rockhome, I think you are totally missing the point. Ultracade is illegally trying to squash its illegal competition.
At best, this is an act of vigilantism. At worst, it's perjury, attempted theft, lies, flimflam, and deceit that makes Ultracade every bit as bad as its competition.
While still full of it, Foley issued an Open Offer to the M.A.M.E. community stating, among other things, that he was trademarking the M.A.M.E. logo for profit, and to squash his competition (legal or otherwise).
It seems particularly interesting that he makes it sound like he's doing MAME a favor, and that he will retract his application if the rightful owners decide to trademark the logo.
"We have no desire to use the M.A.M.E. name or logos; we simply wish to find ways to
prevent illegal distribution of classic arcade games. We will be happy to cancel our
application and work with the M.A.M.E. team to assign it to its rightful owners; however
we do want to prevent it from being awarded to someone that intends to use it
commercially."
Yeah, right. he and his company are intending to use the trademark comercially.
Aditionally, in the official UltraCade statement located here we find ubiquitous buffonery such as these conflicting statements:
"In the past couple of years, there has been a huge wave of resellers competing with our UltraCade and Arcade Legends products. They build a similar style cabinet, install a PC in the machine, load M.A.M.E., and sell it for a very low price. Lower than we could ever offer our machines for sale. How? Quite Simple. They profit by stealing others work. If you look at the web sites, and read the eBay ads they offer machines that "Play over 4,000 Classic Arcade Games" They then try and skirt the law by pretending that they are not promoting piracy of these same 4,000 games with statements like "we don't load the ROMs" but of course, almost all of them do. The others that don't, they provide you with an instruction sheet with a link to several web sites where you can illegally download the ROMs, or provide you with the contact information for a CD/DVD duplication house that will sell you a set of
ROMs for all 4,000 games for less than $200. Would anyone really buy this arcade machine if they knew that there was no legal way for them to run over 99% of the games that they were promised, I don't think so, and if you really look at this without emotion, I'm sure you would agree....To them, they read an advertisement on a website or on eBay and compare our product with 50 games or an ad for a machine that promises thousands of games, with the promise of instructions about how to obtain those games. Of course, in this skewed environment the average consumer would gravitate towards the thousands of games machine, not realizing that the software and the games are unlicensed and illegal to play.
"...Now that we have attempted to take legal recourse to prevent illegal competition, the same people, who steal the work of the M.A.M.E. authors, and then profit by selling machines that have no value without the pirated games being made available, turn around and cry foul when we call them on their ways.
"The M.A.M.E. platform, while a technical marvel, consists of many violations of copyrights and trademarks. The authors have always stated in the documentation that it was not put into the public domain to steal from the game authors or publishers, and they have always been hands off about how to obtain the ROMs. They have also clearly stated that it is not to be used for commercial gains."
I can't even put my distaste into words. It's an unforgivable insult to the intelligence of the entire slashdot community that Foley would pull an obvious scam like this and try to tell us we've "misunderstood" him. Additionally, he seems wholely ignorant of the fact he has willfully committed purjury and has attempted the theft of intellectual property in order to leverage a legal cantilever against opposing businesses that he calls thieves and pirates because they are stealing intellectual property!
Ladies and gentelmen, I stand offended.
Slashdot Mirror
rockhome, I think you are totally missing the point. Ultracade is illegally trying to squash its illegal competition.
At best, this is an act of vigilantism. At worst, it's perjury, attempted theft, lies, flimflam, and deceit that makes Ultracade every bit as bad as its competition.
While still full of it, Foley issued an Open Offer to the M.A.M.E. community stating, among other things, that he was trademarking the M.A.M.E. logo for profit, and to squash his competition (legal or otherwise). It seems particularly interesting that he makes it sound like he's doing MAME a favor, and that he will retract his application if the rightful owners decide to trademark the logo. "We have no desire to use the M.A.M.E. name or logos; we simply wish to find ways to prevent illegal distribution of classic arcade games. We will be happy to cancel our application and work with the M.A.M.E. team to assign it to its rightful owners; however we do want to prevent it from being awarded to someone that intends to use it commercially." Yeah, right. he and his company are intending to use the trademark comercially. Aditionally, in the official UltraCade statement located here we find ubiquitous buffonery such as these conflicting statements: "In the past couple of years, there has been a huge wave of resellers competing with our UltraCade and Arcade Legends products. They build a similar style cabinet, install a PC in the machine, load M.A.M.E., and sell it for a very low price. Lower than we could ever offer our machines for sale. How? Quite Simple. They profit by stealing others work. If you look at the web sites, and read the eBay ads they offer machines that "Play over 4,000 Classic Arcade Games" They then try and skirt the law by pretending that they are not promoting piracy of these same 4,000 games with statements like "we don't load the ROMs" but of course, almost all of them do. The others that don't, they provide you with an instruction sheet with a link to several web sites where you can illegally download the ROMs, or provide you with the contact information for a CD/DVD duplication house that will sell you a set of ROMs for all 4,000 games for less than $200. Would anyone really buy this arcade machine if they knew that there was no legal way for them to run over 99% of the games that they were promised, I don't think so, and if you really look at this without emotion, I'm sure you would agree. ...To them, they read an advertisement on a website or on eBay and compare our product with 50 games or an ad for a machine that promises thousands of games, with the promise of instructions about how to obtain those games. Of course, in this skewed environment the average consumer would gravitate towards the thousands of games machine, not realizing that the software and the games are unlicensed and illegal to play.
"...Now that we have attempted to take legal recourse to prevent illegal competition, the same people, who steal the work of the M.A.M.E. authors, and then profit by selling machines that have no value without the pirated games being made available, turn around and cry foul when we call them on their ways.
"The M.A.M.E. platform, while a technical marvel, consists of many violations of copyrights and trademarks. The authors have always stated in the documentation that it was not put into the public domain to steal from the game authors or publishers, and they have always been hands off about how to obtain the ROMs. They have also clearly stated that it is not to be used for commercial gains."
I can't even put my distaste into words. It's an unforgivable insult to the intelligence of the entire slashdot community that Foley would pull an obvious scam like this and try to tell us we've "misunderstood" him. Additionally, he seems wholely ignorant of the fact he has willfully committed purjury and has attempted the theft of intellectual property in order to leverage a legal cantilever against opposing businesses that he calls thieves and pirates because they are stealing intellectual property!
Ladies and gentelmen, I stand offended.