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Old Games

  • Thread starter Deleted member 169154
  • Start date
D

Deleted member 169154

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I cannot find a straight answer on this stuff:

There seems to be some Adandonware that is legal and some that is not. For example, the website Adandonia (seems to be the biggest one) has strict rules about what games can be placed. It is never clear on whether it is legal or illegal though.

I am hoping it is legal because of the limitations they put on the games. Does anyone have some other news about this? I try to stay within legal realms, so before I start going on a downloading frenzy I would like to do it with a clear conscious.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware

Abandonware is a grey area in terms of legality. Most often, it encompasses games that are no longer sold, and the company that made the game is out of business. The game is still copyrighted, but the person/group who owns the copyright doesn't exist anymore, so the theory is that it's still illegal, but the only person who would press charges or such isn't around anymore to do so.
 
I had read that. I am just trying to figure out if the Abandonia rule set falls within legal bounds.

Also...
Other than Ebay (which obviously does not support the developer), is there a legal way to play old console games (old FFs, zeldas, golden sun, etc)? I know some of the old Zeldas are on Virtual Console, so that is a bad example, but countless old (and awesome) games are no where to be found except ROMs. And I do not think ROMs are legal...

Edit:
From Wikipedia->
Abandonia's definition of abandonware is one of the more clearly defined (and possibly the most restrictive) in the abandonware scene. In order for a game to be considered abandoned - and therefore hosted on the site - it had to be pass three very specific criteria:

* First, the game has to be unavailable on the retail market and no longer distributed by its publishers nor by legitimate retailers in any form.
* Second, official support for the game must have been dropped both by its publisher and developer.
* Third, the game must not be under active protection of any anti-piracy agency, such as Entertainment Software Association, nor directly by the copyright holders themselves. If a legitimate copyright holder for any game requests its removal, any downloads of it (or links to thereof) present on the site and its forum will be subject to removal by site staff (although the review of the game would still remain onsite).
 
I don't think you will run into any real legal trouble downloading old games. I'd go ahead with it if it isn't able to be purchased anywhere else.
 
Not too worried about getting in trouble for it. Just more of a guilty conscious thing.
 
The basic idea is that if the game isn't being sold or the business that owns the IP has gone bust then you can more or less copy the media without fear of being prosecuted for it, I'm not sure I would call it "legal" as such, it's never legal to copy copywrited media without the owners permission but if theres no owner you're relatively safe from the law.

Most games that are abandonware aren't sold anymore so morally I think it's fine, and you're not going to get caught for any of this...
 
shmo007 said:
but countless old (and awesome) games are no where to be found except ROMs. And I do not think ROMs are legal...
Click to expand...
They aren't, but I highly doubt Nintendo and others really care since those console platforms were abandoned years ago. You can still buy those old games from places like BRE Software and elsewhere.
 
dark_reign said:
They aren't, but I highly doubt Nintendo and others really care since those console platforms were abandoned years ago. You can still buy those old games from places like BRE Software and elsewhere.
Click to expand...

Exactly.

I highly doubt Nintendo would care if you go and download The Legend of Zelda or Zelda 2 and play it on an emulator. Or at least I doubt they would go through the trouble to sue you like the RIAA would over music downloads.

They don't manufacture the NES, SNES, or even the N64 anymore. They don't manufacture the games anymore either, so it's not like they'd be able to cry about losing sales. Same with Sega.
 
dark_reign said:
They aren't, but I highly doubt Nintendo and others really care since those console platforms were abandoned years ago. You can still buy those old games from places like BRE Software and elsewhere.
Click to expand...

Sure they would, they're selling some of the games as downloadable content for the Wii. I'm guessing they'll want to retain their IP for the long term. Don't they also sell some older games on the DS? (I don't know.)
 
shmo007 said:
Other than Ebay (which obviously does not support the developer), is there a legal way to play old console games (old FFs, zeldas, golden sun, etc)?
Click to expand...
If you own a license to any of these games, you're actually free to create backups (archival copies), in whatever format you desire and play the game from the original or archival copy. These cartridges clearly fall within the DMCA exceptions regarding archival copies since carts are no longer being manufactured (obsolete media), but it's still illegal to download ROMs despite owning the original copy, so you'll need to rip the carts yourself. It requires some hardware to do, but it isn't terribly expensive.

shmo007 said:
And I do not think ROMs are legal...
Click to expand...
ROMs are perfectly legal in certain contexts, at least in the States. Downloading ROMs -- even for those games that you own -- is illegal, but creating archival copies in the form of ROMs is legal, and playing games from those archival copies is legal.

Enceladus said:
They don't manufacture the NES, SNES, or even the N64 anymore. They don't manufacture the games anymore either, so it's not like they'd be able to cry about losing sales.
Click to expand...
No, but they could still pin you for copyright infringement. Would I worry about that happening? Not a chance. The RIAA, MPAA and various other organizations act as "piracy watchdogs" for their members, but Nintendo doesn't belong to any industry association group, nor would I believe that they act as their own piracy watchdog. So, odds are they aren't looking out for this kind of piracy.

From a moral perspective, I don't see anything wrong with downloading ROMs for games you still own (sharing those ROMs is a different matter). All you'd be doing by downloading is bypassing the process of creating your own archival copies.

 
It wouldn't be worth their time and money to go after illegal ROM downloaders. Those older games have more of a cult following than anything else. Older PC games that hold little to no IP value have a similar fate.
 
FEAR
BioShock
Stalker
HL2 ..episode 1 & 2
Condemned Criminal Origins
 
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