Amiga Games & Copyright

[Contenance]

Hiya M8s,

iam relatively new to the Retrogaming Scene in general and Amiga in particular.
Therefore i would like to ask some questions about Copyright. I'd used the search here as well as google but found nothing in particular.

What about Copyright for Amiga Games (except SPS)?
(for example: adf, cd32/cdtv and stuff like that)

Is it allowed to share this stuff publicly?

Thanks for your help in advanced.

[DeafDaz]

Most old games In ADF format were commercial games, considering that the games were 20+ years old, I highly doubt the copyright holders will even bother to chase u up for copyright violations, as long as u dont profit financeially

[Contenance]

@DeafDaz:
This is exactly what i thought about too. On the other hand, you'll never know.
And iam not going to make money with it Think thats one of the basic rule you could brake to get in trouble easiely.

You know, i just wanna share my stuff with the community, but iam utterly uncertain, if i can upload games stuff on my public server (perhaps the eab server) or not.

[DeafDaz]

U can share ur adf disks as long as u dont share Workbemch, IPF files, and any other programs that are still sold and supported. if in doubt dont be afraid 2 ask

[Graham Humphrey]

Originally Posted by DeafDaz

U can share ur adf disks as long as u dont share Workbemch

...and by extension, this also applies to Kickstart ROMs of course.

[DeafDaz]

Ahem yes.. What Graham said

[Dreedo]

I'm no expert but here's my take on it:

The copyrights are still valid, the developers could take action against you if you download or distribute Amiga games. But it is highly doubtful, the programs themselves don't make them money anymore, except in very rare cases. A lot of Amiga developers (EA, RockStar, Team17 for example) have current generation games for the Xbox and PlayStation formats that they will be a lot more concerned about, they won't be checking if a 20 year old game is being downloaded.

As Deafdaz said, drawing attention to yourself by attempting to sell copies online would probably increase your chances of having a chat with the developers.

[Schlachtwerk]

What's up with the FTP server, the only thing I see is here since yesterday (see picture), but there are no files there.

[s2325]

Yes, I have same problem for few days if not weeks. Is there any solution?

[prowler]

It's working okay here...

[Contenance]

@Schlachtwerk, s2325
I personly use the browserfrienly link http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=43633
The other one wont work for me either.

[s2325]

Thank you.

[prowler]

Originally Posted by Contenance

I personly use the browserfrienly link http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=43633

...but that one doesn't work for me.

[Djay]

Out of interest... would anyone buy copied Amiga disks now anyway? Most originals on ebay are cheap enough, people can easily use stuff like WHDLoad (and of course register it), the copies i have seen on ebay dont really sell anyway and if you have bought an Amiga (again) then i would think you'd probably want originals now if you went down the floppy route. Most excuses for copying disks was that friends gave you copies for free as you couldnt afford originals with your pocket money!

Is there a market for it?

[Dreedo]

Mmmm only reason i would BUY an Amiga game, copy or not, on ebay is if i had no way to create them myself. Now i have a load of floppies and a PCMCIA-CF adapter, I don't buy any Amiga games.

Not to mention a lot of originals on eBay don't 100% work anymore, the 2 games I've bought on ebay have both had faults, one didn't work at all.