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Summaries of Court decisions affecting EULA's can be found here:
http://www.void.jump.org/EmuFAQ2000/AppendixB.htm.
See especially ProCD, Inc. v. Ziedenberg. 86 F.3d 1447 (7th Cir., 1996).

Yup, Phoenix did it on contract for Compaq, and according to the The EmuFAQ the case was tried for copyright infringement and "The courts are unable to find any proprietary IBM microcode within the Phoenix BIOS. Phoenix is cleared of all charges, and the "clean room" reverse engineering technique becomes a legitimate bulletproof means of software developement."

Well, sort of legitimate IMHO ;-)

Yes, he's the same one. He came into the Linux world from writing text games...

Alan used to work for AdventureLand UK where he wrote a game called "Blizzard Pass" [1986]. He later wrote AberMUD (search for 'alan cox interview' on Google, this is mentioned every time someone asks him how he got into Linux) and part of the Abermud world even includes pieces of Blizzard Pass.

See this entry in Spectrum FAQ - Where is...?.

The Adventureland game database site credits him for ScottFree here:
ScottFree page @ AdventureLand

not certain about other emulators, but certainly spectrum emulation is a grey area. most software houses/copyright holders of old speccy games are happy to let their work into the public domain. some downright refuse (hello codemasters). there's a huge list of what's "free", what's restricted, and what's "in-the-air" on WOS.
one deciding point is that the machine itself can be considered public domain (amstrad released the roms to the public).
so there are two factors when it comes to emulation -- is the emulator allowed, and is playing the games allowed? guess we should ask the ISDA.

ZX SPECTRUM Computer Sound Chip Emulator Home Page

This has a full AY-3-8910 emulator (Windows only, I'm afraid) with a pretty good archive of Spectrum SoundTracker songs to play with it. Also check out Project AY, again mainly Speccy-oriented, but lots of tunez from popular games/demos (many of them classics in their own right).

"Be vewy vewy quiet, I'm hunting wuntime ewwors!" - Elmer Fudd

Get your C64 games, Spectrum games, Amiga games and Atari ST games.

As usual, much too late for anybody to read this...

Obviously, the people that host ROM sites aren't about to do the research to see what is legal or not

The best (IMHO) one does. See World of Spectrum's Permits effort - an attempt to contact the copyright holders/authors of every ZX Spectrum program for permission to distribute them; the programs belonging to the few that have denied permission have been removed from the archive.

Phil

As usual, much too late for anybody to read this...

Obviously, the people that host ROM sites aren't about to do the research to see what is legal or not

The best (IMHO) one does. See World of Spectrum's Permits effort - an attempt to contact the copyright holders/authors of every ZX Spectrum program for permission to distribute them; the programs belonging to the few that have denied permission have been removed from the archive.

Phil

Probably much too late for this to get noticed now, but...

Is there an archive of ZX81 software anywhere, possibly in WAV or MP3 format?

The best by far is ftp://ftp.void.jump.org/pub/sinclair/ zx8 1/, part of World of Spectrum. These are generally RAM images, rather than tape images.

Other places worth going are the comp.sys.sinclair newsgroup, and its FAQ (although this is more ZX Spectrum biased. And maintained by me :-)).

Phil

Probably much too late for this to get noticed now, but...

Is there an archive of ZX81 software anywhere, possibly in WAV or MP3 format?

The best by far is ftp://ftp.void.jump.org/pub/sinclair/ zx8 1/, part of World of Spectrum. These are generally RAM images, rather than tape images.

Other places worth going are the comp.sys.sinclair newsgroup, and its FAQ (although this is more ZX Spectrum biased. And maintained by me :-)).

Phil

Another possible problem is identifying the proper legal owner of the code; many old software companies have gone out of business, and finding out who inherited the intellectual "property" may be quite difficult. (Unfortunately, even if the actual author is sympathetic, some company or another usually owns the copyright and won't be as sympathetic, unless they still value that author.)

Being involved with this on the ZX Spectrum side of things (see World of Spectrum), the problem isn't so much companies not being sympathetic (almost all give their permission) as just ignoring you completely...

Phil

At World of Spectrum there is an excellent archive of thousands of Sinclair Spectrum games. They have been actively and repeatedly chasing copyright holders of various games, for permission to archive their games.

Have a look here for an explanation of their process, and here for some results. Every day they seem to get more positive results.

Sure, it's not as good as getting the source released, but at least we can legally download and play the games.

At World of Spectrum there is an excellent archive of thousands of Sinclair Spectrum games. They have been actively and repeatedly chasing copyright holders of various games, for permission to archive their games.

Have a look here for an explanation of their process, and here for some results. Every day they seem to get more positive results.

Sure, it's not as good as getting the source released, but at least we can legally download and play the games.

At World of Spectrum there is an excellent archive of thousands of Sinclair Spectrum games. They have been actively and repeatedly chasing copyright holders of various games, for permission to archive their games.

Have a look here for an explanation of their process, and here for some results. Every day they seem to get more positive results.

Sure, it's not as good as getting the source released, but at least we can legally download and play the games.

..that if you put something up on the web, you've made it publicly available for people to link to.

Yes, but there are right ways and wrong ways to do it - to take an example, the fantastic World of Spectrum has thousands of ZX Spectrum games available. Some people then link directly to the games (say here), trying to make it look like they've put the work in to build up this collection (I've seen sites with "here are some of my games for you to download" and then linking to WoS).

Phil