Faux pas at The Wargamer?

[bayonetbrant]

So why is Abandonia still running? Like most laws, punishment only occurs if you get caught – and the other side is willing and able to make the charge stick. Most of the software listed on abandonware sites no longer have an owner, so no one can sue. In other cases the owner still exists but has decided not to enforce copyright. System Shock is currently owned by Electronic Arts, yet the original System Shock game can be found on many abandonware sites.

My emphasis

Cat - this isn't on you, b/c you're just quoting.  But this is flat fucking WRONG.  Those pieces of software have an owner.  The owner might be unaware of it if there was a convoluted series of mergers / sales / acquisitions / liquidations.  The owner might not give a crap.  The owner might be the government if the previous owner died with no will.  The owner might be someone who purchased assets in a corporate liquidation and has no clue what he got.  But there's an owner somewhere.

[mirth]

I sure hope you guys have never picked a penny up off the ground and put it in your pocket. It  would make you the moral and ethical equivalent of an "abandonware" thief.

[Keunert]

piracy, apart from all the damage it has done, opened up new ways of distribuion. maybe the abandonware thing was an inspiration for the gog marketplace, the mp3 theft sure has accelerated the creation of itunes and other stores.
i still cannot watch any of the us tv shows as there are copyright problems with european distribution. but i do watch it illegally (well in Switzerland streaming movies is legal... but it is still some form of theft) or i could chose to not watch it.
but nowadys they measure the success of games and shows by piracy rates which in return sure opens up some production wallets.

the clear demand for us shows and the constant refusal of european tv stations to air them for whatever reason, will soon make way for legal forms like netflix and i will gladly pay for it. the tv market is still not a liberal one over here.
the same goes with abandonware: after gog i never again used it and gladly pay for it at gog and have some nuisances (dos configs etc) solved by those guys for a few bucks.

[BanzaiCat]

Brant, I wholeheartedly agree with you.

I only quote those sources to help add to the conversation.

Personally I think it sucks that some classic games you just can't get a hold of. I only have Covert Action because I've had it for years, transferring it from computer to computer until finally I put it on a USB thumb drive. I'm surprised it hasn't corrupted or crapped out but I guess that's the beauty of simpler programs and coding.

Thing is, as you said, the owner might not give a crap. That of course doesn't make downloading it right. However, think back to the 70s when Steve Wozniak gave away free diagrams of his wiring schematics for his computers - he didn't care about profit (until Steve Jobs brought him on board). He owned those diagrams but didn't care about making money. It's a far leap of imagination to compare that with games that are no longer supported actively and I'm not trying to tie the two together.

What I'm trying to see is if you guys think apathy equals permission. I think that's far too nebulous a concept. In the case of copyright law, no it does not. If I write a book (as I am now) and it appears on a torrent site somewhere, I'm going to fight that shit tooth and nail and sue the crap out of anyone I can. In forty years? I don't know. I might be dead then, who knows. I might not remember what day it is and be crapping my adult diapers and therefore not care. But the bottom line is, of course, the law, which says I have a copyright on that book for many years, which I believe falls to the hands of my inheritors after I pass, and they can renew it if they wish.

Someone, as has been said, somewhere, owns the title. MicroProse made Covert Action. They were indy for about a decade, then were bought by Spectrum HoloByte, then Hasbro, and then Infogrames, and then (I think) Firaxis and some other companies I can't think of. In all that acquisitioning and mergering I would say the ownership of Covert Action kept passing hands. Someone owns it. Whether or not they give a crap about Covert Action is totally another thing. If I don't give a crap about my book, that does not make the law go away. Same with games.

If you run a red light and get a ticket, then go to court but the cop isn't there and get off scot free, does that make it right? No, of course not. There's still the fact that you broke the law, had to go to court, pay court fines, etcetera. The cop's apathy (or otherwise engagements elsewhere) doesn't mean you're not guilty of what you did. The law says otherwise and has provisions for this.

I know I'm preaching to half or 2/3 the choir here.

MIRTH I sure hope you guys have never picked a penny up off the ground and put it in your pocket. It  would make you the moral and ethical equivalent of an "abandonware" thief.

Of course not. A penny's not worth the effort. :P

Now, I DO recall picking up a $5 bill in the parking lot of a Kroger's (grocery store hereabouts), which I think was the biggest amount of cash I've found. Nobody was around. Did that make me a thief? We could debate that endlessly. I did not take it out of someone's pocket or wallet, but that doesn't mean they didn't want it or didn't give a crap about it. If I dropped a five dollar bill I'd sure as hell want it back! But unfortunately it's a sign of the times; if I go up to someone and say "hey, is this your $5," if they're quick they'd say "Oh yeah, thanks!" and take it. Turning it in to the customer service booth in the store would have been silly.

But that brings up a great argument for another thread. Where do you draw the line and be honest? If it was a $100, I'd have turned it in to the booth, because I KNOW the odds are good someone will be backtracking looking for that. It could have been someone's grocery money for the week and they're going to be SOL when they get to the counter. Then again there's a chance it could be a drug dealer or millionaire or someone with a wad that wouldn't notice it. Unlikely at a Kroger's, but not out of the realm of possibility. It's all about perception. $100 to a millionaire might not be that big a deal as a penny isn't that big a deal to you and me.

Anyway, sorry for derailing this to a found-money discussion.

GOG, IIRC, used to be an abandonware site, right? I seem to remember being told about it years ago. I'm glad too, as Keunert said, that they're in business and selling classics for a few bucks that can easily be played through DOSBox.

[mirth]

The found money example is relevant in the context of moral, ethical and legal absolutism. Downloading a 20 year old game from an "abandonware" site is a crime. So is pocketing found money of any amount. In both cases, you are stealing someone else's property.

The truth is that most of us here are probably thieves and liars, in absolute terms.

[ComradeP]

I sure hope you guys have never picked a penny up off the ground and put it in your pocket. It  would make you the moral and ethical equivalent of an "abandonware" thief.

It's these kind of responses that make such a discussion so difficult, and presumably why it has been suggested to move the thread. Picking up an object that someone lost without being able to locate the owner is a more complicated example than stealing, so it's not the same thing as downloading something and it might be treated differently by local law. For example, in the Netherlands I believe you are legally allowed to keep some things you find if no owner claims it within X amount of time or something. Something similar applies to picking things up on the beach as far as I know.

Thus far in the thread, people commenting on what does or what doesn't legally constitute "theft" are immediately considered to be on a "high horse" and rambling about "moral standards".

I understand that people don't want to be called a thief, but what people think is completely irrelevant when it comes to how something is written down in the law. Moral relativism is the mortal enemy of any legal system.

Does downloading a game put you in the same moral position as someone who steals someone's car? Depends on who you ask, but not really I'd say. Are both thing legally considered to be theft? Most certainly. Stealing a pencil from a store is also theft just like stealing a computer from a store is. You're thinking in terms of value, which is why you shrug at stealing a pencil being called theft, but it's still legally theft.

Considering that in many circumstances you're actually violating IP laws if you copy parts of a book or show some footage at a meeting, I find it highly unlikely that any person who has been using computers or hardware like scanners has not violated IP laws at some point. Some of you get the impression that the statements given by Jarhead, or what I write here, judge you, but that's not the intention as far as I'm concerned. Jarhead is just trying to explain the law. Again: whether you like it or not, the law is the law, it does not change after a moral or ethical debate until someone changes the actual law. In countries with a jury system, ethical and moral standards will presumably matter more than in a country where no jury exists, like in the Netherlands.

The truth is that most of us here are probably thieves and liars, in absolute terms.

Which is exactly my point, some people just find it very difficult to acknowledge.

[bayonetbrant]

I sure hope you guys have never picked a penny up off the ground and put it in your pocket. It  would make you the moral and ethical equivalent of an "abandonware" thief.

I'm not trying to convince someone of the legality of their actions, nor of the moral implications.

I am merely correcting the inaccurate statement that a piece of software may not have an owner.  Much like that penny on the ground, someone owns it, even if they are unaware of their ownserhip (fell out of their pocket)

[BanzaiCat]

When I worked for United Airlines back before 2001, if someone left something on the plane, they'd keep it for 30 days in the luggage office. When the item arrived they'd catalogue it, tag it, and put it on a shelf. Needless to say there was a lot of crap down there...laptops, clothes, whole suitcases, books, magazines, CD players, headphones, you name it. They'd let us take books if they'd been there for 30 days. There were two of us that would go down and browse and if we found something we liked, we'd put our name on it so the luggage folks would let us know. I got a nice copy of a history of the 29th Infantry Division that way.

While that's allowed by the company I work for, they would not allow giving away other valuable items. Books were the only thing. Anything else would go to public auction, according to the law (which escapes me now, although I was familiar with it at the time). I think the law stated that they were allowed to do so as long as that window of time passed and they made reasonable attempts to contact their owners. Problem with books, they so often don't have names or numbers or anything in them.

Also, here's a funny story about found items in parking lots. I went grocery shopping one day, early in the morning, took the stuff out to my car in the parking lot, loaded up the car, then left. As I was backing out of my space, which was up front as I got there so early, there was a woman 30 feet away from me bending over, looking at my license tag, then turned around and went back into the store. I didn't think anything of it. When I got home, which is about 10 minutes away, I started unloading the car...take stuff in, go back out, repeat. On my second or so trip back out a constable pulled up into my driveway and pointedly asked me if I lived there.

"Yes sir," I said. I was once a CJ major and try to be as respectful as possible to cops.

He went on to say someone saw me picking up a wallet out of the parking lot at Wal-Mart. I told him I did no such thing (and indeed, I did not). He wasn't being accusatory; in fact he was rather amused because he went on to say the witness said the person that grabbed it had long hair and was driving a light car. I had short hair and a black vehicle. I offered him my license to check me out, and he did, then apologized for wasting my time and left. With as many cameras as there are in parking lots now, I can only imagine they looked at them and found out I was not the culprit.

The point is, you find something in the lot and someone complains they lost something, they will find you. That cop had found me in ten freaking minutes just from the license that dumb broad got off my car. I hope they made her feel stupid.

[Jarhead0331]

I sure hope you guys have never picked a penny up off the ground and put it in your pocket. It  would make you the moral and ethical equivalent of an "abandonware" thief.

It's these kind of responses that make such a discussion so difficult, and presumably why it has been suggested to move the thread. Picking up an object that someone lost without being able to locate the owner is a more complicated example than stealing, so it's not the same thing as downloading something and it might be treated differently by local law. For example, in the Netherlands I believe you are legally allowed to keep some things you find if no owner claims it within X amount of time or something. Something similar applies to picking things up on the beach as far as I know.

Thus far in the thread, people commenting on what does or what doesn't legally constitute "theft" are immediately considered to be on a "high horse" and rambling about "moral standards".

I understand that people don't want to be called a thief, but what people think is completely irrelevant when it comes to how something is written down in the law. Moral relativism is the mortal enemy of any legal system.

Does downloading a game put you in the same moral position as someone who steals someone's car? Depends on who you ask, but not really I'd say. Are both thing legally considered to be theft? Most certainly. Stealing a pencil from a store is also theft just like stealing a computer from a store is. You're thinking in terms of value, which is why you shrug at stealing a pencil being called theft, but it's still legally theft.

Considering that in many circumstances you're actually violating IP laws if you copy parts of a book or show some footage at a meeting, I find it highly unlikely that any person who has been using computers or hardware like scanners have not violated IP laws at some point. Some of you get the impression that the statements given by Jarhead, or what I write here, judge you, but that's not the intention as far as I'm concerned. Jarhead is just trying to explain the law. Again: whether you like it or not, the law is the law, it does not change after a moral or ethical debate until someone changes the actual law. In countries with a jury system, ethical and moral standards will presumably matter more than in a country where no jury exists, like in the Netherlands.

The truth is that most of us here are probably thieves and liars, in absolute terms.

Which is exactly my point, some people just find it very difficult to acknowledge.

+1 on all points.

[Keunert]

Moral relativism is the mortal enemy of any legal system.

if a law is ignored by large portions of society it has to be discussed and maybe it will be changed.
the law has to adopt with society and what today is a crime may be completely legal tomorrow.
i used to smoke pot while it was illegal, today it is legal. did i feel guilty for commiting a crime? no never.
homosexual acts were illegal not too long ago, but ehm well theft will be theft as long as i live  ;)

[Jarhead0331]

Moral relativism is the mortal enemy of any legal system.

if a law is ignored by large portions of society it has to be discussed and maybe it will be changed.
the law has to adopt with society and what today is a crime may be completely legal tomorrow.
i used to smoke pot while it was illegal, today it is legal. did i feel guilty for commiting a crime? no never.
homosexual acts were illegal not too long ago, but ehm well theft will be theft as long as i live  ;)

Is this you coming out of the closet?

[LongBlade]

In the US the general rule for lost stuff is, as Banzai pointed out, that you have to make a reasonable attempt to find the owner.

If you're unsuccessful you may keep whatever you found.

In the case of software, someone owned a copy of said software and made an illegal copy, placed it on a website with the intent to distribute it. It is in no way the equivalent of walking down the street and finding a CD with Steel Panthers on it.

[ComradeP]

if a law is ignored by large portions of society it has to be discussed and maybe it will be changed.
the law has to adopt with society and what today is a crime may be completely legal tomorrow.

Whilst I agree in theory, such as with the example you give of homosexuality now being legal, it is still a slippery slope because if you base changing the law purely on how people behave and forcing the law to change based on that, instead of some sort of discussion where both the people establishing what is legal and what isn't and the society as a whole come to an agreement, something like ignoring red traffic lights or, indeed, theft, might very well become legal at some point.

In the US the general rule for lost stuff is, as Banzai pointed out, that you have to make a reasonable attempt to find the owner.

Yeah, what I wrote about how I believe it works in the Netherlands already assumed the owner could not be found. If you find something on the street, it's often unlikely the owner is still around or even aware he/she is missing something.

[bayonetbrant]

I think one of the complicating factors here is the fact that for tangible goods, there is a zero-sum quality to the goods in question.  In JH's example of the car that's not being driven, if you take the car, I no longer have it.  People tend to see that as more "wrong" than making a copy of a game that does not take away the copy I already have.

I'm not saying it *is* more (or less) wrong, just that perceptions change when it's intangibles that don't subtract from 'inventory'

[bayonetbrant]

if a law is ignored by large portions of society it has to be discussed and maybe it will be changed.
the law has to adopt with society and what today is a crime may be completely legal tomorrow.

no disagreement, but ideally you change the law to allow the action, rather than just ignoring it