Slashdot Mirror
World of Spectrum gets a Visit from the IDSA
Dasaan writes "the
World of Spectrum
, a site that legally archives old Sinclair Spectrum games, has been accused of distributing copyrighted material by the
IDSA
.
The list of games supposedly being offered on the site include titles such as Soldier Of Fortune and Barbarian. And a quick search of the site shows that these titles are indeed being offered, however they are the original versions that were released many years ago and have now been officially made legal to supply by the current copyright owners." Their correspondence is also available.
IDSA is a company / organisation, not a gov body. Tell them to fuck off.
Same for the BSA and others. They carry no weight, they can represent who they want. its in the courtroom that matters.
Reading that link you realize that essentially they are PRO-IDSA.....
Nintendo were very careless about licensing in the early eighties. Donkey Kong and Mario Bros appeared on several home computers before Nintendo realised they could make more money if they only appeared on the NES. It may well be that the companies that published the old Nintendo arcade games on computers in the eighties actually do have the right to make them freely downloadable.
That said, just saying 'Mario' is about as vague as it gets. How many Mario games are there now?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Something that you might want to consider is that, while the publisher or author has given permission to distribute these works, it is possible that the publisher/author themselves were in violation of copyright laws. During the late 70's and early 80's there were a lot of independent developers that programmed 'clones' of popular arcade games for home computer/hobbyist systems. These games were distributed without permission or license from the copyright holders of the original arcade games. Many old timers will probably recall the infamous "This game is over" ads from Atari concerning clones of its licensed games. Most notable of these were the PacMan clones. It was during this time in the industry that Atari asserted that just because a game did not use actual code nor actual artwork from the original, it was not immune from copyright infringement litigation if it could be reasonably concluded that it diluted the copyrighted work's value. From the list of titles given, it appears that each of them are well known copyrighted and trademarked entities. As such, it is the duty of the copyright holders to enforce any alleged misuse of those copyrights/trademarks. It is doubtful that the Spectrum version of PacMan, Donkey Kong, or even 007 were distributed through a valid license agreement with the original copyright/trademark holders. Perhaps with some clarification from the IDSA, WorldOfSpectrum could contact the copyright/trademark owners of the alleged infringing properties and obtain permission from them. Please don't misunderstand my take on this. I am not attempting to side with IDSA, I just happened to glance at this issue from a different perspective.
The problem is with organisations like IDSA which stumble across websites offering games and then automatically assume there must have been a copyright violation.
The article explicitly states that the website in question had already obtained permission from the copyright holders to redistribute the material...
Curiously enough, the other joint copyright holder has just about every version of Elite ever released available for free download on his website. It seems the two no longer get along terribly well...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Show me a link to a Nintendo game on the site - otherwise I am pretty sceptical. I suspect that you may be as guilty of rushing in without checking the facts first as the the Lawyer from the main story - which is surely the moral here.
P.S. Donkey Kong may have originally appeared in the arcades on a Nintendo machine, put in the case of the spectrum, the Donky Kong game was published by Ocean and even then written by someone else - so just because it is called "Donky Kong" doesn't mean that it has anything to do, in copyright terms, with Nintendo (although the name Donky Kong may have been licensed from Nintendo at some point).
Given that the ISDA is a self-proclaimed authority that, in fact, very few copyright holders (and almost none outside the US) are members of, and given than the copyright holders of most of these programs have long gone the way of the dodo...
However, members of the IDSA do hold the rights to a significant number of Spectrum games (most notably the Ocean and Ultimate games), actions designed to annoy them probably aren't the wisest course of action. As has been pointed out elsewhere, we don't have permission to distribute most of the games on WoS, despite our best efforts (or more precisely, those of Martijn van der Heide, the owner of WoS, who had previously contacted every IDSA member telling them we had their games available and asking for permission to do this).
On an almost on-topic note, I've gotta point out this site.
The spectrum had some of the coolest games ever, and the guys at Retrospec have made some great remakes. For those of you who were unfortunate enough to never have a Spectrum, I'd especially recommend any of the versions of Manic Miner, and Klass of '99 (a remake of Skool Daze).
I'm sure I still have a working Spectrum around here somewhere...
"If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated"
You do realize that copyright doesn't cover ideas, but the expression of those ideas? The words you used, the way you formatted, etc. is what you own the copyright on, but there's nothing to stop anyone else from writing about the same thing.
This has been a test. Had this been a real emergency, we would have fled in terror and you would not have been informed.
Is this really how they are doing it? If so, can anyone post the list of file names that they are looking for?
In all honesty, don't know. However, they certainly didn't appear to do much more than that. Getting as far as WoS's database entry for Soldier of Fortune (one click away from the game listings) clearly shows that it's not the modern game.
As has been pointed out elsewhere, that's the most clear-cut case; some of them (eg 007) I don't believe the IDSA are representing the copyright holders to the versions on WoS, even if we don't have permission to distribute them. Others (Mario, Frogger, etc) the IDSA may be representing the copyright holders, at least for some of the versions. If the IDSA responds to Martijn's reply, then action may be taken with respect to those games.