Legalities of code disassembly

[Mitchell Gant]

This is a question for the admins really, about the legalities of posting lots of technical information and where the vector... sorry, line... is drawn.

Say I wanted to do some disassembling of game code and publish a technical document that could be hosted, say, on UKVAC about how the game works, or even just a discussion thread in the forums. At what point does it step on the legal toes?

I take it that if UKVAC wanted to host MAME ROM images then understandably it would not be allowed, as it's a clear breach of copyright.

But what about a disassembly of that code with details of how parts of it work? Even part of a disassembly? Individual functions? A few lines of code?

I'd guess that a complete reverse engineered file listing of assembler that could be run through an assembler and some other tools to produce the original ROM images would technically be naughty. Even if it is a 30 year old game from a defunct company. But would that be a problem for the admins of UKVAC?

To put it simply, how far could I go before I got a slapping?

 

[chadsarcade]

Have you seen this site: http://computerarcheology.com/ ?

 

[Ravage]

We like to think we're open and fair
here at Hotel ukVac.com - and indeed at times a question, or a post makes us
wonder if we should be obliged to remove it, censor it, what-have-you. We've
debated for hours and dozens of posts, for instance on the acceptability of say
60-in-1 PCBs and the ilk. We always end up at the same stance - yes, they’re
part of gaming history, no, they’re not to be promoted... but like it or not, piracy
and bootlegging go hand in hand with UK Video arcade collecting - in fact I’m
proud to have met a guy whose been sued by Sega for infringement of Frogger
copyrights back in the 80s and he's proud he got sued a cool million for it - if he's bragging, we're bragging !

 

[backflipper]

I always take the stance of politicians, do it until your told not to...

 

[DanP]

We've actually had discussions in the past using Asteroids disassembly. I think common sense should apply here. If you're showing code from a classic era game which at the end of the day anyone could get by themselves anyway then I doubt anyone will have a problem. Let's face it it's way easier to find the compiled rom images on the internet than taking source and assembling again anyway

So Mitch, yes please go ahead and feel free to discuss here. Many of us are interested in how the hardware works with a mind to keeping the games running. Having some of the software source available will only make it easier to understand what the original authors were intending and where any problems may lie.

Dan

 

[Mitchell Gant]

Have you seen this site: http://computerarcheology.com/ ?

Wow, thanks for that link!

The section on sound/music coding is very interesting, and explains some of the stuff I've been looking at recently too.