Quote:
Originally Posted by Burns11
It's not a gray area at all, it's very much black and white: unless the copyright holder relinquishes those rights it's 100% illegal.
Current laws also are not failing, you don't have a right to play these copyrighted works no matter how much you may want to.
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Very few things are black and white in this world. Harald B proposed one case where laws blatantly fail: legal limbos do exist and we see creations with very few chances of being re-released because their rights became severely mixed-up (we were recently discussing about the Legend titles, a good example).
But I go one step further. You talk about the holder's right; I talk about another right, one that is not covered by any law: the consumer's right to accessible culture. I'm strongly against piracy and I'm a huge advocate of endeavors like GOG.com. We need more like them, and pirating games that are widely available (especially in such low prices for the PC) is really shameful.
However, as much as I'm against piracy, I'm a strong believer in accessible culture. What I mean by this is that any creative work, particularly those that have cultural significance, should be freely accessible. My philosophy is that once a creative work becomes public, there is an implicit right for the consumer: no matter how much time passes, anyone should have the right to appreciate such work.
Even if that goes against the author's wishes. Yes, the importance to preserve culture kills everything. Take what George Lucas did with Star Wars: with his obsession, he has crippled the original movies, which can no longer be acquired by "legal" means. The hell with him and his wishes, period. He has a
responsibility as the author and holder of rights to make such versions available.
So the laws look after the copyright holder rights but aren't addressing the sensitive issue of preserving culture. Games are obviously culture and thus I commend the work of "responsible" abandonware sites that preserve some games. Even so, there are some really stupid exceptions. Nobody here will deny the importance of Maniac Mansion in our industry. Now you tell me, where can anybody legally acquire Maniac Mansion these days? I'm not sure what's the current situation with its rights but it's likely that somebody screwed up. It's
unthinkable to me that a new generation of gamers can't appreciate this title because some executive hot shot was irresponsible. Nobody - and I really mean this - should feel bad about downloading Maniac Mansion as long as it remains unavailable.
I rest my case. I'd like to stress again that I agree that sites like this should remain neutral given the circumstances. But abandonware isn't taboo -- it's a solution to a problem that nobody is addressing.
