Great Hierophant wrote:

ADDiCT wrote:

To aquire such software is currently illegal, even though the copywrite owners make no profit from the software, and there is a genuine market for it.

Can you spot the mistake in this sentence? (;

EDIT: i was referring to the "there is a genuine market" part, which i thought should read "no genuine market". But the current form makes sense, too, i think.

The word "copywrite" is misspelled. Copyright refers to the intellectual property concept, "to copywrite" is to write copy for a newspaper or an advertisement.

I prefer copyleft.

I think even if so many people sign this petition that a nerved british minister says "okay, lets legalize it" - it won't work. Why? Because in the moment when the government legalizes the free (uncontrolled) distribution of so called "abandonware" the copyright holders will file hundreds of lawsuites against this law and the government (which is financially much more attractive than to charge some nerds)
And not only because their copyright is going to be violated. It's private property that is taken from them. It's that simple.

By stopping production and support for a program, they are essentially saying they don't care any more. There would have to be some sort of time period applied though. Such as a game goes pd if the copyright holder has stopped production and support for 1 year, 18 months, 5 years, whatever.

That sounds fine. Even logical somehow. But if this is true for software, why isn't it true for.... mhm... let's say - houses?
"By stopping to look after the house and cleaning its stairways, houseowners are essentially saying they don't care any more...."
Perhaps some of you remember the time (I think in the 80's and early 90's it was) when people in european cities occupied empty houses that seemed to be abandoned by their owners. What happend?
Sometimes the police came, sometimes the landlord. Time passes but finally many of the former occupiers got lease contracts.
What I mean is you can't take the copyright from the creators or copyright holders but you may perhaps somehow legalize the now still somehow illegal distributors (abandonware sites).
It will be a little bit complicated but for the benefit of all:
- so called abandonware sites should be licensed, meaning that they are allowed to offer free downloads of "abandonware" only for private purposes (like a public library), the copyright remains at their repective owners
- everyone in this "chain of downloading" has to pay a small indirect fee, meaning i.e. that your dsl router will cost you 38$ instead of 37$, that your provider charges you 25ct a month more, the computer / component manufacturers pay something a.s.o. The money is than given to the copyright holders or creators by breaking it down according to the actual download numbers.
This seems like indirect taxes and it is somehow, but a similar system works quite well (in my country) with books and music for years now.
This would also serve the main reason to keep "old" games and software alive:

Alot of PC software would disappear through neglect if it were not traded illicitly.

...by the way, GH, please be merciful with my english... 😉

dh4rm4 wrote:

Software copyright statutes do not need to be mucked with via those who wish to legitimise 'abandonware', it's perfectly fine as it is. It is up to publishers and vendors to decide which of their legally owned products they wish to to be put into the public domain. Petitioning for the law to change in favour of piracy is just stupid.

Perpetually extending the duration of copyright is somehow less stupid? How did we go from 14 years with an optional 14 year extension to life plus 70 years? How is this fair, and how does this serve the original purpose of copyright, which was (and is) to promote the creation of arts and sciences through a limited-term exclusive right to reproduce the original work? All copyright is doing at this point is allowing companies like Disney to leverage their huge closet of old IP to make more money without doing anything new and creative — exactly the opposite of what copyright is about! Publishing is so fast and cheap and easy at this point that you don't need decades to garner significant profit from a work. There's also nothing that says that once copyright ends you can no longer sell the work to people — it's just that you no longer have the exclusive right to do so.

(But, for what it's worth, I do think that Internet petitions are hilariously dumb.)

It's private property that is taken from them. It's that simple.

That's the dumbest argument ever. When I take your house, you no longer have a house. When I make a copy of your song, you still have the original song, I just made a copy of it.

> But if this is true for software, why isn't it true for.... mhm... let's say - houses?

Stop paying your property tax and see what happens 😉

That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. When I take your house, you no longer have a house.

That's because you think that somebody who ownes a house has to live in it. But what happens if you don't live in the house but your family income depends on the rentals?

Colin, but why then should the Beatles be able to hold copyright for 50 years but Peter Moleyneux should not? People still play HELP to this day via electronic formats that didn't exist when that album was originally released and I'm sure Peter hopes that people will play Fable 2 or Black and White 2 again in the next 30 years on platforms that don't exist now. By extending copyrights on software from 14 years to 70, it just brings them into line with written and musical copyright law, which is 50 years from date of creation. Copyright law protects tha artists, not the publishers by the way. Disney, like a lot of large corporations, just tends to create many of its works in house under the name of its father, so copyright law protects its in house developed works.

Silent Loon wrote:

That's because you think that somebody who ownes a house has to live in it. But what happens if you don't live in the house but your family income depends on the rentals?

No, look, this house metaphor is ridiculously stupid. Please stop using it. You just tried to make an analogy between a one-time purchase (computer software) and a subscription service (property rental). It makes no logical sense.

Colin, but why then should the Beatles be able to hold copyright for 50 years but Peter Moleyneux should not?

Neither of them should hold copyright for that long. You don't need 50 years of exclusive copyright in order to turn a profit on a creative work.

People still play HELP to this day via electronic formats that didn't exist when that album was originally released and I'm sure Peter hopes that people will play Fable 2 or Black and White 2 again in the next 30 years on platforms that don't exist now.

Once again, you are missing the point of copyright. It is supposed to encourage new works, by providing an incentive for people to create them. Peter Moleyneux does not have an incentive to create new works when he's still getting paid enough from the old ones to live comfortably.

Also, if he's the copyright holder, and he dies, and the person that inherits the copyright (his estate) really doesn't want people to play these games, then nobody ever will, because they can't be legally distributed, and they can easily get lost forever.

By extending copyrights on software from 14 years to 70, it just brings them into line with written and musical copyright law, which is 50 years from date of creation.

This is not true, at least in the US, where copyright is for any "original work of authorship", including software, and the term is life of the author plus 70 years. And it keeps going up, slowly but surely, every few decades, ensuring that even though perpetual copyright is unconstitutional, the limits just keep getting raised to make it effectively perpetual.

Copyright law protects tha artists, not the publishers by the way.

Yeah, making sure their decaying corpses continue to get royalty payments for 70 years after they're dead — that's really protecting the artists, huh?

You seem to forget the artists' families. This is what the 50 year and/or 70 year copyright statute is made to protect.

dh4rm4 wrote:

You seem to forget the artists' families. This is what the 50 year and/or 70 year copyright statute is made to protect.

Do the families of office workers or assembly line workers that die continue to get a cheque every month from the company for 70 years? No, they don't. Why do you feel that it should be different for these people? Why are the families of content creators entitled to money for work that they didn't do any more than some Joe Sixpack? Do their children get their arms and legs chopped off so they can't make their own money?? No, they don't.

Also, you just said it was for the artists. Now you're saying it's for their families too. Maybe we should also send some money to the artists' landscapers and maids and people too, when they die, so they don't have to work any more either.

Copyright law protect the rights of the artists' ownership over their works. The artists' families are further protected by the same governance. This is standard practice for Estate Law, which is an older law than copyright law and thus copyright law has to take into account the other laws it relates to and affects. Office work doesn't apply here nor does bringing other non familial/filial relationships into the argument. However, should the artists' estate cover non blood related members via a will then yes, they too may well be eligibe for ongoing dividends from the estate which are also protected via copyright and estate statues.

The incentive to continue to be creative should not and does not come from the threat of losing one's ownership of creative works. The incentive comes from wanting to continue to be creative. The idea that creative people have to be incentivised by the threat of poverty is not a pleasant one.

Copyright was intended to provide a limited monopoly for a brief period of time, then the work was supposed to go into the public domain allowing others to build upon it or creative derivative works. The term has become way too long, and is now stifling creation rather than encouraging it.

Should all works be treated equally? These days a game's window of opportunity is just a few weeks or so after the initial release. It will make the majority of it's money at that time, then everyone is after the next big thing. Other than maybe a select few such as Starcraft or Diablo you don't see very many games over a couple years old on the shelves. On the other hand, I still listen to music made 40 years ago or some movies even older than that. I can still read a book written 100 years ago. Games just don't seem to have that longevity. Will there still be anyone even wanting to play them when the copyright expires, or will they just laugh at such primitive technology and go back to the latest holo-vid?

I guess that depends on what value someone places on the content delivered via the older 'primitive technology'.

I'd say the very existence of emulation and it's continual improvements in performance and broadness would show that the value of older works should continue to be protected by copyright law.

dh4rm4 - If you read what most of the people here say, it not that everyone thinks copyright should be totally abandoned. The question is: How long should it last?

How long do you want the copyright to extend on a software game? 10, 50, 100, 500, 1000 years? And why that time?

I've read and understood what we're discussing Minimax and I do not agree that software copyright should not lapse after 14 years. I'm of the opinion that software copyright should be the same or similar to music copyright - that is, 50 years with renewal to the family estate of the original copyright holder. I believe this to be applicable because families have as much right to the protection of their software assets (patents, copyright etc) as they do already for physical assets such as housing, land and valuables. Music and literature automatically fall into public domain 50 years after the original copyright owner's death unless some sort of estate has been engaged to handle the ownership after the original copyright owner's death. Software should not be any different, despite what some people refer to as its shortened 'shelf life' - it still remains valuable to those who wish to collect it and those whose families should be able to continue to earn from it.

The problem with the house analogy is that it is imcomplete. A house that is being rented would be equal to a game that is still being supported and/or sold. If you want to compare it to software that has been abandoned (no sales or support,) then it would be as if you moved out of your house and did nothing with it. As far as that goes, unless you take active steps, there is a perfectly legal way for someone to take your house from you (without paying.) In the US, there is still a law on the books refered to as squater's rights. That is, if someone moves into an abandoned house, takes steps to improve the property, and the original owner never files a complaint, then after a period of time, the squaters now own that house. This analogy actually 'supports' the existence of an abandonment clause to copyrights.

Remember, what we are talking about here is opening software that is no longer being published and no longer has any sort of support to the public. If a company is still producing it, even if you pretty much have to order direct from them, then the amendment wouldn't apply. If a product is no longer being produce, but the company cares enough about it to maintain some form of support system, then again, the amendment wouldn't apply. So, to follow what others have been saying, if the company (or a person,) wants to maintain a copyright for the entire protected period (regardless of how long it is,) then all they have to do is at least keep a support structure in place, if not actually continueing to produce it as well. This is even easier now than it used to be. More and more companies are setting up digital purchase systems (pay $40 and download your game straight to your computer.) Of course, in 5 to 10 years, when the company stops selling that game (or gets bought out, merges with another company, etc.) you will no longer be able to get the install "authorized" and the money you spent flies out the window.

If you really insist on complete fairness, then allow for a publisher to manually renew the copyright on a regular basis, extending the time between abandonment and losing the copyright. So, if the amendment states that 1 year after a company abandons a work, it will go into public domain, then if 11 months and 27 days after that abandonment, the copyright holder applies for an extension, then the clock would start all over. If however the company doesn't care enough to take such steps, then they obviously don't care if the work goes into public domain.

There are many good games out there that just cannot be had without paying a small fortune (comparatively.) I gather, from what people have been typing, that some of you would actually prefer to pay $500 to play a game. This is money going into the pockets of a greedy end user. Not one penny of it goes to the publisher. What I'm wondering is, in these cases, how would an abandonment clause hurt the publisher? They are no longer seeing any money from the game anyways. In many cases the current copyright holder may not even know they hold those rights, and couldn't produce or support it anyways (because the masters have been lost.) In the later cases, the company would actually be incapable of ever making any money off of the game itself.

One item not covered, so far, though. What about the copyright on the name? If there were to be an abandonment clause voted in, then it should (IMHO,) only be applied to the particular work, and not all of the names and titles associated with, and protected by, that particular copyright. So, if Ultima 1 (for example,) were to be foced into the public domain this way, it would be legal to copy and download the game. However, the Ultima title itself would still be protected. So, while you could copy the game to your hearts content, you couldn't turn around and produce Ultima X without first getting permission from EA.

p.s. - Maybe we are actually looking at this from the wrong angle. Since games are so hardware dependent, put them under patent laws instead. Of course, then it would actually cost a producer a minimum of $2,000 to get it protected. Also, patents have been known to get hijacked during the application period (can take up to 10 years.) Finally, patents only protect a product for a limited time (I think it is 10 or 20 years, after the patent is approved, not sure.) After this time, they are open to be copied by whoever wants to. Of course, as some have already pointed out, when copyrights were first established in the US, they only protected for a set period as well. I'm wondering about the descendents of John Hornblower (made up name, don't look it up,) who are now broke and destitude because the copyrights on his masterpieces were only good for 25 years.

dh4rm4 wrote:

I've read and understood what we're discussing Minimax and I do not agree that software copyright should not lapse after 14 years. I'm of the opinion that software copyright should be the same or similar to music copyright - that is, 50 years with renewal to the family estate of the original copyright holder. I believe this to be applicable because families have as much right to the protection of their software assets (patents, copyright etc) as they do already for physical assets such as housing, land and valuables. Music and literature automatically fall into public domain 50 years after the original copyright owner's death unless some sort of estate has been engaged to handle the ownership after the original copyright owner's death. Software should not be any different, despite what some people refer to as its shortened 'shelf life' - it still remains valuable to those who wish to collect it and those whose families should be able to continue to earn from it.

I don't know what laws you are reading, but we are talking about US law here, and I've already pointed this out to you twice. If you aren't going to read what I am writing, please stop commenting. I noticed you are from Australia, so I went ahead and did a quick look at Australian law, and the law there is life plus 70, not life plus 50, with exceptions for Crown copyright and works whose authors died before 1955. Also, there is no exception for "unless there is an estate" that I can see, so please stop making false statements; it damages your credibility.

You also persist in your convenient ignorance of the intended purpose of copyright, which is not to provide a cosy blanket of extra money for your children, but to promote the useful arts and sciences. With rare exception, these excessive copyright periods accomplish only three things:

1. Allow corporations like Disney to get rich while not creating any new works, defeating the purpose of copyright.
2. Stifle new creative works by making it impossible for derivatives of copyrighted works to be legally created.
3. Cause a great number of old works to fall be permanently degraded or even be lost completely because they can't be legally copied or used in any way.

If you don't think it is a problem, please do some research on orphan works, which is a more generic extension to "abandonware".

FeedingDragon wrote:

In the US, there is still a law on the books refered to as squater's rights.

Interesting. I admit I didn't know that. As far as I know we don't have such a law (in Germany) - which has created a lot of problems in the past...
The reason I used this analogy was mainly to point out that the government is the wrong addressee for such a petition, as the law does not make so much difference between intellectual property and estate property.
I also didn't want to make a moral statement. The current situation is not good, as it partly criminalizes people spending their time to preserve what I regard as some kind of cultural heritage. But the british government can't "legalize abandonware" even if they wanted to do so.
Regarding copyright I agree with dh4rm4. Of course you can discuss the length of the copyright.

So, if the amendment states that 1 year after a company abandons a work, it will go into public domain, then if 11 months and 27 days after that abandonment, the copyright holder applies for an extension, then the clock would start all over.

Why should the right go into public domain and not back to the original creators / game developers?
I don't know about the contracts in the gaming industry, but I guess its mostly total by-out. So why shouldn't the original designers benefit from their creation when the publisher has abandonend the game or went bankrupt? Does a writer loose his copyright when the publisher doesn't print his books, or simply doesn't exist anymore?

FeedingDragon I understand what you want, and your idea doesn't sound bad, but I fear it will have bad consequences:
Major companies will prolongue their copyrights again and again, and also they will find a way to pretend that some titles are still avalaible. Others will collect copyrights, or buy them cheap and than perhaps offer some kind of expensive download. As a result there will be only few games that go into public domain.
One of the reasons for the current situation - that the distribution of abandonware is tolerated by many copyright holders - is that they don't loose their copyright by doing so. From the moment on your amendment comes into effect, lawyers will secure copyrights of software they never heard of before. There won't be '"free games" I fear.
That's why I had this idea with the small fee and that the money is given automatically to the copyright holders.

Silent Loon: We seem to have a slight missunderstanding here. If an amendment made abandoned works go into public domain, that would mean that nobody does or can hold the rights to it anymore. The only way lawyers could start snapping up copyrights is if, due to company failures, mergers, ect., they had already been given the rights. Again, this is by US laws (which is where I live, and are the only ones I was required to study umpteen years ago in college.)

If a company started offering these older games for digital purchase, I wouldn't mind at all. The 'catch' here being that, unless it was at a greatly discounted price, I would expect some form of support for the game. Thanks to DOSBox, such support is actually appearing for games that I have recently purchased in one form or another. Leisure Suit Larry is still (well, as of 18 months ago at least,) being produced and sold. The CD I purchased had DOSBox included, along with a front end that did all the config work for you 😀 Bethesda, using DOSBox, has released Arena as a free download, and the web site, last time I looked, also had support available to help you get it up and running. Although, IIRC, many of the answers refered to this very web forum. Now, if Bethesda wanted to charge me $4.99 or maybe even $9.99 for the game, I would jump at the chance and wouldn't hesitate to pay for it. In Betheda's case, because they are the ones releasing it, they still retain the copyright even though they are not charging anything at this time. They could, if they so choose, start charging for it in the future.

Those 2 examples would be of older works that are still being produced or supported. As such they would retain the full benifit and protection that copyright laws grant. However, lets say a company were to own the rights to a game and absolutely refuse to produce it, even going so far as to have deleted the original masters and source code, and then go on to tell people to their face, "we will not support that game, you need to go buy something newer." Don't laugh please, I actually had a support technician say those exact words to me when I was trying to get Ultima VII up and running (this was before I had even heard of DOSBox.) In cases such as this, I am all for such an amendment. The company, in this case, is basically saying, "that game is so old it is totally worthless and we aren't going to bother with it no matter how many people may want it."

Sure, companies turn a blind eye (in many cases,) to abandonware sites. But even so, such sites are still technically illegal. They are just pretending they don't know what is going on, so they never have to file any sort of legal complaint to retain their copyright. I think I covered this aspect of US copyright law in another post here. Basically, if a copyright holder is aware of an infringement, and doesn't take steps to stop it, they relinquish thier rights to that property (making it public domain.)

Next up, very few games (that's what we are all really talking about here I believe,) have a single individual as the copyright holder. I don't know about anyone else, but every time I have ever worked for a company, I had to sign an agreement, in advance, giving up all my rights to original works to the company. So, even if a company goes completely out of bussiness, the original programmer has no rights to the work in question. Usually, when a company goes under, other software companies bid on the properties owned by that company. In some cases, the company in question actually auctions off these properties in advance, to garner some closing bussiness funds. This is another issue I have with US copyright law (and this situation being one of the main reasons even individuals have incorporated when producing games.) That is, that the 'life' of the author, when a corporation is involved, is based apon the corporation itself and not any single individual. This can actually be passed on to the new company if the originator goes out of bussiness. Essentially, the copyright becomes completely eternal, as the 'author' can never actually die (if it is handled correctly.)

I'm sorry, US laws need to be totally re-vamped (IMHO.) The laws and precedents have become so tangled and complex that the legal system is becoming clogged. So, I guess I'm saying that the US legal system needs an enema 😀

Personally, if such an amendment was passed, and companies started taking steps to retain their copyrights, I don't see a real problem. The easiest ways for companies to do this would be to just dig up the original masters, build an online store, and start selling digital download versions. With the support being a simple FAQ and a link to this forum. The companies that have been turnining a blind eye (and they have to maintain, at all times, that they have no idea this is going on,) problably wouldn't even wory about copy protecting the works either. After all, the monies made from the site would just be icing off the cake (yes, off, as in totally extra and not really expected.) Sure, there may be a company or two (**cough** EA **cough**,) who might put rediculous prices on these, but as the copyright owner, that is there right, and they would be totally ignoring the fact that this would probably adversely impact their sales on newer games.

Now, here is the kicker that some may not have considered. What an amendment like this would really work for are those games were nobody knows who owns the rights any more. Because of their contract, it cannot be the original creator. The original company, if they are still around, have a totally new management staff, who could be completely unaware that they own those rights. They may have even destroyed the original masters (and maybe even code,) during a clean up of their servers. If the original company is no longer around, the rights could have moved through several different hands, until it ended up at a totally unexpected place. The new company may not even be in the software bussiness at all. In both cases, the company in question may not even be able to produce proof that they own those rights. Thus, if the copyright was set up correctly in the first place, the rights to those works are in eternal limbo. They are protected by copyright law, but can never be produced again.

The only real drawback, that I can think of, are those extremely rare games that were held by a single individual. They may be in a place where they can't produce or support their game. The owner (or their estate if they are no longer around,) may not want to lose their copyright, but cannot conviently take the necessary steps to keep them. However, with the internet becoming more and more available, this should become less of a problem. Even someone that no longer has a computer can get on the net now (the library here has free access.) All they really have to do is go to one of a myriad of free web hosting sites, set up a download page, and put it up for download. Sure, they wouldn't be making any money off of it, but they would, at least be protecting their copyright for the time being. The next step (though I would personally advise skipping the first one if you can,) would be to find a digital distribution site (such as Direct2Drive,) that sells other peoples games, and set it up with them. Then, they could get a little bit of income that way (where now they are probably getting none, since they cannot produce the game anymore.)