Settle it in...SMASH!

Here is where we shall discuss the long-debated and usually brought up again and again topic of whether abandonware is, indeed, piracy, and if we should even care.
Now go, brave men, and let the slashing of throats over differences in opinion occur!


Edit: Just so y'all are aware, this thread is for the purpose of ceasing the derailing going on over in this thread.

I guess the Somalians will win this one?

Black sails season 3 starts this week on history.

I think with GOG and things like Virtual Console, 'abandonware' has been less relied upon or at least sidelined. There are still the issues of titles stuck in legal limbo. It tends to be more difficult with PC, but if the console makers are smart they can make more money from this than they are now. Nintendo can make a Netflix model out of it, but with better value than what they're offering currently. We're on season 4 right now, but season 3 is pretty good.

My opinion is that copyright law, as it is, lasts too long; hence I think there's no moral issue with pirating old things. I should probably point out that not everyone on this forum is a man.

Edit: One more thing: I consider DRM to also be unethical. Hence, if a title is DRMed, I consider piracy of it to be more justifiable than if it isn't. (In fact, if the person has paid for the DRMed version, I would consider there to be no ethical issue in cracking the DRM or obtaining a pirated copy of the same game.)

what is?... o.O where do i even?...

talk to zeogold?.. the so-called puzzle master?.. no........ i CAN'T do this... :-|

ARRRRGH! no! YES! YES I CAN!

it's all very simple really - if a game has aged long enough that you can't normally play it on your computer, then it's not piracy to use dosbox or whatever other emulator because the company who made the game didn't make dosbox.

but anyway i'm a great fan of piracy. i pirate games without discrimination... i HOARD them.... i have bad dreams at night that my harddisks fail and i lose all my precious games.. :'(

My stand on piracy

If it's sold somewhere (not 2nd hand market), then I'm not gonna download it

If it's not available anywhere, I'll download it.

OK, so my neighbor has a Model A Ford car that requires leaded gasoline for the proper running of the engine. That gasoline is not normally found where I live and Ford never made leaded gasoline anyway, so it is OK for me to go and take his car without permission and fix it up and keep it for my own use and enjoyment. That about cover it?

Obligatory: something something abandonware not an actual thing something something rationalizing piracy something something about copying a car.

Personally, I can't begrudge anyone willing to bend the law to play some old games, mostly because we need more gamers with more sophisticated tastes to ward off the legions brought up to think dubstep face shooters are the epitome of the medium, but that's probably not very defensible from a moral or legal standpoint. Still, when I wasn't able to get my purchased copy of F-22 Lightning 2 running awhile back, using a cracked version on top of the legal files was the only thing that got it working correctly, so there are upsides even for people who actually own the games. And one would think that in parts of the world where games are expensive, "abandonware" could provide that first hit that gets people hooked and finding ways to spend money. That might be looking at things a bit too rosily, though.

I find it difficult to care about piracy in general these days. Big companies have cried wolf and used it as a justification for all kinds of anti-consumer garbage, so my sympathy is pretty much dried up (and it's hilarious when the people who make games about sticking it to evil corporations do evil things and then complain about their game being pirated). More and more I realize that the only reasons I don't partake—outside of the one or two occasions where it was necessary to get an owned game working—are my backlog and knowing that used games bother them even more.

You should edit the OP and say that this thread is meant to be a continuation of the discussion in the gaming deals thread.

Anyhow, the discussion there seemed to be whether downloading from sites that do not have distribution / copyrights is legal / moral or not.

It is not legal because the sites do not have the right to distribute the work of other people without having the copyright / rights of ownership over what they are offering. Legal distribution sites like GOG have contracts with the developers to distribute their stuff for a (% of the income as) fee, and are legal.

It is, IMO not moral because you're using the fact that you may not know the thing you're downloading is actually not free as an excuse, while voluntarily not checking whether its free to download or not.

So there.

I have no ethical issue downloading games not available for purchase, or games that I own with DRM cracks. I see the legal issues, but legality is not morality. It is legally wrong, but morally, I have no qualms. I won't condemn people for downloading games not available for sale.

There's a discrepancy here. You aren't 'taking' his car, first you duplicate the car and then take the duplicate, you never deprive Ford of his car.

No one gave me permission to duplicate the car. That is definitely illegal. The car not being property of mine, how can I legally duplicate it?

I think the real issue are people who come to this forum proclaiming how GoG is selling abandonware and then stating how one can legally obtain those games for free elsewhere and GoG is screwing us by selling us "free games".

None of this is true. Even in the old days of "freeware" and "shareware", the rights owners required the copies to carry specific notices with them. Or in other words, they could only be freely shared if one followed the rules provided by the rightsholders. The same applies to free games from developer sites much of the time, where they offer the game for free download, but no other site can lawfully provide it without express permission. I'm pretty sure Blizzard would have something to say if sites are promoting a free copy of Lost Vikings.

As to the legality of downloading no-crack patches or even pirated games which you already own, I know there is some legal precedence which seems to allow one to bypass older DRM schemes for your own use in some jurisdictions, but I'd also find it hard to believe a judge would rule against someone who owned physical copies of everything he has downloaded. I would imagine the same would apply to downloading MP3's only of CDs one actually owns. P2P file-sharing might be an issue if used for the download, but even then, I'd imagine some leeway might be given.

One can debate the morality of downloading games which are nowhere for sale, especially those which seem likely abandoned. It's not legal at all, but at least looking for a legal copy first, might make one feel better and would likely make a better excuse in court than "the abandonware site said it was okay".

At the bottom of the list, would be pirating games which are for sale elsewhere. No one is going to succeed trying to claim some site said they were abandoned when that clearly isn't the case.

You're getting more into trademarks, copyright, patents and the like. All of those systems are to repress others from copying something in order for someone else to make money on the copying process.

It is said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But they don't want imitation, or duplication. They want full out ownership of something, monopoly and they want to own it forever. And if you didn't go through their system they want to sue you into oblivion. And it's this system that I hate. Certainly copyright has held some purpose and use in the past, but today it's pointless except to milk for decades and decades and decades and decades after it was created, when the original copyright was 14 years long. 14 vs lifetime+70.

So who gave permission to copy/duplicate the car? The Government. However WHEN you can has been so long skewed it is messed up. After a time knowledge, copyrights, patents, all of it goes into the public domain. That's the way the system was intended.

<span class="bold">To quote King David:</span> There is nothing new under the sun.