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I know it isn`t sms related but it`s a subject that i feel that i need to chat with you guys . let`s talk about mame , you know that slow emulator that is nonetheless apretiated ( some games are so cool ) . Now i`ve read on ther homepage something like : historical realese ! pong is emulated ( or simulated ) . Wee hee . I jump in joy... now , i know that there goal is to emulate as many games as posible but... pong ? im sorry to all the pong lovers out there ( is there some ? ) but this is going to far... im not gona play pong for three hours straigt and consequently i am not gona have fun... sure , it has a historical standpoint and everything but... pong ? I know that it is ther wet dream but they are going to fast for themselves... I think that the idsa has left alone the emulators programers since emulating hardware is not a crime . and mame has allways applied to this law... untill now . They are getting blinded by their " savoir faire " and it is getting dangerous for them... for you see , atari probably still has the rights to this game... anyway , only time will tell . Now , about games inside the emulators themselves : meka has the snail game right ? this is , i think , different than the mame case . Why , you ask ? simply because it is a part of the original hardware and that zoop has acheved ( near ) perfect emulation . I know that it was dumped like the logo but sega nor idsa can`t say a damn thing because the law stipulates that emulating hardware IS legal... snail game included ! I unfortunatly can`t say the same for mame as pong isn`t part of any hardware , or so i`ve heard... In closing , i probably wrote all this for nothing but i wanted to share my feelings with you guys... Im questioning myself : what if somebody inside a big corporation deside that the move made by the mame team infringes copyright laws ? I sure hope that it goes unnotised... what about you guys ???

kanichiwa

Yes, Hasbro DOES have the rights to Atari games....and has been making many re-makes of the
originals for the PSX and PC. Of course, those games are techinaly illegial for MAME to
have. But MAME emulates the ORIGINALS.....these are enhanced, modern versions of the
classic games.

And no, no one plays Pong straight for 3 hours....but as all the revierwers have said, it's
great fun to play for 10-15 minutes at a time, several times a day!

Greg

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> kanichiwa

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> I know it isn`t sms related but it`s a subject that i feel that i need to chat with you guys . let`s talk about mame , you know that slow emulator that is nonetheless apretiated ( some games are so cool ) . Now i`ve read on ther homepage something like : historical realese ! pong is emulated ( or simulated ) . Wee hee . I jump in joy... now , i know that there goal is to emulate as many games as posible but... pong ? im sorry to all the pong lovers out there ( is there some ? ) but this is going to far... im not gona play pong for three hours straigt and consequently i am not gona have fun... sure , it has a historical standpoint and everything but... pong ? I know that it is ther wet dream but they are going to fast for themselves... I think that the idsa has left alone the emulators programers since emulating hardware is not a crime nd mame has allways applied to this law... untill now . They are getting blinded by their " savoir faire " and it is getting dangerous for them... for you see , atari probably still has the rights to this game... anyway , only time will tell . Now , about games inside the emulators themselves : meka has the snail game right ? this is , i think , different than the mame case . Why , you ask ? simply because it is a part of the original hardware and that zoop has acheved ( near ) perfect emulation . I know that it was dumped like the logo but sega nor idsa can`t say a damn thing because the law stipulates that emulating hardware IS legal... snail game included ! I unfortunatly can`t say the same for mame as pong isn`t part of any hardware , or so i`ve heard... In closing , i probably wrote all this for nothing but i wanted to share my feelings with you guys... Im questioning myself : what if somebody inside a big corporation deside that the move made by the mame team infringes copyright laws ? I sure hope that it goes unnotised... what about you guys ???

There's no law being violated with adding Pong to Mame. And I'll try to explain why:

Have you ever noticed that nobody ever attepts to complain about CPU emulators themselves violating any copyrights? Never happens. CPU emulators are, after all, hardware simulations in software, and over and over it's been proven that writing software that simulates the implicit functions of a piece of hardware is perfectly legal.

The implicit function of a CPU, of course, is to request bytes from the data bus, perform various operations on those bytes as to the (generally widely documented) instruction set, and send bytes back to the data bus (in the case of certain processors, like the z80, factor in input and output on ports, as well). An extreme simplification, but correct.

Then there's the other parts of an emulator: Graphics and Sound chips.. they too have an implicit behavior... they take a given input and produce an output signal.. in the case of a 'signal' an graphics chip emulator outputs a bitmap or a digital sound wave (usually).

This is perfectly legal. Even hardware recreations are okay: VGA card makers have been cloning the same models for years... Cyrix and AMD make chips that act like 80x86's and Pentiums, and there's nothing Intel can do about.

Since MAME and other emulators only contain hardware simulators, there's nothing illegal about them, so much as certain indivuduals and comanies would like to you believe otherwise (Meka IS an exception, by the way: it uses the SMS Bios embedded in the executable itself... Sega would have a right to complain, but I'd say they wouldn't have a problem with it.. that or we're 'flying under radar').

The portions of these arcade games that are copyrightable are the program code for the CPU's to run, the data that the graphics chips can turn into a video signal, etc... basically, anything built out of bytes is can be considered a 'creative work' and thus be copyrightable.

Well, Pong doesn't have one shred of data in it... The whole game is built of components that do nothing but act according to their implicit behavior. Not a ROM to be found (a little semantic issue worth addressing.. remember, it's not the rom chips themselves that are copyrighted, but the data on them... there's no patent or copyright on the function of a rom chip, which is to accept requests for certain bytes in its storage and send the corresponding data back on it's data lines).

Hasbro could complain that the pong simulator clones the 'look and feel' of pong, in fact they could bring that against any pong clone, but they wouldn't get very far. There may be a patent on the layout of the Pong circuits, but I don't think that's patentable, and if was, the patent would likely have run out by now (patents have much shorter lifespans than copyrights). Hasbro could also object to Mame calling it 'Pong'... hasbro DOES have the rights to the name.

Okay, is it fun? Maybe if you have someone to play it with. It's more fun than say.. Laguna Racer? Dogpatch?

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> > kanichiwa

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> nt

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> > > kanichiwa

Author	Message
Le hamster croustillant Joined: 03 Sep 2007 Posts: 352 Location: Canada	Emulation related... please read Posted: Mon Nov 22, 1999 2:08 am
	I know it isn`t sms related but it`s a subject that i feel that i need to chat with you guys . let`s talk about mame , you know that slow emulator that is nonetheless apretiated ( some games are so cool ) . Now i`ve read on ther homepage something like : historical realese ! pong is emulated ( or simulated ) . Wee hee . I jump in joy... now , i know that there goal is to emulate as many games as posible but... pong ? im sorry to all the pong lovers out there ( is there some ? ) but this is going to far... im not gona play pong for three hours straigt and consequently i am not gona have fun... sure , it has a historical standpoint and everything but... pong ? I know that it is ther wet dream but they are going to fast for themselves... I think that the idsa has left alone the emulators programers since emulating hardware is not a crime . and mame has allways applied to this law... untill now . They are getting blinded by their " savoir faire " and it is getting dangerous for them... for you see , atari probably still has the rights to this game... anyway , only time will tell . Now , about games inside the emulators themselves : meka has the snail game right ? this is , i think , different than the mame case . Why , you ask ? simply because it is a part of the original hardware and that zoop has acheved ( near ) perfect emulation . I know that it was dumped like the logo but sega nor idsa can`t say a damn thing because the law stipulates that emulating hardware IS legal... snail game included ! I unfortunatly can`t say the same for mame as pong isn`t part of any hardware , or so i`ve heard... In closing , i probably wrote all this for nothing but i wanted to share my feelings with you guys... Im questioning myself : what if somebody inside a big corporation deside that the move made by the mame team infringes copyright laws ? I sure hope that it goes unnotised... what about you guys ???

VgNut Guest	Snail game is SOFTWARE built in to the SMS, it is no different than Pong in that sense. nt Posted: Mon Nov 22, 1999 3:25 am
VgNut Guest	kanichiwa

SoulBlazer Guest	You should check out the new Pong PC version by Hasbro! Posted: Mon Nov 22, 1999 3:39 am
SoulBlazer Guest	Yes, Hasbro DOES have the rights to Atari games....and has been making many re-makes of the originals for the PSX and PC. Of course, those games are techinaly illegial for MAME to have. But MAME emulates the ORIGINALS.....these are enhanced, modern versions of the classic games. And no, no one plays Pong straight for 3 hours....but as all the revierwers have said, it's great fun to play for 10-15 minutes at a time, several times a day! Greg

Le hamster croustillant Joined: 03 Sep 2007 Posts: 352 Location: Canada	Here`s the tricky part : can we consider it part of the hardware ? nt Posted: Mon Nov 22, 1999 3:57 am
	Quote > kanichiwa

Heliophobe Site Admin Joined: 25 Oct 1999 Posts: 2029 Location: Monterey, California	Posted: Mon Nov 22, 1999 5:34 am
	Quote > I know it isn`t sms related but it`s a subject that i feel that i need to chat with you guys . let`s talk about mame , you know that slow emulator that is nonetheless apretiated ( some games are so cool ) . Now i`ve read on ther homepage something like : historical realese ! pong is emulated ( or simulated ) . Wee hee . I jump in joy... now , i know that there goal is to emulate as many games as posible but... pong ? im sorry to all the pong lovers out there ( is there some ? ) but this is going to far... im not gona play pong for three hours straigt and consequently i am not gona have fun... sure , it has a historical standpoint and everything but... pong ? I know that it is ther wet dream but they are going to fast for themselves... I think that the idsa has left alone the emulators programers since emulating hardware is not a crime nd mame has allways applied to this law... untill now . They are getting blinded by their " savoir faire " and it is getting dangerous for them... for you see , atari probably still has the rights to this game... anyway , only time will tell . Now , about games inside the emulators themselves : meka has the snail game right ? this is , i think , different than the mame case . Why , you ask ? simply because it is a part of the original hardware and that zoop has acheved ( near ) perfect emulation . I know that it was dumped like the logo but sega nor idsa can`t say a damn thing because the law stipulates that emulating hardware IS legal... snail game included ! I unfortunatly can`t say the same for mame as pong isn`t part of any hardware , or so i`ve heard... In closing , i probably wrote all this for nothing but i wanted to share my feelings with you guys... Im questioning myself : what if somebody inside a big corporation deside that the move made by the mame team infringes copyright laws ? I sure hope that it goes unnotised... what about you guys ??? There's no law being violated with adding Pong to Mame. And I'll try to explain why: Have you ever noticed that nobody ever attepts to complain about CPU emulators themselves violating any copyrights? Never happens. CPU emulators are, after all, hardware simulations in software, and over and over it's been proven that writing software that simulates the implicit functions of a piece of hardware is perfectly legal. The implicit function of a CPU, of course, is to request bytes from the data bus, perform various operations on those bytes as to the (generally widely documented) instruction set, and send bytes back to the data bus (in the case of certain processors, like the z80, factor in input and output on ports, as well). An extreme simplification, but correct. Then there's the other parts of an emulator: Graphics and Sound chips.. they too have an implicit behavior... they take a given input and produce an output signal.. in the case of a 'signal' an graphics chip emulator outputs a bitmap or a digital sound wave (usually). This is perfectly legal. Even hardware recreations are okay: VGA card makers have been cloning the same models for years... Cyrix and AMD make chips that act like 80x86's and Pentiums, and there's nothing Intel can do about. Since MAME and other emulators only contain hardware simulators, there's nothing illegal about them, so much as certain indivuduals and comanies would like to you believe otherwise (Meka IS an exception, by the way: it uses the SMS Bios embedded in the executable itself... Sega would have a right to complain, but I'd say they wouldn't have a problem with it.. that or we're 'flying under radar'). The portions of these arcade games that are copyrightable are the program code for the CPU's to run, the data that the graphics chips can turn into a video signal, etc... basically, anything built out of bytes is can be considered a 'creative work' and thus be copyrightable. Well, Pong doesn't have one shred of data in it... The whole game is built of components that do nothing but act according to their implicit behavior. Not a ROM to be found (a little semantic issue worth addressing.. remember, it's not the rom chips themselves that are copyrighted, but the data on them... there's no patent or copyright on the function of a rom chip, which is to accept requests for certain bytes in its storage and send the corresponding data back on it's data lines). Hasbro could complain that the pong simulator clones the 'look and feel' of pong, in fact they could bring that against any pong clone, but they wouldn't get very far. There may be a patent on the layout of the Pong circuits, but I don't think that's patentable, and if was, the patent would likely have run out by now (patents have much shorter lifespans than copyrights). Hasbro could also object to Mame calling it 'Pong'... hasbro DOES have the rights to the name. Okay, is it fun? Maybe if you have someone to play it with. It's more fun than say.. Laguna Racer? Dogpatch?

Zoop Joined: 24 Jun 1999 Posts: 1732 Location: Paris, France	Re: I'm afraid no, Meka is evil nt Posted: Mon Nov 22, 1999 6:27 am
	Quote > > kanichiwa

unfnknblvbl Joined: 12 Jul 1999 Posts: 891	All the more reason to use it... teeheehee (evil laugh) nt Posted: Mon Nov 22, 1999 8:01 am
unfnknblvbl Joined: 12 Jul 1999 Posts: 891

Le hamster croustillant Joined: 03 Sep 2007 Posts: 352 Location: Canada	All of this has been informative guys... thanks nt Posted: Mon Nov 22, 1999 3:56 pm
	Quote > nt

Le hamster croustillant Joined: 03 Sep 2007 Posts: 352 Location: Canada	LOL !!! ... nt Posted: Mon Nov 22, 1999 4:36 pm
	Quote > > > kanichiwa

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