Slashdot Mirror
Warez and Abandonware
markm writes "Stephen Granade, webmaster of the interactive fiction site at
About.Com has written
an excellent article
on the warez and abandonware scene. It's worth checking out, even if you don't
participate in trading warez."
What are your favorite abandoned games that you'd like to try playing again? Would you pay?
1. NATURAL VERSUS ARTIFICIAL RIGHTS.
:)
In the eyes of the law, the right of propertyowners to control the use of their property is a natural right. The right of people to be equal, regardless of skin color, is a natural right. The right to vote, regardless of gender, is a natural right. Note that the Constitution has not always specifically acknowledged these natural rights, and there are many natural rights which the Constitution does not recognize.
In addition to natural rights, there are such things as artificial rights. These are more accurately called "privileges". Just like you have a natural right to travel where you like in the US, you have an artificial right to drive on public highways. Remember how they told you in Driver's Ed that driving is a privilege and can be revoked by the State at will? It's the same principle.
Interesting, copyright is not a natural right. All natural rights recognized by the Constitution are phrased in terms of absolutes and imperatives: the government shall not pass law that restricts your freedom of speech, it shall not forbid you arms, it must get a warrant from a judge before violating your privacy rights, etc.
Copyright is a permissive, not an absolute. Congress may, in order to further social goals (scientific discoveries, literary development, etc.) secure for authors and inventors a monopoly on the usage of their creations. As can be seen from the wording of the Constitution, copyright is not a right--it's a privilege.
2. WHO'S IN CHARGE HERE?
The fundamental question of any government is, and always will be, who's in charge here? In the United States, that question was answered in 1783 when Washington accepted Cornwall's surrender, and again in 1789 when our Constitution was established: we the people are.
If we, the people, feel that the social ills of copyright outweigh its beneficial effects, then it is our absolute and sovereign right to ignore any and all acts of Congress which are contrary to our wishes.
America has a long tradition of rabble-rousing, much to the dismay of the government. When civil rights were not recognized by Congress and segregation was still the law, we, the people, marched on Selma and on Washington. We, the people, disobeyed the government. When Vietnam was tearing the country in half, we, the people, burned draft cards and engaged in civil disobedience.
Congress is not in charge of the government. Nor is the judiciary, nor is the executive. The people who are ultimately in charge are you and me.
3. WHAT IS THEFT, ANYWAY?
Black's Law describes theft as the unauthorized (not unlawful) deprivation of property, or in some cases, benefit of that property.
By that legal definition, unauthorized copying is not and cannot be theft. The `benefit of property' is none; if the author of the software is sitting on it and not turning a dime of profit by sitting on it, then I'm not depriving him of a dime by using it anyway and sharing it with my friends. After all, he still has his original copy (so I'm not depriving him of property), and he's not been deprived of any benefit (since he was receiving no benefit before).
Unauthorized copying is not equivalent to theft. Black's Law says so.
CONCLUSIONS:
1. "... The focus will switch to owning intellectual property."
As pointed out, it is impossible to own intellectual property. Physical property exists as a natural right; "intellectual property" is a privilege granted by the State, and privileges can always be revoked.
The alternative is to elevate intellectual property to the level of natural right, and if you're arguing that this should be the case, you're going to have a hard time convincing me--but please, try!
2. "If I broke into your home and took things out of your attic or basement, then you'd be outraged. But somehow calling it `IP' makes the difference? Does it really?"
Absolutely. The former is theft--the deprival of property and benefit thereof. The latter is unauthorized copying.
Now, it's likely that a theft argument can be made for unauthorized copying of material which is already available for a fee. If my favorite garage band is selling CDs for $10 a pop and I start burning copies of that CD for all my friends, I'm depriving them of a fraction of $10 per sale. (After all, most of my friends wouldn't buy their CD; of the ten people I burned a CD for, the band probably lost only one sale. Thus, their losses are $10, not $100.)
In the case of abandonware, no profit is being made, and thus, no damage has been done.
One of the facets under common law is that if someone doesn't use something for ten years, does not show any significant effort to maintain it, and someone else does these actions instead independant of the owner, the latter person gains the right to use that property as they see fit without the ability for the original onwer to prohibit them from doing so. Typically this is used with tracts of land, but I suspect it could apply to other things.
Now this is not quite a transfer of ownership, but it still is something significant. The question then arises as to if the latter person can then give copies of the item to everyone. It's hard to say; I don't know any court precedent here. A court case like this would be interesting to see.
The product is not the list of bits on the disk.
If game companies made old games freely available, it WOULD cut into their new business. You can not simultaneously argue that they should free these old games since you would love to play them and argue that they aren't losing business when they free the old games.
The week you spend playing Bard's Tale is one week of delayed revenues for Ultima 2001 Pro Special Gold Edition.
Bingo Foo
---
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
Since many of these old games (and applications) don't generate revenue in any way, shape or form for the company any longer, why don't they release them under a license so that the general public can use them without fear of breaking EULAs or copywrite law?
For example, I liked the game Quarantine for the PC. You're a taxi driver taking people around a futuristic city that's filled with psychos and diseased people (yeah, I'm pretty twisted, get used to it). I'm 99.99% sure they haven't sold a copy of this in 3 or 4 years, so why not throw it on a FTP or web site somewhere with a new license and make it available to anyone who wants it?
The other idea I had is an "expiration" if you will on software copywrites, like patents. After X years, the software's EULA no longer applies and people can do whatever they want with it (including make copies).
Imagine Elite for the BBC Master was released from copyright. Modern versions of Elite would not then be made, at least not with the Elite name; companies would shy from associating with a rogue brand. Look at what happened to Doom.
It's not so much that the style of game would die; there will always be better updated clones. It's just that games of the same name would not be released. I'm quite nostalgic, and like to see games with the proper name. It gives the develepors a tradition to uphold and may even improve quality.
It's best all round if the games companies just turn a blind eye to pirating of ancient games, in the long run, I think.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
a Washington, D.C. firm. IPR calculated how many computers were being sold into a country for business purposes and how much software was being sold... From this they could calculate how much software should be sold to match the number of business computers in the country. The deficit between the ideal sales rate and the actual one is the piracy rate.
I don't understand how that could give an accurate estimate of lost revenue. Suppose a company had 1000 computers, each with a licensed copy of MS Office. Then, they scrapped all those computers, and bought 1000 new computers, and installed the old MS Office onto the new computers. There would now be a difference of 1000 between computer sales and software sales. There was no piracy involved, but according to that statement, MS lost around $400K ($400 for Office x 1000 computers) to piracy. How does that work? Even if the company sold the 1000 old computers to users, who in turn bought 1000 copies of MS Office, you'd still have a deficit of 1000 (+1000 new computers, +1000 old computers, -1000 MS Office).
Hey you nasty games companies! The loudmouth Stuart Campbell journalist thinks you should leave him and his retro-gaming rampant piracy activities alone. In fact, he thinks you shouldn't make much money on them, too.
Now, I've never wanted to point this out to Stuart, but most of his earnings come from game-related punditry. If the only games available were badly-done freeware clones, why would anyone want to have them reviewed, especially by a man with an evil streak a mile wide? But I digress...
Does my bum look big in this?
I keep hearing how these abandonwarez sites are posting titles that can't be bought.
? SP=10023&PN=1&V1=167545&xid=9564&search_id=2087833 &doc_id=11 , I hope that works] and more are the classics.
Unfortunately, anyone with a few minutes of looking online can find *NEW* *FOR SALE* *FROM THE PUBLISHER* copies of a lot of the titles that are offered. Interplay's Forgotten Realms archives [look at http://www.digitalriver.com/dr/v2/Ec_Main.entry24
Many publishers have offered those games for sale, but I see "abandoned" sites listing the same titles online. Just because it's not front and center at your local Best Buy or Fry's seems to make some think nobody can find it.
If and when the "abandoned" crowd can actually clean up their act and bother to remove titles that are legally available for sale, then I might think of them as different from the "warez" groups. For now, they're merely lying about what's truly not available.
They are public companies, mostly.
As a public company, their Intellectual Property is viewed by the investment community as an assett.
A company giving away it's assets for no monetary gain runs the risk of having it's directors in some severe class action lawsuits, for improperly managing company assets.
THAT is why public companies don't just 'give shit away because it's the right thing to do'. Because even if the Management, and the Board think it's okay... it opens a VERY REAL door for a class action lawsuit from the shareholders.
To all software authors,
For crying out loud, when the users pay money to purchase the programs you wrote, the did it because of their trust in you.
I am not a warez user, nor will I ever be. I respect the goodworks and time and effort you've put into your software product, but if you ever decide to ABANDON the product you have written, please consider the users who have PAID THEIR MONEY to purchase the product! Please, don't leave them holding the empty bag.
The VERY LEAST you can do is to let the users have the SOURCE CODE of the ABANDONWARE, and let them decide what they (the users) gonna do with it.
I am speaking from experience, both as a user and an author of an already abandon software. I feel very sad that after I have paid good money for something - which I thought might have SOME MORE MILAGE TO GO, for years to come - and wake up to find that the software I use can no longer be used on newer OS environments, and the original author has decided to abandon the product altogether !
One example I can point to is Optasm, an excellent Assembly Language compiler. After the author sold his company (along with all the copyrights of his software) to Symantec corp, Symantec decided to DISCONTINUE the development of Optasm, and YET, they (the folks at Symantec) steadfastly refused to release the source code for Optasm, and we, the users who have appreciated the way Optasm compile the assembly code, are now facing NO OPTION but giving up our favorite assembly language compiler altogether.
Had Symantec releases the source code to Optasm, I bet someone (even perhaps moi!) may try to modify it to run on other OS environment, including the Open-Source ones, such as Linux or FreeBSD !
Now, I am not saying that the assembler language utilities for LInux or FreeBSD is not good, but if you compare the way Optasm did the compilation to those currently available for Linux and FreeBSD, there's just NO comparison at all!
Hopefully, one day, Symantec will come to the conclusion that releasing the source code for products that they have decided to TOTALLY ABANDON may generate goodwills for the company, goodwills that may reap MORE BENEFITS in the future, in term of support and sales of future products.
Let me re-iterate my point again, I am NOT interested in Warez, but please give me the source code of the product if you the author decides to abandon it.
Thank you again for reading.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !