EA hates abandonware

[LivingInThePast 364]

Recently, an abandonware site I occasionally visit, Macintosh Garden, was forced to remove all of its content by EA, many of which are even rarer than their DOS counterparts, are no longer sold, and don't even work natively on modern hardware. This was overseen by a ****weed lawyer. What does this mean? The thread is at Macintosh Garden. DOS versions at Abandonia may be next. Edit: fixed html

[SC4BOY 21]

I expect it simply means that EA is unwilling to forfeit its rights as the holder of legal rights on it's products. In the USA at least if you do not vigorously defend your rights to intellectual property, you FORFEIT those rights.

[Duke87 1,070]

Originally posted by: SC4BOY

I expect it simply means that EA is unwilling to forfeit its rights as the holder of legal rights on it's products. In the USA at least if you do not vigorously defend your rights to intellectual property, you FORFEIT those rights.quote>

This is true of trademarks, but not of copyrights.

EA would not risk forefeiting rights to its old games if they let abandonware sites get away with hosting them. They could chose to start enforcing their copyright at any time (at least until it expires).

They would, however, (for instance) lose their sole right to make games called "SimCity" if another company was making unlicensed games by that name and they did not sue.

[Msprintz 25]

Originally posted by: Duke87

Originally posted by: SC4BOY

I expect it simply means that EA is unwilling to forfeit its rights as the holder of legal rights on it's products. In the USA at least if you do not vigorously defend your rights to intellectual property, you FORFEIT those rights.quote>

This is true of trademarks, but not of copyrights.

EA would not risk forefeiting rights to its old games if they let abandonware sites get away with hosting them. They could chose to start enforcing their copyright at any time (at least until it expires).

They would, however, (for instance) lose their sole right to make games called "SimCity" if another company was making unlicensed games by that name and they did not sue.

quote>

That would be true if those games were still in production and being sold ( these games have been out of  production and off the shelves for years ).  It's one thing to call copyright infringement if you're still selling and profiting off of the item in question, that's not a problem.  It is a problem when you supress 10-15 year old games( many of which only exist on diskette, downloading is the only way to acquire them ), and in doing so use your companies clout. 

EA isn't going to produce or sell these games, thus in a court of law they have no case.  In not having sold these games in such a long time span, they have technically forfeited rights to these games. 

This would be the equivalent of say the B&O Railroad museum going after Maple Leaf Tracks  ( apparently they didn't like the B&O Sandpatch route for trainsim ).  Suffice to say the museum had no case as they weren't CSX.   

[SC4BOY 21]

Originally posted by: Duke87

trademarks, but not of copyrights.quote>

Thanks for the clarification.

Originally posted by: mks24

they have technically forfeited rights to these games.quote>

Complete and total nonsense.. if they had never sold even one copy, they would have the same rights.

[LivingInThePast 364]

I'd like to see them prove "lost revenue" to these. I actually recently acquired legal copies of SimFarm and SimAnt, but they were on the used market, which is the only way to get them now.

[Mootilda 76]

EA doesn't need to prove that they have lost revenue. They just need to ask to have it removed. That's the way that Abandonware works.

[SC4BOY 21]

They needn't prove "lost revenue" (though it might follow in a court case for damages).. however, if you've paid any attention to the legal actions of the RIAA regarding music distributions (Kazaa, etc) the damages can be outrageous.. for example $150,000 per song downloaded.. certainly not "lost revenues" but clearly vendictive..

I really fail to see what you're trying to say here... that you "deserve a free game"? that somehow history is being lost? That it shouldn't matter somehow? .. or just general gritching..

[LivingInThePast 364]

By the way, the title should be "wares", not "warez", for those wondering...

[FlyHigh 181]

I really can't say much about the legal aspect of the thing but, as far as I know, If EA has the game copyrighted then any distridution of it can be considered illegal  and they can stop it at any time, regardless if they're distributing it themselves or not.

Yes unfortunately it can be considered a cultural loss but that's how copyrights work these days. Until those laws are abolished, there's nothing the consumer can do.

[FlyHigh 181]

I really can't say much about the legal aspect of the thing but, as far as I know, If EA has the game copyrighted then any distridution of it can be considered illegal  and they can stop it at any time, regardless if they're distributing it themselves or not.

Yes unfortunately it can be considered a cultural loss but that's how copyrights work these days. Until those laws are abolished, there's nothing the consumer can do.

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Originally posted by: SC4BOY

I really fail to see what you're trying to say here... that you "deserve a free game"? that somehow history is being lost? That it shouldn't matter somehow? .. or just general gritching..

quote>

Well, I can imagine that it feels frustrating to see that something that doesn't do any harm from a rational point of view is wilfully destroyed just because someone can.

I mean, EA doesn't sell these games any more. You can't buy them in any store. There is no way they could generate any revenue from these games given the current situation. There is no alternative way to get these games. You don't circumvent any legal way of purchasing. Hence, you don't deprive EA of a single cent they would earn otherwise. Taking down such a site doesn't benefit EA in any way. They don't increase sales, revenue or whatnot. Far from it, it probably costs them money to have someone deal with these sites.

Now if we put those laws and entitlements that are written on some piece of paper aside for a moment and restrict ourselves to common sense, this attitude seems destructive, spiteful and pointless. I think it's a rather low trait of character when you destroy something that didn't actually harm you, but made some people happy, just because somewhere there's a piece of paper that says you have the right to behave that way. I mean, if we all treated each other like this, what a sad world would we be living in? Will we ever get past this?

If this is what livinginthepast wanted to express, then I admit that I feel with him - even more so since EA obviously doesn't give a crap that the copyrights of thousands of custom content creators are freely and openly violated day by day in thousands of cases on the official EA lot exchange, where plagiarism is not an occasional phenomenon, but rather the rule, and reporting such cases doesn't have any effect. Guess we could add "hypocritical" or "bigoted" to the list above.

[Ijuin 2]

For the sake of argument, let us say that a game company put out a game that they later become ashamed of and want the world to forget ever existed. They are then in their right to stop all production and distribution of new copies of it. In short, copyright means that the holder not only has the right to exclusive ownership, but that they ALSO have the right to prevent the work's distribution if they wish.

That said, what bothers most of us isn't the times when the publisher actually wants to deny people access to the work, but rather when they simply decide "oh well it's not worth the expense to produce and distribute another print run of them". There may be ten thousand people who want a copy, but the company's accountants have calculated that anything less than twenty thousand copies won't turn enough of a profit to be worth retooling the production line for another run--or even worse, the company may have a policy of "we always move forward, never back", which in real terms means that they never ever reprint anything that is older than a certain age even if there were millions of dollars to be made by doing so.