Abandonware is now legal in the USA

Don't know if anyone already posted thise here. If so, lock it up.

Apparently a law allowing programs made for 'obsolete' systems to be for free was passed in the USA...

Here's the link with the whole thing.

I guess we can expect a 'boom' of sites providing old gaming system's game ROMs.

 

Interesting!

 

"A format shall be considered obsolete if the machine or system necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that format is no longer manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace."

thats rather vague. what does reasonably available mean? it could mean anything almost.

it'll be interesting to see how this plays out in the long run.

 

Actually, reading up on this at slashdot.org (scroll down for the discussion) shows this does not suddenly mean abandonware downloads and emulator ROMs are legal.

Basically, this means that if you bought a NES game, and the NES is no longer on the market, you can write a program that allows you to use the game you bought in another way (like an emulator, for example).

It does not invalidate the copyright on the game, and allow you to redistribute the rom, or to download the rom from somewhere else. It just lets you get at what you have bought to be used in a way the maker didn't design for you.

Using the term "abandonware" which people connect with downloading roms you have not purchased an original cartridge or software license for only confuses the issue.

 

Oh well... wishful thinking, I guess.

 

essentially this makes emulation of certain hardware systems legit. thats pretty cool and surprisingly sensible.

 

atari 2600 et al. emulation has long been "legit" in the sense that no one cares and no one will prosecute you, because the systems/games are so old and not popular.

 

Hang on, I thought emulators have always been legal. That's why it's easy to find an emulator but hard to find ROM's because ROM's border on illegal. Like MP3's. Is it legal to have MP3's if you own the CD? Yes.... Same with games.

At least that's what I always thought.

¤Night

 

Yes, it's legal if you own the game/cd, most people don't though.

 

Note: This post is strictly a discussion of the state of things prior to the passage of this law. I have no idea what's up now.

Night, the issue with emulation is that emulators must by nature feature some system code. If this code is reverse-engineered and then it's probably not command-for-command the same, and so it's probably not a copyright violation. It can still be a patent violation, however. I know that the manufacturers of the Playstation prosecuted emulators for copyright/patent violations in using the system BIOS.

And if you possess the original game, it is certainly perfectly legal to possess a ROM of that game. However, as I understand it, it would be illegal to distribute ROMs of the game without written permission of the copyright holder no matter what. Certainly, it is very illegal to have those ROMs posted in such a location that it is reasonably possible for people who do not own the game to have access to them. The best way to be perfectly sure you're legally clear in giving someone a ROM is to accept the game cartridge from them and make the conversion from that particular cartridge, not retaining a copy. Anything else is slightly grey.

I don't know how much the new law has done to alleviate these issues, as I don't trust analyses and I haven't had time to read it. However, what I think I would support at the moment is a separate and combined copyright/patent system for all computer code. It would be some sort of hybrid process through which both the actual code and the methods of performing the actions the code performs are protected together. This certificate would be nonrenewable, and would expire much faster than existing copyrights -- I'd say twenty years, max. Ten to fifteen is probably more reasonable. At the rate that software and computer systems evolve, it's ridiculous for code to be protected for the same length of time as an unchanging work of literature. Within ten years, it's practically necessary to find some form of emulation to use the software.

That would also prevent stupid patent office blunders like the indefinite legal protection of the electronic shopping cart, which is currently being fought in court. I mean, sure, the certificate of protection could still be granted in error -- but it would be over in ten or fifteen years. Future technology could grow from it freely.

-Paul