Good point. It's strange that although many people still think we live in a democracy, people rather ask "Am I allowed to do that?" than "Is it forbidden?".

In theory, governments (or even people, ha!) make laws but in practise companies do, as we can see in the (free) Pirate Bay Movie here on GoG. You are talking past each other because of this misconception, you are seeing how it should be while others here see how it is (without saying it's right this way) as far as I understood.

The problem is that laws are usually vague enough they are somewhat open-ended. In terms of copyright infringement, a company generally just needs to show a likely loss of profits. In other words, if any game under copyright gets downloaded (disclaimer or not), they would be liable. Especially when you can search and see games uploaded that are currently being sold, the "I have no control over what is uploaded" argument has always failed such as with Pirate Bay.or Napster or Demonoid, etc.

I wonder if that defense would hold up in court if Internet Archive were to get sued and tried to use that defense. I hope they don't get sued because of all the great work they do in other areas.

Obviously they have control over their uploads I failed to find stuff younger then 10 years, unlike napster, pbay where current stuff is most prominently available.

Also, why keep people arguing against IA? They doing this for us, saving the digital heritage! The companies you defend don't offer a solution to orphaned works, they just don't care.

They have a copyright exemption to do valuable archivaric work for us all. For the few titles in conflict with gog's catalogue, they should collaborate, it will be beneficial for both.

"The Internet Archive has created an archive of what it describes as "vintage software", as a way to preserve them.[11] The project advocated for an exemption from the United States Digital Millennium Copyright Act to permit them to bypass copy protection, which was approved in 2003 for a period of 3 years.[12] The exemption was renewed in 2006, and as of 27 October 2009, has been indefinitely extended pending further rulemakings.[13] The Archive does not offer this software for download, as the exemption is solely "for the purpose of preservation or archival reproduction of published digital works by a library or archive."[14] Nevertheless, in 2013 the Internet Archive began to provide antique games as browser-playable emulation via MESS, for instance the Atari 2600 game E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.[15] Since 23 December 2014 the Internet Archive presents via a browser based DOSBox emulation thousands of archived DOS/PC games[16][17][18] for "scholarship and research purposes only".[19]"

As you can see, Internet archive is an exception from DMCA.

And where is that from? That's not quite what it currently says on Wikipedia...

Even if what is said is true, they're not supposed to offer them for download, which they clearly have.

I'm glad they took down a few, but there are still thousands of "abandonware" games up there. I can only hope that GOG still works hard to get the rights to sell these games, but I somehow doubt they will.

I still haven't heard anything in response to my email, which is a bad sign.

It's exactly from wiki, see abandoware. The numbers are the articles that can be checked for further informations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware#Archives

IA seems to have gained an exception in the DCMA (in the US at most) but this exception only is valid for preserving content that would otherwise be lost, it seems to me. Since most of these games are still playable with DosBox and still hold a copyright, I don't think they are acting on legal grounds here. I just hope they have checked the legal situation very carefully and maybe found a loophole or if not that at least the rest of the IA is safe from this venture. It would be a pity if the wayback machine gets destroyed by this.

Dosbox is an imperfect emulator developed by volunteers, meaning, these games DON'T run on modern stock PCs anymore and are to 95% not available and supported by no one.

That the copyright still applies is the fundamental problem and reason why the IA had to act now. If copyright law would be not out-of-control this stuff would be public domain now, but as it is not the IA needed the exemption. Also, check please the "orphaned works" article in wikipedia for broader context and overview on this topic.

It's a big discussion, but I just would like to say that I don't think that copyright law is out of control nor that public domain is the solution to everything. You could make games like Master of Orion yourself and publish them as public domain. And you could then use the copyright to ensure they are not sold for profit. But you cannot expect that the creative work and property of others act under the same conditions. If someone wants to keep the fruits of his work private and do not want to give it away for free - so be it. Just my opinion though. And IA might as well have found a loophole although I doubt it.

I'm not arguing there should be no copyright at all, what I meant with "out of control" is the protection time.
The problem with copyright is that the protection time was extended again and again and lasts now a excessiv long times. For software way too long, something reasonable would be 3 to 10 years.

If someone really don't want that other people enjoy his work in future, he should not release it in first place. The copyright holders enjoy already a enormous benefit by the copyright (the protection by law is pretty costly and demanding to the society) for a long time, therefore I find it appropriate when a work falls back to the community after some time, as public domain.

They have not found a "loophole", the got exemption from copyright to fulfill their function as archivar of our digital heritage when no one else is capable and the industry don't cares.

Honestly, I'm really wondering how you can fantasize so much about copyrights... No offense but when I read you (and some other people too), I really have the feeling that protecting artistic work is only for elitist millionaires who want to put the consumers into slavery :o)

Copyright is a normal thing and in this age of internet, it's even more relevant if you don't want your work to be stolen. It reminds me of why Kevin Mc Leod (incompetech.com) doesn't do too much hip-hop instrumentals: it didn't take too much morals for a leecher to take his instrumental track, put his voice on it and reselling it on Itunes....

I'm also wondering about why you call it "costly", in which context? If I take the rates of the SABAM (the Belgian equivalent of your GEMA), it's 124€ to be affiliated and you then pay 10€ for a 5-year extension of a registered work. Again, you should explain what you mean by that.....

Also, this convo reminds me when RPS wrote a troll article that every 20-year old software should be put in the public domain. Considering that many people are still alive and have the rights to benefit from their work, I find it insulting. I could easily make an analogy with music or books from the early 90's but closer to us, I think of Eric Chahi and his Another World.

Now, If you're the Internet Robin Hood type....

What you are talking about? I stated my supported FOR the existence of copyright but not in its current excessive form as it leads to the problem of orphaned works. As an illustration to what this leads see the graph of current book releases ordered after age... you will see that the excessive length of copyright makes big parts of our heritage unavailable & leads to an unnormal distribution. distribution

Troll? Why should have specific forms of creative expressive work have such an excessive protection? Why should they be able to benefit their complete live time from (lets say) one year's work of creative & mental work, due to the artifical protection of the society who protect their right to keep their work exclussive? Why should the society grant such a privilege? What benefit it brings to us all? Why should they deserve such a privileged treatment? When they are gifted with an creative ability they should be able to live from it, but for being continously creative & productive like everyone else. Protection time should be only granted to an amount which is required (an not more), a trade-off between personal interests and the interests of the society. Currently it is totally tilted towards the content creator interest.

(PS: in context of video games, after such times, decades, most often none of the original creative guys (why might deserve it) sees a penny as they lost the IP long ago, only same share holders of publishers get money, benefiting from laws based on a idea not meant for them)

"productive like everyone else" => I sense a bit of frustration there ;)

As such the system is good as it can give the opportunity to anybody (no matter if you're poor/rich, black/white, etc.) to potentially benefit from his/her creative work and not taking part in the rat race for some time (a few months or years). Now if your goal in life is to work in a factory until you're 65 year old and that your children do the same, I agree we disagree :o)

I agree, society should support & protect creative people as creative work is a benefit for all. This was the original idea. In the bad old times authors had zero protection, e.g. working 1 year on a book, to see then on release the book pirated by other publishers and seeing small or zero return of investment. Obviously, this we don't want.

On the other hand, we also not want to overprotect these creatives... they might become lazy, not realizing their internal creative potential due to the constant influx of income, getting frustrated... becoming alcoholic and commiting suicide in the end! Our fault, overprotection, the thrilling challenge of life was lost! Let's protect the creative guys from boring, deadly laziness and reduce the protection time to a sane & "motivating" length of e.g. 2 years. ;-)