Sam & Max - Abe Lincoln Must Die was released as freeware......

Mabye you should do more than take a quick glance at the website.

DosFreak, maybe you should read what Garatt said

"There aren't many games listed, but on the plus side there's no doubt about the legality."

There is obvious doubt about the legality when it explicitly tells you to get a lawyer!

The license on these files is unclear. It is best to assume that the files are available for individual use and may not be used […]
Show full quote

The license on these files is unclear. It is best to assume that the files are
available for individual use and may not be used for commercial gain. Your
best option for a precise answer is to retain an attorney. Thus is the nature
of copyright law.

How about you stop being a ****head and stop quoting things out of context. Godamn. Spam another fucking board with your lazy ass research.

For pretty much anything in modern day life your pretty much better off with a lawyer for anything, even wiping your own ass most likely.

Try to keep it civil. I'm only stating the facts.

No, you are stating the twisted facts. Let us look closer at the liberated Sam & Max episode. Going to the publishers site, I see this:

http://www.telltalegames.com/samandmax/lincolnmustdie

The president's lost it. Federally mandated group hugs, a pudding embargo... what's next, gun control? Sam & Max are off to Washington to take care of this bozo, but the political climate will only get stormier... and a new power will rise...

This is the fourth episode of Sam & Max: Season One, and as of November 5 2007, it's absolutely FREE! Just click the green "Download the Free Demo" button to download the full game.

And this is from their blog:
http://www.telltalegames.com/community/blogs/id-268

Abe Lincoln Must Die free for all (literally!) Posted by emily November 5, 2007 UPDATE NOV. 6: The free version is now availabl […]
Show full quote

Abe Lincoln Must Die free for all (literally!)
Posted by emily November 5, 2007
UPDATE NOV. 6: The free version is now available directly from Telltale, too!

We're closing in on the Season Two launch, and we're so giddy with excitement about it that we've done something a little crazy. Remember Abe Lincoln Must Die, the episode that got some of the best reviews last season? We've decided to slash the price into oblivion. That's right, from now on, Abe Lincoln Must Die is FREE. Yep, as in zero dollars. What's the catch? There is none. Just go download it and stop asking questions already.

The free episode is exclusively available at IGN, GameSpy, and FilePlanet today. Starting tomorrow you'll be able to get it from Telltale's site and probably a bunch of other places, too. Please spread the news to all your cheap frugal friends!

And a follow-up, also posted by "emily", marketing coordinator at Telltale Games, had this to say about the word "demo" and the free-ness:
http://www.telltalegames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3781

We did remove the option to buy episode 4, since it's now free... (The "Try the Demo" button actually takes you to a download for the full game, we just haven't had time to update that art yet.)

Now, with all this said, how free is the game really? Free to download for personal use? I am fairly certain it is.

Are you allowed to download it, burn it on a CD, and give the CD to a friend? Maybe.... But that is kind of distributing it, and that is a quite different from simply downloading it for personal use.

Are you allowed to put it up on a file server at liberatedgames.org, and let people download it from there? Not sure at all. We are now entering a realm where a lawyers opinion would be beneficial. Or a copy of the license.

So I downloaded the game, unpacked it (but did not installed) it and tried to see if there was some kind of license file included in the download. Unfortunately there was not.

In that light, don't you think words like

The license on these files is unclear. It is best to assume that the files are available for individual use and may not be used for commercial gain. Your best option for a precise answer is to retain an attorney. Thus is the nature of copyright law.

is a fairly accurate and cautious description?

[removed last "comment"]

Just don't.

Here's a great site for buting old games: http://www.retrosoftware.com/

Tons of stuff, lots of which is only $1...

Looks nice, until you read their international shipping policy:

2) Minimum order is $100 USD excluding shipping charges
...
4) We will only accept a wire transfer of funds for payment. Instructions will be given upon approval.

4) We will only accept a wire transfer of funds for payment. Instructions will be given upon approval.

preferably via Western Union? Suuuuuuuuuuuuuure 😀

Dominus wrote:

4) We will only accept a wire transfer of funds for payment. Instructions will be given upon approval.

preferably via Western Union? Suuuuuuuuuuuuuure 😀

They are actually legit... It does sound like they don't give a rat's behind about selling outside North America, though... Guess this is actually something that makes me glad to be american: I can get Tomb Raider for $1 and you can't 😜

something that makes me glad to be american

at least that

I don't see what the big deal about old games that have not been sold in years and years. The only ones making a (much too high) profit on people buying these old and often too expensive games are the ones re-selling used copies. The original publishers/developers/etc don't see a dime in any case.

I think preserving old games is very important and I think it's a good thing many people have access to very old games for often defunct systems that would be very hard/expensive if you had to get a boxed version from some auction site and what have you.

Also - many of these old games have copy protection locking the games onto the floppies.. which would mean that when all the floppies eventually fail, we could wave goodbye to those games.

Personally I do buy most old games as I enjoy collecting them.. it's awesome having the original boxes/manuals and all that. But I would not feel guilty if I did not do that.

There is also the ESA organisation (Entertainment Software Association).Nobody mentioned it and the purpose of it's existence.The game produces of it's members (companies like Sierra or Lucasarts) are protected and therefore not allowed to be copied by anyone.What about the rest (non ESA-member Companies and their products)?
And what about Piracy?Is Piracy "just" the illegar reproduction (copies) of software or there must be also the purpose of earning money from it (selling it) too?

tsampikos wrote:

There is also the ESA organisation (Entertainment Software Association).Nobody mentioned it and the purpose of it's existence.The game produces of it's members (companies like Sierra or Lucasarts) are protected and therefore not allowed to be copied by anyone.What about the rest (non ESA-member Companies and their products)?

Look at EU Council Directive 91/250/EEC of 14 May 1991 on the legal protection of computer programs:

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/smartapi/cgi/sg...

It goes into a lot of details on what rights the authors and publishers of computer programs have. Then in article 4 it says:

Article 4 Restricted Acts […]
Show full quote

Article 4 Restricted Acts

Subject to the provisions of Articles 5 and 6, the exclusive rights of the rightholder within the meaning of Article 2, shall include the right to do or to authorize:

(a) the permanent or temporary reproduction of a computer program by any means and in any form, in part or in whole. Insofar as loading, displaying, running, transmision or storage of the computer program necessitate such reproduction, such acts shall be subject to authorization by the rightholder;

(b) the translation, adaptation, arrangement and any other alteration of a computer program and the reproduction of the results thereof, without prejudice to the rights of the person who alters the program;

(c) any form of distribution to the public, including the rental, of the original computer program or of copies thereof. The first sale in the Community of a copy of a program by the rightholder or with his consent shall exhaust the distribution right within the Community of that copy, with the exception of the right to control further rental of the program or a copy thereof.

This "The first sale" is what happens when I legally buy a game in a shop. Once this first sale happens, the publisher/author (rightholder) has exhausted (lost) the right to stop me from selling it to someone else.

The same directive also stipulates:

Article 8 Term of protection

1. Protection shall be granted for the life of the author and for fifty years after his death or after the death of the last surviving author; where the computer program is an anonymous or pseudonymous work, or where a legal person is designated as the author by national legislation in accordance with Article 2 (1), the term of protection shall be fifty years from the time that the computer program is first lawfully made available to the public. The term of protection shall be deemed to begin on the first of January of the year following the abovementioned events.

In short, a computer program is copyrighted for 50 (or more), meaning that the copyright holder (the author, or the company) has the right to determine how and when copies are made. And there is no requirement that they somehow put up a notice in national newspapers, register themselves with some copyright office, etc. So just because the copyright holder can not be easily found, he/she/it still holds the copyright, even for a 20 year old game.

It means that even my first BASIC program for a Commodure PET-20 to calculate the average of 5 numbers enjoys copyright even if I never was a member of that random group called ESA.

tsampikos wrote:

And what about Piracy?Is Piracy "just" the illegar reproduction (copies) of software or there must be also the purpose of earning money from it (selling it) too?

Remember, that 20 year old games, that looks primitive on todays PC's might be the next big hit on your mobile phone. If people start to throw those programs around on filesharing sites, that is lost money for the publishers and copyright holders.

Very informativ indeed.

MiniMax wrote:

Remember, that 20 year old games, that looks primitive on todays PC's might be the next big hit on your mobile phone. If people start to throw those programs around on filesharing sites, that is lost money for the publishers and copyright holders.

Indeed, I would love to be able to play UFO: Enemy Unknown and the Terror of the Deep sequel on my phone.

The main reason I see no problem is that part of the law talk about 'protection'. I.e. If you leave a box with items in outside your door on public property and 5 days later I take it, and you know I took it, and then you left another box and 5 days later I took that and you did nothing, and this happened for 2 years, the law would say as no action was taken to 'protect' no crime had taken place.

I see the same with Abandonware. Developers/Publishers know where these sites are, they often demand individual titles to be taken off, but they do not, through their associations or individually, take any action to 'protect'. When you add the fact that there is also the replacementdocs site that carries old and quite recent manuals in PDF form, that get support from some publishers and again are only occasionally asked to take individual manuals offline.

It is this placet collusion from the PC games industry that stops me worrying about downloading abandonware titles. Although personally, I own practically every game I want to play, going back to the late 80's and my Commodore 64 machine, and really only download abandonware games as they often are patched up when I cannot find patches and often have the DRM removed which means no word look-ups in the manual.

Your example is full of holes.

The law protects the goods from theft, regardless as to their level of protection. Theft is breaking the law, whereas insurance is up to the individual's value assessment of their goods. In your example, if the individual does nothing to persue the criminal, then no charges are pressed, yet the law has still been broken.

Meaning of the word piracy: "The material theft, illegal copy for the purpose of commercial exploitation."
"Abandonware" is material which is out of production and therefore not any more supported.That's why it is called abandonware, because it is "abandoned" material. It is not interesting for it's publisher any more (if the publishing company still exists) and there are not any commercial or income expactations of it. So there is no "commercial exploitation" neither from the ones who have the abandonware sites nor from the ones who download these programs.
If a publisher would start the reproduction of an old program and make it available in the computer market again, then ,yes, there would be a piracy issue, because the publisher expects to have a profit of this program.It is "interesting material" again. So if someone does make it available in the internet then the following conditions are there:
a) Illegal copy
b) purpose of commercial exploitation (IF the one who provides the illegal copy has a profit of it.)

BUT: There is NO commercial exploitation if the one who provides the illegal copy is commercialy based on donations or advertisments and doesn't have a profit directly from making an illegal copy available on the internet.Of course this is still a discussable issue.

Which is the difference if someone buys an original oldgame copy (which is out of production) from ebay or if he downloads it from an abandonware site? The former Producer (in both cases) doen't have any commercial benefit of it.

Bullshit, there's no such word as abandonware. It's a made up term. Don't confuse legal language with colloqual expressions of piracy. If a company chooses to put something into public domain, they can do so. Until they do so, it still remains their legal property.