundaries of the DMCA and the limited powers given to the copyright office by the DMCA.

[kingpong]

This isn't over yet. JAMMA cabinets are still widely available in the commercial marketplace. That is probably enough.

Nah, JAMMA just means a bunch of wires and connectors, and that hardly constitutes the system needed to run a piece of software. One could perhaps argue that the "work" of an arcade game includes the hardware on which the software runs (if the hardware is unique to that game), but that flies in the face of the intent of this exemption - allowing software to run on a device other than the original, obsolete device to prevent the performance of the work from being lost when no more original devices are available.

Well, the software is distributed in the form of PCBs. And to "render perceptible" the software, you plug the PCB into a JAMMA cabinet. And JAMMA cabinets are still widely available.

No, the software is distributed in the form of ROM chips. To "render perceptible" the software, you plug those chips into a PCB that contains hardware that can read and execute the software on those chips, and in turn that PCB is plugged into a JAMMA connector to allow us to view the result. JAMMA connectors and ROM chips are obviously readily available (assuming that you could use an EPROM in place of a mask ROM, which is not always the case), but the non-ROM part of the PCB is typcially not available. Since that unavailable part of the equation is preventing the rendering perceptible of the software, it is acting as the access control, and may be circumvented. Saying that JAMMA availability is a problem is sort of like saying you can't emulate a console because televisions are available.

[Jorpho]

So you're saying that original, individual ROM chips are more widely available than PCBs? (I would think that the chips would be thoroughly useless by themselves.)

[Ed Oscuro]

This is a bit old...but needs clarifying.

I've never seen a home or arcade game where the ROM chips weren't soldered to the board, unless you're talking about plug-in EEPROMs on a prototype where pulling individual EEPROMs for reprogramming would've been necessary. I don't know if I'm seeing exactly what KingPong's saying because it doesn't seem to make sense. ROM chips are soldered to the PCB. You go to buy a PCB, not a ROM chip... LOL

Now some systems, like the CPS2, have A and B boards, and some have a motherboard/daughterboard setup where you can remove a game from the main PCB and switch it with another by simply swapping daughterboards. However, to talk about "loose ROM chips" is nonsense. Especially since I don't think 1/100th of the arcade machines around today would still be working if the manufacturer had to make a chart of where each ROM chip should go and counted on the arcade operator to place them--even if they were all plug-in socketed ROMs, as opposed to the vastly more common soldered on variety. Most all of them would've been killed right off by static at some point.

JAMMA is just a standard setup harness for plugging in your board, made so you can swap games and still have cords long enough so leads from your coin mechanism can be "wired" to the game simply through a prewired system that utilizes a cartridge-style pin to finally connect to the game itself, as opposed to rewiring every cabinet for every new game as was done in the old days; so KingPong is correct in saying that they're not rare at all.