[paranoid]

Originally Posted by mrbob2

My answer, of course not. It was the same as the other computers, spectrum, c64, amstrad etc. The machines had a finite lifespan as the hardware couldnt be upgraded or as in the amiga, didnt have the financial clout to compete with the pc/microsoft.

I'd say this is pretty spot on.. Except, I'd add a little more to it and that Commodore gave up without much fight. I think the ones running Commodore at the time might have been able to do more financially, but figured it was better (for them) to just let things slide until they could just go out of business, without much financial harm to themselves.

However, that a computer is going to die of old age isn't so much the question as whether or not piracy murdered it in its sleep.

I know piracy harms developers and its illegal but when i was at school EVERYONE who owned an amiga owned copied games and the amiga was i reckon the 1st machine for people to create "games lists for"

In my 24 years of gaming ive never heard of a developer go bust due to piracy.

I imagine there's a few, actually. In a world with no piracy (philosophically speaking) there might be more people that would buy some title that otherwise didn't do well enough for the company to try again. But then, talking about the Amiga itself -- Commodore wasn't a (software) developer in the same sense. You can't pirate hardware (easily) and no way could someone cobble together an Amiga from parts from Radio Shack as a way to skirt the cost of an Amiga.

["in the same sense" to mean only software or a focus on it.. Of course AmigaOS is technically software and could be pirated and they did AmigaVision (among other things?) but the piracy of those things didn't put a dent in Amiga computer sales, surely. And I added "easily" for hardware, because I do remember plans for a couple things floating around, like some hardware copier, but I know of no one that actually made them.. Also, thinking of early stories of the Amiga, I imagine one could homebrew an Amiga from plans downloaded off a BBS, but you might as well get a part time job for a couple weeks instead considering the work it would take.]

Thanks to the net i have ammased a collection of around 3gb of amiga games. In my eyes my collection is complete, every game ive always wanted i now own. As some of these games a are probably still owned by some company or other, am i being naughty?

I'd argue that it is naughty, just not very naughty. Unless Team 17 has a warehouse of Superfrogs it's trying to unload (or something similar), the developer isn't missing any money from your copied Superfrog. However, the value of an original Superfrog trying to be sold on ebay has decreased, though, probably just slightly. Having said that, beyond the actual boxes of Superfrog, Team 17 holds the copyright to Superfrog, and if they wanted to sell it to be emulated on Xbox, your copy would devalue their profits similarly.

[You'd have to find someone that finds Superfrog on ebay, would otherwise pirate if they could, but for some reason can't, and would buy off ebay. Someone that wants an original for the manual, etc doesn't care that someone has just emailed them Superfrog as an attachment.]

If i borrow a friends dvd film and copy it to dvd its copyright theft and naughty..... If the film is on tv and i record it to watch another time, is it still theft?

If its just the film from start to finish, whats the difference?

Technically speaking, "another time" is fine -- if you mean just once and not to watch more than once, or give to a friend, etc. If I remember correctly, in the US anyway, there was a big lawsuit over VCRs back in the day, and it was dismissed for "time delay recording" saying someone can record a show they'd miss in order to watch it (once) later. But it didn't allow for someone to do more than that.

(And as noted, this has been hashed out before it seems.. But I do like the discussion.. )