Is This Site Illegal?

[Mise]

The reason they don't do this:

If a copyright holder doesn't *mind* having his products distributed by these sites, he needs to send them a notice *explicitly* granting them permission to do this, or even releasing the game into the Public Domain.

Is because of this:

if he is made aware of the situation, he may sue the abandonware site. (It has been done.)

 

[DBear]

Abandonware sites are a case of technology outpacing law. The original copyright law was applied to books, which have been in their current form for hundreds of years. It was clearly not meant for electronic data that can be rendered obsolete in a mere decade.

 

[The Person]

It takes a whole decade for electronic data to become obsolete????

 

[Maniacal]

Well, there is NOTHING stopping us (generaly) from gonig to a site, downloading all 600+ dos games...

 

[Zelig]

liberatedgames.com has some good older games which have truly been released for free by their copyright holders.

 

[Urederra]

Some thoughts and news.

First. I have seen a copy of Civ II for sale on Menards a couple of months ago. (Yes I am not kidding, in Menards, the DIY store) It was $10 or something like that. Didn't buy it, (maybe I can go this weekend) I bought MOO2 instead.

I have always found unfair that books, music, computer programs have a long copyright life, and drugs (medicines) copyrights instead are too short. it is twenty years since the patent is granted and there is a long way from the approval of the patent and the day the drug hits the market (if tehy finally do). That makes drug so expensive, since farmaceutical companies only have a limited time to make profit. (a bit Off topic, I know, sorry)

The last thing.most of the games that were released 20 years ago cannot run in the new computers, unless you have a emulator. It is a bit silly to install those games in a desktop or a laptop. But, how about a PDA? I am with Sophie in this case, if you owned those games, but in cassette or 5 1/4 disks and you don't have any other way to convert or buy those games in other media, well... eeeerrrr.... it might no be legal, but is not inmoral. IMHO.

 

[SoCalian]

and morality is the highest law.

 

[damunzy]

Point to think about - just because the owners of the game may not be selling the game currently, doesn't mean they won't in the future. There seems to be a big retro craze going on right now with all the systems with X amount of old arcade games built into them that you just plug into the TV. <- If the games are available to download for free the copyright holder wouldn't be able to make money off of them. Not that I care, I am just playing the devil's advocate.

 

[kleedrac]

While Abandonware pretty much does come down to morality (which I'm not going to chime in on here ) people who missed out on the Civ's series early beginnings can always go back to play Freeciv which is an open source recoding as an homage to Civ II. This is completely free and open source and availible on any platform!!

Kleedrac

 

[dragokatzov]

Civ2 was the best all hail the King!!!

i totally agree