Basically, this hosts Java ports of Nintendo, Sega, Gameboy and arcade games.
I would assume what’s going on is not legal, correct?
With the same idea in mind, how do abandonware sites like Home of the Underdogs get around intellectual property issues? Is abandonware a legally murky area (it seems not to be so to me), or is it an issue of the authors not really interested in defending their copyrights?
I hope I haven’t crossed any legal boundaries by naming these sites, but Underdogs is fairly well-established, and the software companies seem to give it a free pass in the distribution of old software. Any company can ask for their software to be removed from their website.
It would depend on whether the Java programmers at the site obtained permisson from the copyright holders to distribute what I would assume amounts to a “derivative work”. You won’t see me putting any money down on the idea that they did.
AFAICT, “abandonware” is not a legally valid category. Copyright is copyright, and if you choose, for whatever reason, not to distribute what you own a copyright to, that’s your decision, and no one gets to change your mind for you by pilfering your copyright.
The only reason these sites can exist is because the copyright owners are unable or unwilling to prosecute.
The trouble with the “abandonware” people is that, frustrated over the rate at which companies, and their associated hardware and software, come and go, have confused their affection with entitlement (kinda like stalkers). The result is that they act as though the copyright laws have been rolled back to pre-1831 days:
or at least pre-1976 days:
So, when Hunt the Wumpus* was written in 1972, the expectation was that unless the author renewed, the program would have entered the public domain in 2000, which is pretty much how your average web programmer sees things, not that Mr. Yob has been exactly litigious…
However, the 1992 revision meant that the copyright was automatically renewed, so Hunt the Wumpus would then have automatically been under copyright until 2028.
Of course, the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act of 1998 means that we now must wait for Gregory Yob, the original programmer, to die (AFAIK he is still alive), then we may begin counting down the 95 years until Wumpus is finally public domain.
This is cute: “If you ask us nicely, we’ll deign to stop violating your copyright”.
*FTR, Pong and many other early arcade video games were not programmed microprocessor games, but hard-wired state machines, according to Nolan Bushnell himself on a CD-ROM I own, so they would be covered under patent law, not copyright, hence my use of an early computer game as an example.
Well, what’s you’ve summarized above is pretty much how I’ve always understood copyright law (being a visual artist, I have quite a bit at stake to keep copyright laws tight.) What I’m surprised at is the fact that major software companies don’t protect their copyrights at these abandonware sites, thereby seeming to give them the go-ahead in this practice. I mean, Home of the Underdogs has been around for a LONG time (I’m guessing over 5 years) without any serious legal challenges that I know of. I assume the programming work done is work-for-hire, so it’s not like it’s penniless programmers who can’t sue. It’s major software companies that hold the rights to these video games.
So why don’t they protect their copyrights more vigilantly? When it came to emulator ROMs, it’s become more and more difficult to find cartridge images as, I presume, the sites have been threatened legally. Yet the most visible abandonware site seems to putter along without any trouble.
Sometimes the copyright holder isn’t around any more.
In a few cases, the work has actually been released into the public domain. (There’s a couple cases of this on HotU, but I’ve forgotten which. >_< Some of the old Sierra games, maybe?)
In some cases, ‘abandonware’ is quite literal - The companies, while still around, have no intention of marketing the games, or any dirivitives ever again, so don’t bother spending the time and money to defend their copyrights.
And in some cases, the only reason the abandonware sites don’t get hit is flying under the radar - the companies are still around and perfectly willing to defend their copyright, but they don’t know the sites exist. Obviously not the case with HotU - they keep themselves safe by complying when a company defends their copyright on something they have.
Isn’t the definition of ‘abandonware’ those items that would still be under copyright, but where the copyright owner has vanished? Or are these sites also including items where the copyright owners still exist but have explicitly abandoned them?
I can imagine a gradation of copyrighted items in order of decreasing ease/probability of copyright enforcement:[ol][li]Items for which the copyright owner is aware of copyright infrinement and is actively searching out infringers and enforcing copyright (current movies and songs, for example).[]Items for which the copyright owner is unaware of copyright infrinement, but would actively search out infringers and enforce its copyright if it knew (the flying-under-the-radar sites?).[]Items for which the copyright owner is not actively searching out infringers or enforcing copyright.[]Items for which the copyright owner has ended support and no longer wishes to deal with the item.[]Items for which the copyright owner does not know that they have the copyright (an item aquired from another company say).Items for which the copyright owner has vanished.[/ol][/li]
It seems to me that the last category, at least, should be usable by others. How can one get copyright permission from someone who doesn’t exist?
You don’t, and the work is lost forever. (Don’t think Disney won’t extend copyright protection again. Mickey Mouse will never enter the public domain.)
In the real world, there is a load of software that is effectively not owned by anyone anymore: The person or company that developed it is out of the business, out of business entirely, or otherwise so uninterested in asserting its ownership that the work could be airdropped onto Times Square and nobody would feel the need to file legal paper one.
Sometimes, the work is explicitly released into the public domain or relicensed under terms so liberal it doesn’t make a real difference. (CP/M, for example, is now freely downloadable: Gary Kildall is dead, and Digital Research doesn’t have any use for an obsolete OS.)
Other times it isn’t, but it is still available from various sources. Complaints are generally honored, and there is no possibility of financial damage to the `owners’ of the de facto abandoned work.
scotandrsn, do you need to be reminded that we are, in fact, in GQ, and not The BBQ Pit?
Barring Amelia Earhart-type disappearances, I don’t think that this can legally be the case. If a person (in the legal sense, including corporations) ceases to exist, it’s my understanding that all assets of that person pass to someone or another: This might be designated heirs, or to creditors or owners in the case of a dissolved corporation, or to whoever the creditors auctioned it off to.
Now, it may well be that a particular piece of intellectual property was part of a package of “all other assets of XYZ company not previously mentioned” that someone bought for a dollar, and the new owner might not give a damn about who uses that property, or might not even know that they own it. But in principle, at least, there’s still a copyright holder, who theoretically needs to give permission before the work can legally be used by others.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, but I do play a lot of video games.
As I understand it, in order to win when pressing a copyright case, you have to prove that the violator harmed your ability to profit from the work. Even in cases where the holder is aware and unhappy, they don’t have much of a leg to stand on when declaring that someone’s Java port of Zaxxon is cutting into 2005 sales of the arcade machine.
There is also an entire Open Software movement, who wouldn’t dream of suing, which is, of course their own affair.
My Computers and Ethics professor calimed this aspect of things was built into copyright law. Courts are much more proactive when shutting down someone in violation of a patent, not so much in the case of copyright, because as originally conceived, regarding only written documents oin paper, the thought was that free exchange of ideas was more important that considerations of control of distribution.
The pendulum has swung the other way, of course. The Sonny Bono act extended copyright of works for hire (which I assume is the classification of most widely released video games) to 95 years. This is quite excessive, IMO.
However, I think the solution is to get the laws changed, not act as though they are not there. I have seen many opinion pieces that claim digital technology has changed everything. I say nonsene. The open license agreements and copylefts bandied about are perfectly within the rights of copyright holders to state as the conditions for use of their works under current law. It is not anyone’s right to invalidate other conditions, however. Those who do are simply breaking the law no matter how magnanimously they try to paint themselves when caught. The nature of the law doesn’t change just because someone reeeeeeally wants to bve able to play a 6502-programmed game on their Pentium IV.
Most the companies involved simply arn’t around, and the rights have been lost forever. Software companies don’t stay around long, and games especially have a short period of time where it’d be profitable to sell them. There’s nobody who cares about these games, no money to be made off them and without abandonware they’d simply be lost to the world.
It might do us all well to remember our constitution’s stated purpose for copyright, which was to “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries”. At what point do we stop promoting progress and start hindering it? I guess that’s one for GD.
I’m not so sure this correct, so could I have a cite on that? All I know is that as a photographer, if my work is registered and wilfully infringed, I can seek substantial punitive damages (in the $100K category.) I know one photographer who paid off his mortgage in this way.
As I understand it, it’s not so much a matter of specific law as a question of historical precedent, at least in nebulous cases. Clearly, if you take a photograph, register its copyright, and someone violates that copyright, it’s pretty cut and dried. However, if there is some question about what has been violated, it helps the plaintiff if they can demonstrate financial harm.
For instance, what exactly constitutes a videogame?
The Java applet code is not going to be exactly the same as whatever they programmed in in the 1970s, and Apple tried and failed with the “look and feel” argument in their lawsuit against Micrsoft over Windows 1.0.
So if it’s not an exact copy, a company wanting to take the porters to court would have to show that the copy was diminsihing their ability to make money off the game. But if all they have is software designed to run on ancient processors that are no longer manufactured, rather than updated ports for modern machines they are marketing, it becomes harder to prove harm.
Software’s a weird thing as far as copyright is concerned. For instance, a co-worker of mine claims that Lotus went under largely due to the results of a copyright lawsuit they brought, the details of which escape my mind at the moment. The court ruled that the copyright all documents created with the Lotus software in question belonged, in fact, to Lotus. Not exactly the result Lotus was seeking, and not a result that made their enterprise clients eager to buy their software.
So a software company looking to press copyright charges has to tread carefully and pick their battles.
I’d say their reputation is based on several things. If a game is rereleased, they take it off the site. Kf the company which owns a game asks for it to be removed, they do. HOTU isn’t trying to sneak under the radar or provide free copies of new games.
I’ve heard vague stories about programmers finding their games on abandonware sites and being flattered that somebody still plays them. Al Lowe (the Leisure Suit Larry series, Turin’s Passage, Freddy Pharkas, etc) proved that this does happen by including some of his old works free on his website.
On his site, “The Underdogs” is a link to HOTU.
RE Everygame.
Even if the Java applet is entirely different bit of coding than was used in the arcade machines, or console cartridges, I’d be stunned if the word Zaxxon, the distinctive lettering used in that logo etc are not trademarks of the original company.
