Abandonware - Page 2

Galahad/FLT · 08 May 2003, 23:23

Obviously my history excludes me from giving a toss. Most of my actions enable you to have an Abandonware site in the first place, if I did give a toss, then I suspect you would have less wares to display

Drake1009 · 09 May 2003, 08:25

And even though Galahad already said this Syko. When you bought it doesn't mean you can do with it what you want.

The DMCA is one great defender of the IP owner's rights to dictate what you can and can't do with a program.

And there's also a bit of precedence for you. Sony got some manufacturers of mod chips shut down. Nintendo got some people who made and sold flashlinkers shut down.

The mod chip was made for you to be able to play backups and imports, but you weren't allowed to put it in your PS2.

And the flashlinkers would be a nice thing to have if you wanted to develop something yourself for the GBA but I think that thing competes with Nintendo's developers pack.

Antiriad · 09 May 2003, 11:29

Hey Galahad, was it you of Dual Crew who hacked Relokick 1.4?

Galahad/FLT · 09 May 2003, 13:12

Quote:

Originally posted by Antiriad
Hey Galahad, was it you of Dual Crew who hacked Relokick 1.4?

Yup

Syko · 11 May 2003, 14:11

nah, Sony attacked the mod chips because they could.

They used expensive laywers who talked fast enough to bamboozle the morons who sit on benches. The mod chip importers shutdown rather than take them on.

End of story.

The flashlinker steped on the copyright toes of nintendo - as you say the SDK did the same job.

The RIAA says a lot about what the DMCA can and can't do. One thing it can't do, is prevent people who have bought somthing from altering it to their hearts content.

Yes, I know about the law which says this is hacking, and I do not belive that it is enforcable, as their is an enormous body of 'prior art' that can be used. The problem is that no one with the financial backup has taken them on in this area.

If you remove the copy protection, then that specific modification is almost certainly illegal, however I wasn't refering to that, I was talking about customising. Given the American hot rod and custom scene, I'm sure that they would be more than a little interested in a customiser being prosecuted for customising!

Indeed the copy of M$ IE that I'm using has been turned into 'Irritating Exploder' Ok, ok, a very minor bolt on job, but still technicaly illegle in the good old land of the free...... the one thing I find really strange in all this is, why, in country with easily available firearms is Hilary Rosen still alive? :kill

Find a loony, program them and give 'em a gun. End of problem.

Unknown_K · 11 May 2003, 14:25

Quote:

Originally posted by Syko
nah, Sony attacked the mod chips because they could.

They used expensive laywers who talked fast enough to bamboozle the morons who sit on benches. The mod chip importers shutdown rather than take them on.

End of story.

The flashlinker steped on the copyright toes of nintendo - as you say the SDK did the same job.

The RIAA says a lot about what the DMCA can and can't do. One thing it can't do, is prevent people who have bought somthing from altering it to their hearts content.

Yes, I know about the law which says this is hacking, and I do not belive that it is enforcable, as their is an enormous body of 'prior art' that can be used. The problem is that no one with the financial backup has taken them on in this area.

If you remove the copy protection, then that specific modification is almost certainly illegal, however I wasn't refering to that, I was talking about customising. Given the American hot rod and custom scene, I'm sure that they would be more than a little interested in a customiser being prosecuted for customising!

Indeed the copy of M$ IE that I'm using has been turned into 'Irritating Exploder' Ok, ok, a very minor bolt on job, but still technicaly illegle in the good old land of the free...... the one thing I find really strange in all this is, why, in country with easily available firearms is Hilary Rosen still alive? :kill

Find a loony, program them and give 'em a gun. End of problem.

The people with the layers and money are the ones who make the rules. I dont see much of a problem with modifying your console. If you crack it open you void the warrenty, but it shouldnt be illegal.

Syko · 11 May 2003, 15:03

Exactlly!

If you want to paint it purple, fine

If you want to make it glow with UV, fine

Once you have paid for, and purchased a product, you may use it in any way you see fit. This is a right of the purchaser, they have paid for the right to dispose of, or alter the item in any way they see fit. Since this right is implicit in the financial transaction of purchacing an item, it is axiomatic that it cannot be removed by legislation. Therefore, the DMCA in this application is not valid and cannot be legally applied.

Either fight the power, or knuckle under. Your choice.

Unknown_K · 11 May 2003, 18:31

What is going to happen is that in ten years you wont own the console, it will be rented or given away for free. You wont buy any games either, just subscribe to a game service that will let you play any game in the library for a fee. When this is done they will have 100% control of what you play or can play.

Twistin'Ghost · 12 May 2003, 03:20

Quote:

Originally posted by Syko
The RIAA says a lot about what the DMCA can and can't do. One thing it can't do, is prevent people who have bought somthing from altering it to their hearts content.

Yes, I know about the law which says this is hacking, and I do not belive that it is enforcable, as their is an enormous body of 'prior art' that can be used. The problem is that no one with the financial backup has taken them on in this area.

If you remove the copy protection, then that specific modification is almost certainly illegal, however I wasn't refering to that, I was talking about customising. Given the American hot rod and custom scene, I'm sure that they would be more than a little interested in a customiser being prosecuted for customising!

Oddly enough, no publisher back in the day ever went after any of the companies making products like RawCopy, ProjectD, Nib, etc., nor the similar apps on the C64, PC, etc. Compared to the strongarm tactics they threaten now with form emails, you'd think that such laws would have shut down such products as these before they ever got out the door. These apps definitely produced hacked/modified versions of the software.

Syko · 13 May 2003, 17:17

Any copying program has a certified legitimate use, in that it can be used to produce a working copy of software as allowed under US copyright laws (which incidentaly the DMCA prevents you from doing and is therefore an ilegal restriction of consumers rights). The targets they're after are file-sharing and cracking, although cracking is covered by the same rules as copying, if it is done to allow a backup to be made. But Unknown_K is spot on when he says that soon you won't buy, you'll rent/lease, and then you're screwed. It's already happening with M$ DRM which requires you to re-purchase the music if the key is changed.

Key's can be changed by the person who sold the music, by changing your harware, or by M$ (who's usually the one who sold it as well...) check out The Register or The Inquirer for full details of how you're losing your rights, and lots of sad tech news

WOC_Admin · 22 May 2003, 20:04

Hi,

You can make copies of your software legally in the United Kingdom and the US providing they are for your own personal use. I personally like to use backups, be it a music cd or something, I'd rather play the copy so if it gets scratched then I can just use another copy. In the prime days of say the Amiga; the copy protection on some games didnt give me the option to make a back-up.

I believe the copyright when a company folds is passed to the individual programmers. If say a publisher folds (they normally have the biggest say) then the developer gains all the rights. If you put a game on your website you have to obtain permission from both sides (publisher and developer). If the game incorporates a title from a film, ie Batman. You also are suppose to get permission from the film makers too because they own the licence to the name. There is so much legal stuff involved, its untrue.

Drake1009 · 22 May 2003, 21:16

As far as I know you can copy a music CD for your own personal use for backup purposes, unless it's copy protected, in which case you're not allowed to break the copy protection to make a backup.

As for software, you're not allowed to make copies, not even for backup.

Unknown_K · 22 May 2003, 22:36

The laws might have changed over the last 20 years. Also these days there si alot more legal bullshit on the seal to the actual cd that you supposedly agree with if you crack it open.

The fact that they tell you explicitly that if you dont agree with the liscense they will accept the software back and give a refund.

Chuckles · 23 May 2003, 00:24

Actually, the terms found in "shrink wrap" licenses tend to vary to some extent (at least in the US), so for any given bit of software what is and is not permissible may be different. I have seen some which explicitly permit you to make 1 copy of the software for backup purposes only, but that is by no means universal.

"Shrink wrap" licenses have always seemed to me to be, shall we say, less than fully ethical in their terms. While it is possible that if you were to challenge the terms of some provision of the license in court you might actually win your case, you'd probably have to first find yourself in a position where the publisher was actually attempting to enforce your violation of those terms before any court over here would even consider taking up the matter.

As for what happens to a copyright in a case where the company that publishes a bit of software goes under, in the US at least the copyright does not revert to the programmers (and except in very rare cases, it never was theirs to begin with). Software is considered to be the intellectual property of the company, and when the company goes under, the copyrights remain a part of the assets of the company every bit as much as the tables and chairs in their offices do. Those assets may be sold or signed over to others in an attempt to at least partially offset any of the debts owed to creditors, so the only way that the rights might be given back to the programmers would be if it was determined that the copyrights were of little or no value to anyone else. You could easily argue that the copyrights for much old software are of little or no value, however the owner of the copyright still has to give up those rights. While the company is actually going through the bankruptcy process, even that would probably require the approval of a judge.

IFW · 23 May 2003, 07:40

Actually copyright depends on a lot of issues...
As for Amiga games that were contracted, one word: expiration.
Read any such contract and you'll see the contact expires within a given amount of time and all rights are back to the original authors.
If the company does not pay - seems common for Amiga games, including one still being sold: Myst, so that was w@rezed by the publisher... - they are breaching the contract and it is automatically terminated.
If company goes bust and they are supposed to pay a royalty for the product or supposed to produce new units from the game they can't do that and hence can't fulfill the contract, that means it is terminated.
Basically the majority of Amiga games software in reality owned by their respective authors, not anyone else, though many of them are unaware of the legal conditions. Therefore non-existant companies giving "permissions" for games where the contract expired for years, etc are nothing more legal than anyone downloading from the usenet.
The in-house work conditions are slightly different, but most software houses just published games (once they were nearly finished) and sometimes had 1-2 in-house teams to produce games, however it was more often that they gave up on in-house work and contracted a developer company - like Imagitec -, who practically all own their games by now. Since those companies normally worked again on contractual basis and royalty fees, again the copyright by now belongs to the developers and so on...

etc., etc., etc.

This is not as simple as many people think and we could fill pages explaining each situation, that I am too lazy/busy to do...

Chuckles · 23 May 2003, 16:04

The laziness bug has bitten me too, so suffice it to say that there simply is no one answer that applies to all software across the board. Each situation is different depending on the terms under which the software was produced in the first place, among other things.

Unknown_K · 23 May 2003, 16:14

The reason alot of abandonware sites are still around is because the legal rights to the software is probably unknown, forgotten, or so messed up that its not worth bothering to sue the websites for something your not sure you even own.

Open up a playstation download site and see how long it takes to get a call from a legal department.

WOC_Admin · 24 May 2003, 15:21

Hi,

Yep, I once asked an EA rep about the distribution status of their older 8/16bit titles and they said "I couldnt tell you because the paper work is no longer around for that time"..

Edited because of major typos!

Mr Creosote · 24 May 2003, 20:14

Quote:

Originally posted by WOC_Admin
Hi,

Yep, I once ask and EA rep about the ditribution status of their older 8/16bit titles and they said "I couldnt tell you because the paper work is no longer around for that time"..

The worst similar case which ever happened to me was that I contacted Virgin Interactive about one of the semi-old games (from 1990) and the reply was "Are you sure this is a Virgin game?". :eek

laffer · 02 March 2012, 04:50

For me, abandonware being legal or not isn't very important... it's not likely anyone will bother to get you in trouble for downloading such ancient games anyway... so it comes down to how one feels about it personally.
I don't consider myself a software pirate, I buy every game and application I use that are still for sale, but I do download roms of really old stuff that is no longer available anywhere - and I don't feel the least bit guilty about that... though I guess technically speaking, that does actually classify me as a pirate... I guess I'm the harmless, Monkey Island kind of pirate, maybe

08 May 2003, 23:23	#21
Galahad/FLT Going nowhere Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: United Kingdom Age: 50 Posts: 9,014	... Obviously my history excludes me from giving a toss. Most of my actions enable you to have an Abandonware site in the first place, if I did give a toss, then I suspect you would have less wares to display

22 May 2003, 20:04	#31
WOC_Admin Zone Friend Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: England Posts: 73	Copyright Hi, You can make copies of your software legally in the United Kingdom and the US providing they are for your own personal use. I personally like to use backups, be it a music cd or something, I'd rather play the copy so if it gets scratched then I can just use another copy. In the prime days of say the Amiga; the copy protection on some games didnt give me the option to make a back-up. I believe the copyright when a company folds is passed to the individual programmers. If say a publisher folds (they normally have the biggest say) then the developer gains all the rights. If you put a game on your website you have to obtain permission from both sides (publisher and developer). If the game incorporates a title from a film, ie Batman. You also are suppose to get permission from the film makers too because they own the licence to the name. There is so much legal stuff involved, its untrue.

23 May 2003, 07:40	#35
IFW Moderator Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: ... Age: 52 Posts: 1,838	Actually copyright depends on a lot of issues... As for Amiga games that were contracted, one word: expiration. Read any such contract and you'll see the contact expires within a given amount of time and all rights are back to the original authors. If the company does not pay - seems common for Amiga games, including one still being sold: Myst, so that was w@rezed by the publisher... - they are breaching the contract and it is automatically terminated. If company goes bust and they are supposed to pay a royalty for the product or supposed to produce new units from the game they can't do that and hence can't fulfill the contract, that means it is terminated. Basically the majority of Amiga games software in reality owned by their respective authors, not anyone else, though many of them are unaware of the legal conditions. Therefore non-existant companies giving "permissions" for games where the contract expired for years, etc are nothing more legal than anyone downloading from the usenet. The in-house work conditions are slightly different, but most software houses just published games (once they were nearly finished) and sometimes had 1-2 in-house teams to produce games, however it was more often that they gave up on in-house work and contracted a developer company - like Imagitec -, who practically all own their games by now. Since those companies normally worked again on contractual basis and royalty fees, again the copyright by now belongs to the developers and so on... etc., etc., etc. This is not as simple as many people think and we could fill pages explaining each situation, that I am too lazy/busy to do... Last edited by IFW; 23 May 2003 at 07:46.

24 May 2003, 15:21	#38
WOC_Admin Zone Friend Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: England Posts: 73	Hi, Yep, I once asked an EA rep about the distribution status of their older 8/16bit titles and they said "I couldnt tell you because the paper work is no longer around for that time".. Edited because of major typos! Last edited by WOC_Admin; 24 May 2003 at 23:02.

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09 May 2003, 08:25	#22
Drake1009 Registered User Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: Denmark Posts: 2,284	And even though Galahad already said this Syko. When you bought it doesn't mean you can do with it what you want. The DMCA is one great defender of the IP owner's rights to dictate what you can and can't do with a program. And there's also a bit of precedence for you. Sony got some manufacturers of mod chips shut down. Nintendo got some people who made and sold flashlinkers shut down. The mod chip was made for you to be able to play backups and imports, but you weren't allowed to put it in your PS2. And the flashlinkers would be a nice thing to have if you wanted to develop something yourself for the GBA but I think that thing competes with Nintendo's developers pack.

09 May 2003, 11:29	#23
Antiriad The Sacred Armour Of Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Sussex, UK Age: 45 Posts: 1,141	Hey Galahad, was it you of Dual Crew who hacked Relokick 1.4?

11 May 2003, 14:11	#25
Syko Now got GSX750F :)) Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Halifax UK Age: 60 Posts: 584	nah, Sony attacked the mod chips because they could. They used expensive laywers who talked fast enough to bamboozle the morons who sit on benches. The mod chip importers shutdown rather than take them on. End of story. The flashlinker steped on the copyright toes of nintendo - as you say the SDK did the same job. The RIAA says a lot about what the DMCA can and can't do. One thing it can't do, is prevent people who have bought somthing from altering it to their hearts content. Yes, I know about the law which says this is hacking, and I do not belive that it is enforcable, as their is an enormous body of 'prior art' that can be used. The problem is that no one with the financial backup has taken them on in this area. If you remove the copy protection, then that specific modification is almost certainly illegal, however I wasn't refering to that, I was talking about customising. Given the American hot rod and custom scene, I'm sure that they would be more than a little interested in a customiser being prosecuted for customising! Indeed the copy of M$ IE that I'm using has been turned into 'Irritating Exploder' Ok, ok, a very minor bolt on job, but still technicaly illegle in the good old land of the free...... the one thing I find really strange in all this is, why, in country with easily available firearms is Hilary Rosen still alive? :kill Find a loony, program them and give 'em a gun. End of problem.

11 May 2003, 15:03	#27
Syko Now got GSX750F :)) Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Halifax UK Age: 60 Posts: 584	Exactlly! If you want to paint it purple, fine If you want to make it glow with UV, fine Once you have paid for, and purchased a product, you may use it in any way you see fit. This is a right of the purchaser, they have paid for the right to dispose of, or alter the item in any way they see fit. Since this right is implicit in the financial transaction of purchacing an item, it is axiomatic that it cannot be removed by legislation. Therefore, the DMCA in this application is not valid and cannot be legally applied. Either fight the power, or knuckle under. Your choice.

11 May 2003, 18:31	#28
Unknown_K Registered User Join Date: May 2002 Location: Ohio/USA Age: 55 Posts: 1,380	What is going to happen is that in ten years you wont own the console, it will be rented or given away for free. You wont buy any games either, just subscribe to a game service that will let you play any game in the library for a fee. When this is done they will have 100% control of what you play or can play.

13 May 2003, 17:17	#30
Syko Now got GSX750F :)) Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Halifax UK Age: 60 Posts: 584	Any copying program has a certified legitimate use, in that it can be used to produce a working copy of software as allowed under US copyright laws (which incidentaly the DMCA prevents you from doing and is therefore an ilegal restriction of consumers rights). The targets they're after are file-sharing and cracking, although cracking is covered by the same rules as copying, if it is done to allow a backup to be made. But Unknown_K is spot on when he says that soon you won't buy, you'll rent/lease, and then you're screwed. It's already happening with M$ DRM which requires you to re-purchase the music if the key is changed. Key's can be changed by the person who sold the music, by changing your harware, or by M$ (who's usually the one who sold it as well...) check out The Register or The Inquirer for full details of how you're losing your rights, and lots of sad tech news

22 May 2003, 21:16	#32
Drake1009 Registered User Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: Denmark Posts: 2,284	As far as I know you can copy a music CD for your own personal use for backup purposes, unless it's copy protected, in which case you're not allowed to break the copy protection to make a backup. As for software, you're not allowed to make copies, not even for backup.

22 May 2003, 22:36	#33
Unknown_K Registered User Join Date: May 2002 Location: Ohio/USA Age: 55 Posts: 1,380	The laws might have changed over the last 20 years. Also these days there si alot more legal bullshit on the seal to the actual cd that you supposedly agree with if you crack it open. The fact that they tell you explicitly that if you dont agree with the liscense they will accept the software back and give a refund.

23 May 2003, 00:24	#34
Chuckles The Ancient One Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Kansas City/USA Age: 69 Posts: 685	Actually, the terms found in "shrink wrap" licenses tend to vary to some extent (at least in the US), so for any given bit of software what is and is not permissible may be different. I have seen some which explicitly permit you to make 1 copy of the software for backup purposes only, but that is by no means universal. "Shrink wrap" licenses have always seemed to me to be, shall we say, less than fully ethical in their terms. While it is possible that if you were to challenge the terms of some provision of the license in court you might actually win your case, you'd probably have to first find yourself in a position where the publisher was actually attempting to enforce your violation of those terms before any court over here would even consider taking up the matter. As for what happens to a copyright in a case where the company that publishes a bit of software goes under, in the US at least the copyright does not revert to the programmers (and except in very rare cases, it never was theirs to begin with). Software is considered to be the intellectual property of the company, and when the company goes under, the copyrights remain a part of the assets of the company every bit as much as the tables and chairs in their offices do. Those assets may be sold or signed over to others in an attempt to at least partially offset any of the debts owed to creditors, so the only way that the rights might be given back to the programmers would be if it was determined that the copyrights were of little or no value to anyone else. You could easily argue that the copyrights for much old software are of little or no value, however the owner of the copyright still has to give up those rights. While the company is actually going through the bankruptcy process, even that would probably require the approval of a judge.

23 May 2003, 16:04	#36
Chuckles The Ancient One Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Kansas City/USA Age: 69 Posts: 685	The laziness bug has bitten me too, so suffice it to say that there simply is no one answer that applies to all software across the board. Each situation is different depending on the terms under which the software was produced in the first place, among other things.

23 May 2003, 16:14	#37
Unknown_K Registered User Join Date: May 2002 Location: Ohio/USA Age: 55 Posts: 1,380	The reason alot of abandonware sites are still around is because the legal rights to the software is probably unknown, forgotten, or so messed up that its not worth bothering to sue the websites for something your not sure you even own. Open up a playstation download site and see how long it takes to get a call from a legal department.

02 March 2012, 04:50	#40
laffer Zone Friend Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Norway Age: 43 Posts: 1,335	For me, abandonware being legal or not isn't very important... it's not likely anyone will bother to get you in trouble for downloading such ancient games anyway... so it comes down to how one feels about it personally. I don't consider myself a software pirate, I buy every game and application I use that are still for sale, but I do download roms of really old stuff that is no longer available anywhere - and I don't feel the least bit guilty about that... though I guess technically speaking, that does actually classify me as a pirate... I guess I'm the harmless, Monkey Island kind of pirate, maybe

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