zaphod77 wrote on 2023-11-26, 20:45:

I believe it was determined that munt was legal, due to the original mt-32 rom technically having no copyright because it was not registered.

Registering a copyright isn't required for something to be protected by copyright. I would assume the MT-32 ROM is copyrighted unless it was explicitly released into the public domain.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-11-26, 20:59:

zaphod77 wrote on 2023-11-26, 20:45:

I believe it was determined that munt was legal, due to the original mt-32 rom technically having no copyright because it was not registered.

Registering a copyright isn't required for something to be protected by copyright. I would assume the MT-32 ROM is copyrighted unless it was explicitly released into the public domain.

I am not a lawyer and am going from memory, so I could be wrong. Please seek qualified legal council if you want any of the assertions below confirmed or infirmed.

AFAICR, it used to be required, laws changed and there was some legal legwork needed for works that were in a grey zone of sorts. This may or may not have taken place for MT-32 ROMs, so their status is, at best, unclear. There was a discussion about this here 20ish years ago. Search for posts by canadacow and you should find it.

Munt itself, AFAIK, is in the clear, because

a) no potentially copyrighted ROM data is included with it.

b) any theoretically relevant patents that might have covered something regarding the MT-32's hardware design are likely expired by now. I have no idea if software patents were even a thing back then (and that might vary according to one's jurusdiction), but I would guess they would probably be expired as well. In doubt, consult a copyright and/or patent specialized attorney.

there was a big kerfluffle with roland over the issue if whether the original mt32 rom was actually protected by copyright, having to do with the laws at the time it was made.

The original mt-32 was made and released in the USA BEFORE the requirement to register a copyright to enforce it was dropped. So by failing to actually register the USA copyright it was by law not protected at the time.

While it was registered in Japan, it wasn't registered in the USA, and predated adoption of the Berne Convention there, which is what makes registration not required for modern copyrights.

That said, the lawmakers realized that this was not fair to copyright holders, so there is a way for such orphaned copyrights to be restored, and regain the protection they should have under the Berne Convention. There are four tests. here they are in simple english

1) Copyrighted in Berne Convention Country not the USA. Passed. Was registered in Japan
2) Copyright not expired. Passed. (yup. still hasn't expired.)
3) Does not currently have copyright in the usa because the legal requirements were not filled. (true, and the reason for the entire problem. the copyright did actually need to be registered in the USA at the time for it to be valid!)
4) must have been published in other Berne Convention country 30 days or more BEFORE it was published in the USA. This one is the kicker, and the true intent test. If it was published later the 30 days, failing to register is considered an honest mistake, and the work deserves restoration. But if it was published within the 30 days, then it's presumed that they were aware registration was required, and the previous law holds due to the US prohibition against ex post facto laws.

The issue was apparently that it was released in the USA within 30 days. The emulator writer said "sorry, but you can't stop us and reclaim the copyright unless the MT-32 was brought to the US 30 days later. prove that and we'll remove the ROM from our downloads." Roland went and checked their records, and found that they couldn't prove requirement number 4, and said GOD DAMMIT!

Hence the argument that the mt-32 rom is under no copyright in the USA, because Roland failed to register it at a time where registration was, and they were unable to restore it.

This is a really fiddly argument, and most definitely against the spirit of the law, but the emulator developer that advanced it seemed to have won at the time.

Regardless of the status of the original rom, the later ones are indeed protected by copyright in the USA for sure.

Any patents are expired for sure.

Roland seems to have eased up on things somewhat, but if anyone actually tries to make their own mt-32 clone outside of software emulation for playing old computer games in DOSBOX, they are still gonna get mad and take action, and despite the issue with registration would probably win in that case. Witness the situation with the dreamblaster cards.

It’d end up going to court, and Roland would probably win, so just depends on if anyone wants to spend a bunch of money on lawyers just to lose in the end. That’s assuming Roland notices, but once they send a cease and desist, the game would be up unless you want to spend a bunch of money on lawyers.

they pretty much aren't bothering now, but only because they aren't selling a solution themselves for dosbox (Roland Virtual MT-32 doesn't exist at all yet), so as long as nobody is actually profiting from this except gog.com (who is selling those old games still), they seem to be willing to look the other way for now. And while there do seem to be MT32-pis that are munt based around, no one is actually using them as a real instrument, which is the same condition attached to the dreamblaster wavetable daughterboards, and nobody is selling them that I know of, because THAT would actually get Roland's attention, and make them rightfully demand a license at least.

okay so tts-1/hypercanvas is not actualyl GS compliant.

So we are back to square one on the GS it looks like. there is no legal option except to buy sound canvas VA (which is the only one that doesn't suck) or a hardware sound module. And the only affordable one of the latter is MAYBE the new gs dreamblaster wavetable boards, and i'm not going to buy one just to test rtft.mid on.

That said, if someone were to write a fully gs compliant softsynth driver or vsti for windows that loads GM.DLS for the sample data, that would be legal, and probably good enough for my purposes. The license for gm.dls literally only lets you use it in conjunction with microsoft operaing systems, and i know of two. actual ms-dos and windows.