I seen someone in my programming class embed a 1 hour trail program into a GOG Installer I don't know how the hell he did this but when you installed the game it did a countdown thing where after an hour the game will shutdown and un install itself from the pc and was pretty neat. maybe someday I can see this happening in some places online.

No, your teacher is about right. De jure, you could be held accountable if you hold a pirated software whatever it's age. Now, the kicker here is, de facto, it is highly highly very supremely unlikely you would actually be prosecuted for holding a pirated copy of a very old game. Much like jaywalking over a road in some remote part of town. Not technically legal, but come on.

Yes and no; he's not on a false path there, of course.

Law has two parts; you have those that are written and there are those that are non-written. And then you have interpretation somewhere between. No, the term "abondonware" is/may not be a legal term, but we still use it in daily life for software that are considered "abandoned". As in, there are no one to claim them. Many are simply lost, or some people just don't care.

As I said - most of those old software has no parents, and therefore no one can legally do anything with them. But if we talk about the preservation of software historically, then we find that "grey" area I mentioned.

I don't support distributing of software that can be legally bought, but, If we take a look at what's happening to software written for CP/M (and DR-DOS), for example, we would loose much of our early software past, if none had preserved them. They're all proprietary and commercial, but they're still important non the less. Too bad some are already lost forever.

I'm not saying it's all impossible, but obtaining those rights are next to impossible, especially when most early software were written in the US, and by law, no one can touch an IP for, was it 99 years (?), after the owner is dead. There's a reason as to why GOG, or even Steam have had slow release of old DOS Games. And even slower today.

Of course, there is this guy that bought the whole IP for Street Rod 1 and 2, and released them pluss a SE edition for free, and I think Retroism are trying to obtain as much as possible. I admire your search, but it was a reason I asked which games you wanted to obtain the right to rent out .

Only 70 years after death in most European countries.

Although there are situations where circumstances or a skillful lawyer could get around that.

First, the copyright law is only for creative work. If you can somehow prove that the software in question is not unique and creative, you could remove its copyright status. I would assume that any Tetris clone that doesn't add anything to the original idea could be regarded that way. And in the specific case of Tetris, it came from the Soviet Union, which no longer exists, so that might in some cases create nice legal loopholes to go through.

Second, if you can somehow detach "art" from the "code", you might have a way to distribute stuff. There are differences in national legislations, so it doesn't work everywhere, but basically if you have computer code, it isn't art, unless it's being run and executed on a computer. So distributing source code might not violate copyright laws. There are some previously commercial games that are now available as freeware, but only as source code, not as executables. Also software like ScummVM kind of falls into this category, as there's no arts assets within ScummVM, only reprogrammed code.

Third, and this is like an unexplored territory, laws in most countries do allow quotations from creative work. A passage from a book, a part of the song, or a short clip of a movie is OK for reviewing purposes and such. Now I don't recall anyone using this in any legal controversy that I'm aware of, but you could do something like embed 1/10 of some game on your website and call it "interactive quote for review purposes". Then it's basically a random chance whether that will hold in court (hope you have a good lawyer!), but at least that would be backed by like 150 years of arts reviews of all kinds, so the other side would have a very challenging task to show that "interactive game reviews" are somehow different than let's say music album review broadcasts which play small samples from records.

Fourth, and this is a very challenging task, is to show that the terms of use in older software don't in any way prevent online distribution. At least most 8-bit and 16-bit games probably didn't mention anything about online distribution in the "EULA" or whatever equivalent of that (if any) came with the game media. But if you somehow build a system which reads data straight from the original floppys or something, and then run that embedded in your own website, that's not "an illegal copy" as technically speaking there is no copy. And if the "EULA" didn't mention anything about online or broadcasting (and you still have that expert lawyer), I think there's a small chance that you can be seen not breaking any laws in court.

I'm sure there are other cases too where you could get away with things using this or that special situation to justify your actions. Not sure if it's worth trying though, but I'm sure some people will do it anyway.

depends how you run it.
If you can get a reliable proof that person has license to some product, then this person is authorised to run it.
means, you can upload the code in any form to persons local computer and execute it.

but if you run the code on your system and person only receives remote output, then you yourself need a rent license.

Origin rents out games (via subscription) that Origin owns the rights to, so Origin is in a legal position where they can offer such a service on their platform.

GOG sells games that with very few exceptions - they (or their parent company) do not own the rights to. As such GOG is not in a legal position to be able to rent out anything in any manner on GOG.com whether it is a DOSbox game or not.

The ability for any company or individual to start up a legal online game rental service for any game, would be a matter of that individual or company negotiating a legal license to do so with the video game publisher for each and every individual video game, which is what GOG would also have to do if they wanted to offer such a service.

One can't merely own a game and legally offer it up for rental online, as video game licenses generally do not permit that to be done. A license would need to explicitly state and grant the right to the licensee to be able to rent out a game legally in order to do so. Lack of such an explicit statement even if the rest of the agreement doesn't specifically mention renting anywhere would mean that it is not permitted, as copyright law requires explicit permissions be granted in such a license in order for one to have such a right.

Renting games online without a legal license granting the right to do so puts whoever it is in potential future conflict with a copyright owner should they become aware of it and decide to pursue a legal case.

I'm just saying.

I'm having trouble thinking of any of the DOS-based titles here on gOg that, when on sale, you couldn't outright buy for the amount of money you'd pay to rent them while allowing the rental company to break even. I mean, these are DOS titles, not today's AAA release.

So I guess I struggle to see the point, beyond trying it as a technical exercise. Maybe there's a way to make money doing it but I'm not seeing it.

That's the thing right there. This would require DRM. And people that would use this kind of thing to get games for free already have avenues to that end.

Not necessarily. It can be done like screen sharing, which doesn't have to be anything more than video transmission of the process running on GOG's own computers. No code transferred. Lag time might be an issue, such as with real-time games, but turn-based and point-and-click should be fine. This is already doable, and it doesn't have to be about renting for money but instead just a tryout without a need to create demos. That could be combined with Universal Cloud Saves by having those particular saves automatically deleted one hour after playing (or the connection) has ceased.

This could be an adequate way for someone to get comfortable with a game before buying it. Though, I think renting for money wouldn't be necessary. Simply have a time limit, perhaps 30 minutes or an hour depending on the game, and only temporary cloud saves (if any). Queues might also be helpful for limiting the number of copies played at one time by the mass of players.

That might encourage more speedruns of games, which could open up new perspectives about them. Furthermore, there could be special saves at later points in a game so anyone could tryout a game from a specific point other than only the beginning.

In contrast to downloading a demo (which might not be available or possible to make), something like this could be rather instant because there's no need for download and installation. Well, except maybe of Galaxy if that's the client through which the screen sharing feed is presented.

Sorry, of what value is any of the above? Why on earth would you want to rent a game for any amount of time? I don't understand this need for everything to be always online. Catn afford a game, or are unsure, buy it on a sale, simple. All this post is trying to do is push one of the few DRM free stores down the route of always on stores like Steam. There is no benefit whatso ever to the customer of always on internet requirement only for the seller. As for youlube videos, another sad product of the "modern" day.

For some games having a multiplayer option with fast and reliable servers that actually have a good amount of players might actually be worth something.

I have actually for a long time wondered why there are so many games where the game card simply states "multiplayer no longer available" or something like that, when it could be possible (in some cases at least) for GOG to run such servers. It would even create some extra incentive over Steam and other stores. I guess maybe it simply would be too much work with no real profit, but with all the Galaxy stuff going on, I'm sure setting up few game servers wouldn't be the hardest thing to do.

You are right. Renting game are good for multiplayer, but other solution could been vendor promise to release sources of server, when servers would be shut down.

I suggest renting games, because player could tests many games and don't be forced to select one/two/etc. Demo version isn't real solution for me. Last thing is that GOG support money back guarantee, so renting game isn't necessary.

It is a legal requirement since the multiplayer programs/networks that came with the original games no longer exist.