As the Internet games fraternity collectively mangles what is an interesting news story regarding licensed emulated arcade products, SPOnG will endeavour to explain the whole MAME row which has kicked off over the last few days.
You may have read in various places that corporate overlord and general evil person David Foley, CEO of UltraCade, has moved to crush the poor happy-go-lucky coders of the MAME (multiple arcade machine emulator) application.
According to various sites, Foley is suing the developers of MAME because he has decided that he should own the MAME name as a trademark for his licensed emulator-based products. This isn’t the case. Foley has indeed applied to trade using the MAME name, simply as a reaction to the burgeoning piracy of arcade ROM sets housed in ready to play arcade cabinets.
As you may be aware, UltraCade offer licensed emulated games of days gone by, available en masse in a single arcade cabinet. The UC project now lists Capcom, Jaleco, Taito, Stern, Incredible Technologies, Midway and Atari amongst its partners, and has etched out a rather pleasant corner of the market, enabling gamers to legally enjoy retro videogaming.
As a reaction to Hong Kong and Taiwanese pirated cabinets, essentially consisting of a MAME-enabled PC and associated ROM sets, UltraCade has sought to remove the well-know MAME name from the wider, unlawful marketplace.
“This is a complex case amongst companies that are trying to make it about UltraCade stealing something from the M.A.M.E. team. That is not what this is about,” asserts Foley. “This is simply UltraCade Technologies and other publishers doing whatever it takes to protect our commercial interests and prevent other companies from stealing our market by capitalising on unlicensed games and selling products that only have value when coupled with illegally obtained games. Our application towards a trademark is to simply prevent anyone from commercially marketing an illegal product, nothing more. There have been no lawsuits filed against any of the M.A.M.E. authors, and there have been no claims towards the open source engine, nor will there be We are simply protecting our commercial market, and nothing more. We have no interest in the hobby community. We have no interest in the open source project. Our goal is to simply stop the rampant piracy in our marketplace, and we will use every means at our disposal to do so.”
Perhaps SPOnG’s only beef with UltraCade is that paying £1.00 for one credit on Street Fighter 2: Champions Edition, set to the hardest level, is a little steep.
You may have read in various places that corporate overlord and general evil person David Foley, CEO of UltraCade, has moved to crush the poor happy-go-lucky coders of the MAME (multiple arcade machine emulator) application.
According to various sites, Foley is suing the developers of MAME because he has decided that he should own the MAME name as a trademark for his licensed emulator-based products. This isn’t the case. Foley has indeed applied to trade using the MAME name, simply as a reaction to the burgeoning piracy of arcade ROM sets housed in ready to play arcade cabinets.
As you may be aware, UltraCade offer licensed emulated games of days gone by, available en masse in a single arcade cabinet. The UC project now lists Capcom, Jaleco, Taito, Stern, Incredible Technologies, Midway and Atari amongst its partners, and has etched out a rather pleasant corner of the market, enabling gamers to legally enjoy retro videogaming.
As a reaction to Hong Kong and Taiwanese pirated cabinets, essentially consisting of a MAME-enabled PC and associated ROM sets, UltraCade has sought to remove the well-know MAME name from the wider, unlawful marketplace.
“This is a complex case amongst companies that are trying to make it about UltraCade stealing something from the M.A.M.E. team. That is not what this is about,” asserts Foley. “This is simply UltraCade Technologies and other publishers doing whatever it takes to protect our commercial interests and prevent other companies from stealing our market by capitalising on unlicensed games and selling products that only have value when coupled with illegally obtained games. Our application towards a trademark is to simply prevent anyone from commercially marketing an illegal product, nothing more. There have been no lawsuits filed against any of the M.A.M.E. authors, and there have been no claims towards the open source engine, nor will there be We are simply protecting our commercial market, and nothing more. We have no interest in the hobby community. We have no interest in the open source project. Our goal is to simply stop the rampant piracy in our marketplace, and we will use every means at our disposal to do so.”
Perhaps SPOnG’s only beef with UltraCade is that paying £1.00 for one credit on Street Fighter 2: Champions Edition, set to the hardest level, is a little steep.
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Comments
YenRug 21 Feb 2005 14:04
1/5
Whilst the makers of UltraCade are claiming legitimate reasons, at present, people should be wary of what happens afterwards. I know of a similar situation that occurred in TV show fandom, to the fans of Farscape.
A fan run convention was being run on a fairly regular basis, known as Scaper Con, after fans adopted the name Scapers for themselves. The Jim Henson Company stepped in and copyrighted/trademarked the word Scapers, claiming they were doing it to protect the fans from exploitation. The vast majority of people were happy to accept this even though they had a chance to protest the claim and prove prior usage, I even warned people that they should do this, simply to retain freedom of the term. No-one did, I was not in a position to protest, as the legal action was in the USA.
Come the next convention? Henson lawyers refused to allow the organisers to use the name ScaperCon, it now belonged to The Jim Henson Company and they "could not allow the property to be degraded in any way".
A fan run convention was being run on a fairly regular basis, known as Scaper Con, after fans adopted the name Scapers for themselves. The Jim Henson Company stepped in and copyrighted/trademarked the word Scapers, claiming they were doing it to protect the fans from exploitation. The vast majority of people were happy to accept this even though they had a chance to protest the claim and prove prior usage, I even warned people that they should do this, simply to retain freedom of the term. No-one did, I was not in a position to protest, as the legal action was in the USA.
Come the next convention? Henson lawyers refused to allow the organisers to use the name ScaperCon, it now belonged to The Jim Henson Company and they "could not allow the property to be degraded in any way".
SPInGSPOnG 21 Feb 2005 19:44
2/5
YenRug wrote:
Come the next convention? Henson lawyers refused to allow the organisers to use the name ScaperCon, it now belonged to The Jim Henson Company and they "could not allow the property to be degraded in any way".
So Henson's a c*nt. What a surprise. He may make cute little characters, and be the voice of Yoda, but he was still a hard-hearted capitalist bastard. And his lawyers - c*nts - how else would they have become lawyers.
SPOnG wrote:
Perhaps SPOnG’s only beef with UltraCade is that paying £1.00 for one credit on Street Fighter 2: Champions Edition, set to the hardest level, is a little steep.
You can hardly blame the avarice of a machine operator on the machine's manufacturer. For instance, my Pinball Table is on free play, but the kudos for that goes to me, not to Bally Midway.
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ohms 21 Feb 2005 20:11
3/5
Rod Todd wrote:
So Henson's a c*nt. What a surprise. He may make cute little characters, and be the voice of Yoda, but he was still a hard-hearted capitalist bastard. And his lawyers - c*nts - how else would they have become lawyers.
Lawyers, yes, but not Jim Henson man, he's been dead for years.
I think his kids run the show now.
(and Frank Oz was/is the voice of Yoda, blasphemer!!!)
YenRug 22 Feb 2005 14:21
4/5
Rod Todd wrote:
So Henson's a c*nt. What a surprise. He may make cute little characters, and be the voice of Yoda, but he was still a hard-hearted capitalist bastard. And his lawyers - c*nts - how else would they have become lawyers.
I never said it was Henson, I said it was the lawyers. I've met Brian Henson, the current part-owner and CEO of The Jim Henson Company, and he's a nice guy with a lot of time for the fans. Farscape is his show, he was the one who started it off and he thanks the fans for being able to bring it back as a mini-series. He even told me how to go about wrangling a tour of the Creatureshop in London, if I wanted to get to see what goes on there.
No, it was the lawyers that did this, in fact at the time The Jim Henson Company was owned by Germany's EMTV, not by the Henson family.
SPInGSPOnG 22 Feb 2005 15:07
5/5
ohms wrote:
(and Frank Oz was/is the voice of Yoda, blasphemer!!!)
Blashphemer??? It's a bad character in an average movie. And the Miss Piggy connections don't help the case.
Oz, Henson... two sides, one coin.