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[Playbahnosh]

Okay, can somebody translate this from lawyerish to english? Pleez?

lemme see what I can make out all of these blabla: The US government released abandonware games to the public, which games was distributed on now obsolete media (like casette or big-floppy). Is this right?

[Luchsen]

No, you won't be prosecuted if you bypass any form of copy protection if you need to do that in order to use a game in a legal way.

[Kosta]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Luchsen @ Dec 3 2006, 06:39 PM) [snapback]270056[/snapback]</div>

[/b]

Hm, that sounds as if they are saying its legal for library of congres to make copies of it digitized archives and distribute those within the library itself without breaking any copyright laws. For example they have X copies of software y, and they need more as its being requested a lot but they can't obtain legal copies anywhere. Then it is legal for them to multiply the copies they have. Or something like that....

[Lulu_Jane]

At first glance it looks non-threatening and as if ESA-type rules/laws are loosening, however, on closer examination it seems as if nothing in particular has changed. I think the most important part of that particular clause is this -

when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of preservation or archival reproduction of published digital works by a library or archive.[/b]

This is a particularly nasty sentence bacause I believe that it leaves lots of room for re-interpretation by nasty corporate and ESA lawyers. Where I believe that Abandonia could easily be classed as an archive, providing the downloads of the games in question for distribution (although free) could be argued as being against the terms of this determination, because although the games are exempt from copyright laws due to their running on obselete hardware, they are still under copyright - so as usual, it's up to the parent companies to decide if they want to bring the hammer down on Abandonia.

Doesn't look like much has changed to me - Abandonia still lives in the grey area

[gregor]

It seems more that if you copy your copy of Jet set willy from casette to computer it will no longer be Copyright violation.

That's why the whole copyright concept is stupid.

Before this you could buy a game on floppy disk but you were actually not allowed to copy it on a CD (to be more safe) cause you would be breaking the law (ehm the US law). with this new law it seems you can actually copy it for preservation purpose. as for abandonia - users are acrhiving the games for preservation purpose as well.

[The Fifth Horseman]

A format shall be considered obsolete if the machine or system necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that format is no longer manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace.[/b]

That more or less applies to DOS systems and the games/software that runs on DOS exclusively...

[gregor]

ehm if so what about win 3.11, win 95 and win 98. the systems are no longer supported by Microsoft. and no longer sold. offcourse the game would have to run on them exclusivelly. and there were a few....

and as for DOS i think Terra nove definatelly can't run even in Win98. Well luckilly this guy made special patch that can bypass some problems (still a messy installer, but game works fine).

[The Fifth Horseman]

There were a few games that are simply impossible to run on newer Windows too, and I agree it might also apply to them.

[Treewyrm]

For example Dark Reign and it's expansion. Both cannot run on 2k/xp/etc. Designed only to run on win95/98 (DX backward compatibility doesn't work in this case). Can DR be considered that sort of game?

[marko river]

All in all nothing is changed - this is just something that had to be done since tchnology is progressing.

Question about AB will never be answered by hte laws for old games but by the way companies see AB. If they think we break law by distributing their games, then it's a crime, if they don't mind and say that AB puts games for preservation only, no problem. But still we have games for download, we are not like Mobygames that are surely only for preservation.