@Olecranon
Quote:

Seems like a lot of poo-poo about nothing.

well, this and other "nothings" like this got us in the situation the Amiga market is now. Did not you notice? How many commercial developers are there? And how many were there before???

@Olecranon
Quote:

I'd argue that it's not the roms/os that sells Amiga Forever

It is not the engine that sells the Porsche? Come on...

@walter
Quote:

"Yes, he is helping," not because I think distributing copyrighted material is a good idea, but because of the software and tutorials that he personally has created and made available to the community.

This is no doubt walter, I appreciate every single man who still develop Amiga software. But this time the question is whether he is helping with distributing illegal Amiga software!

Quote:

but I must admit that he presents the most most reasonable explanation and justification of the abandonware concept that I have seen.

Really? What concept you mean exactly? "Take whatever you think it's abandoned?"

Quote:

Maybe James believes that he is in a situation where the legalities have become pointless (essentially, no longer worth the effort of governments OR copyright holders to enforce), and that he must make his own choices based on the things that he values. Can laws (or even rights) always properly guide us in our decisions?

There's nothing wrong on common sense. But don't you think it is AT LEAST nice to ask the owner: "Can I take please". There's absolutely no law needed! Like I said, law is the last possibility to enforce the respect if the man isn't able to do this himself.

Quote:

I think, at least, that you should reread his arguments, and try to come up with a counterargument as principled and unemotional as his.

Uh? Is this addressed to me or James

Last edited by AmiKit on 24-Aug-2006 at 10:56 AM.

_________________
Modern Retro Experience

@benja

Quote:

I have to stop coming to AW.

Excellent idea.

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@evilrich

Amen to all you have said. The best response.

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Sam

@AmiKit
It would have been a lot easier to vote Yes/No, if I could actually VISIT his web site. Googling for it turned-up nothing. As it is, I have a one-sided (biased) report from you on his site, making any kind of rational judgement impossible - so I voted that I don't know.

However, I do agree with the principle of abandonware: That it is morally acceptable to distribute software that can no-longer be bought in any form (and so hurts no-one financially). AmigaOS 3.x is not true abandonware by this definition, because it *can* be bought, thanks to Cloanto, and you could argue that OS 4 is heavily based on OS 3.x, so that OS4 (when available) is a form of 3.x .

So Jame's arguments, while well intentioned, are probably flawed. But again, without seeing the whole picture (his web site), I can't give a firm opinion.

_________________
Author of the PortablE programming language.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue...

@Olecranon

Quote:

That statement struck me funny

I guess you just have to hope that there are more honest people than dishonest ones.

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Sam

@IceDragon
@ Polka

Quote:

While you asked or announced 2 times that you are planning to do so, i fail to see James agreeing to you posting the whole conversation here on AW. Now, if you are so keen on obeying rules and respect laws etc. which is perfectly ok with me, you should have respected his right for privacy etc. as well.

Well, you're completely right about this. I normally don't public any private conversation. But I believe this situation is much much different as the James' behaviour is ILLEGAL and people do deserve to know it, the same way as you watch the news on TV. Let me use (rather extreme) example: if someone is planning a murder, should I ask for his permission to reveal his plans to police?

_________________
Modern Retro Experience

@AmiKit

If Amiga Inc. can't be bothered to stop him though what do you hope to achieve?

_________________
Sam

@Thread

From TOS:
Quote:

Copyrighted Information: Copyrighted material, private email text, and other privileged information may not be posted here without prior written permission from the original author. If you find that your postings to the web site have been copied, emailed and/or publicly posted or distributed elsewhere or brought to the forums by another for posting without your permission, which constitutes violation of your privacy or copyright infringement, please notify the Webmaster directly so the situation can be promptly addressed. If such an event occurs, the individual posting the information shall be held solely responsible.

Making the thread public again, removed private email transcripts.
As long as we don't have a confirmation from James Jacobs that it is ok to make it public, it is not ok to publish transcripts.

Feel free to continue the discussion. /tomazkid

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@AmiKit

Quote:

well, this and other "nothings" like this got us in the situation the Amiga market is now. Did not you notice? How many commercial developers are there? And how many were there before???

Your blaming the current Amiga market situation on Piracy? Oh my gawd. Your probably right.... It had nothing to do with poor marketing by Commodore, or other computer platforms catching up to the Amiga price/performance. I'm sure the fact that the Amiga went from 1985 to late 1992 without a significant upgrade to its graphics and sound capabilities had no bearing on lost market share issues either?

Every computer/console platform has been pirated.. You think the X86 PC is the dominant platform on the planet because it was never pirated? Hell, people were probably copying punch cards in the 70's

There are NO commercial developers because 0S4 + Hardware = vaporware. If any OS4 compatible hardware is released at a reasonable prices and if OS4 is a truly great operating system, the platform will become economically viable. That that point you'll see commercial developers come back to the Amiga.

@AmiKit
well if iam completely right about this, i wonder why you didnt comply to your own rules then.

Quote:

I normally don't public any private conversation. But I believe this situation is much much different as the James' behaviour is ILLEGAL and people do deserve to know it, the same way as you watch the news on TV. Let me use (rather extreme) example: if someone is planning a murder, should I ask for his permission to reveal his plans to police?

Well, no matter what you normally do, and no matter what you personally believe what is different in this situation, as you also told to James with your OWN arguments, this is subjective and as such not an excuse for violating laws. Your rather misplaced example (sorry, but it is really inappropriate) doesn't help here, because in a case of murder you still have the obligation to report a crime to the authorities (which AW is clearly not) but that still doesnt give you the right of violating privacy laws in this case. AW is no authority, the example doesnt fit. It would have been sufficient if you e.g. would have linked the site and argued about legality without posting private email conversation - then it would have been perfectly fine. But this way you are actually not behaving better than the one you want to prosecute.

@IceDragon

yes, you're right IceDragon and I apologize for my behaviour. The private conversation was removed.

_________________
Modern Retro Experience

@AmiKit

Is him making millonaire profit about selling or distributing that material? If he only is recopilating and charging the media cost, i don't see the bad part.
Come on, there is other things more important to discuss.

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@Olecranon

Quote:

Sorry.. I can tell your very passionate about copyright law, but I dont believe the world is black and white. How is buying used software off of ebay any more legit than downloading it from a website?

Since I make a living out of intellectual property, it would be hypocritical of me to say copyright theft is okay. Thus I possess no illegally copied software, music, videos, whatever.

I have no problem with people buying software second-hand, as long as those doing the selling dispose of any copies they have made when they sell the originals.

Cheers,
Rich

Last edited by evilrich on 25-Aug-2006 at 04:55 AM.

Try googling for "Amigan Software"?

Last edited by Minuous on 27-Aug-2006 at 06:44 AM.
Last edited by Bodie_CI5 on 25-Aug-2006 at 10:58 AM.
Last edited by Bodie_CI5 on 25-Aug-2006 at 10:57 AM.

@Minuous
Perhaps you could PM me with the link, or otherwise post what search terms to use in Google. Probably both would be best.

_________________
Author of the PortablE programming language.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue...

type in "Amiga OS4" or "Amiga Forever" in a filesharing program and worry about those results instead of nagging about some DVD's with games that for 90% never will be played again.

If I had to post the names of all the people who gave me thousands of pirated disks together with the hardware I bought for 20¤. I would be typing for half a day. Bottomline is that the damage is already done more then 10 years ago... and playing the crusader today is not going to change that anymore. And it's like P2P, for every Napster that got crushed, two "crapster's" showed up.

Don't wast your time with it... instead put your effort in what is doing damage today or whatever is helpfull for the community.

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The Belgian Amiga Club on FACEBOOK !

The Belgian Amiga Club Website

I found the site in question. It is an ecletic mixture of:
* A few very old Amiga games, most of which I haven't even heard of, so some may even be freeware (I have not downloaded any to check).
* A lot of Amiga programming documentation, including the ROM Kernel Manual. As most (probably all) of this is long out of print & so incredibly hard to obtain, I have no moral problems seeing it here, even if it may theoretically break copyright. Indeed, this could be very useful for anyone wanting to start Amiga programming.
* A load of Megadiscs (I presume some sort of free scene mag).
* Some Amiga hacker/virus utilities (not really useful today, but could be of historical interest).
* Some really ancient commercial Office & Paint programs for the Amiga.
* A few other bits & bobs that a probably not important.
* Several Kickstarts ROM images & an image of OS3.9+BB2.

The only thing that I have a moral problem with is the last item - the Kickstarts & OS are still owned by a company (Amiga Inc is still with us) and sold (by Cloanto & perhaps others). All the rest is commercially unavailable, and in most cases so old that the companies have long since gone bust.

So I would vote that he is helping the Amiga, except for the Kickstarts & OS image.

Last edited by ChrisH on 27-Aug-2006 at 09:37 AM.
Last edited by ChrisH on 27-Aug-2006 at 09:35 AM.
Last edited by ChrisH on 27-Aug-2006 at 09:34 AM.

_________________
Author of the PortablE programming language.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue...

@ChrisH

Quote:

ChrisH wrote: So I would vote that he is helping the Amiga, except for the Kickstarts & OS image.

I personally think hosting ROM images is helpful, I don't see that it harms anyone. I agree with a previous statement that people buying Amiga Forever are very unlikely to be doing so to obtain legal roms!

Only the other day I needed an A500 ROM. As it happens, I have an A500 but it's in the loft. It is probably going to take me at least 2 hours to get that down, plug it up, find an ancient boot disk (assuming it still works since it's been well over a decade since it last booted), put the relevent util from Aminet on it using my PC and A1200, then copy that to another floppy disk back to the A1200.

Am I going to do all that or am I going to just find it on the net? Naturally, as I'd expect anyone to, I searched on the net. I couldn't help but be irritated at page after page of dead links, presumably removed due to someone, with nothing better to do, hunting down and forcing the removal of the ROM images.

Honestly, who really cares now about A500 roms? I'm far more irritated at how long it takes me to track such things down than I am at anyone fascilitating the spread of copyrighted, but near valueless ROMs.

IF someone was distributing copies of OS4 on ebay or something, that I would have a problem with.

@DarkGlobe

Regarding hosting ROM files... well I agree... Now I got the ROM files since I bought the A1 but my a4k is broken and even though I own the ROMs (even got ROMs for an A4kT laying here) I can't transfer them to a file for use with UAE. So I search the net for them as well.

On the other hand, those who doesn't own an amiga should buy amiga forever.

@hotrod

Yes, the principle that those that do not own Amigas should pay for the ROMs is right & fair of course. But it's almost another subject as what's in question here is whether this guy is helping the Amiga community.

I'd suggest that making ROMs easily available allows for people with no Amiga experience to get some. I'd like to think anyone investigating the Amiga for the first time is bound to find something they like.

People looking for ROMs either already own or previously owned Amigas OR are checking out something new to them. Both groups should be aided in their quest and aren't going to be doing any harm.

The fact that UAE exists, and is freely available, has almost certainly helped boost the number of people in the Amiga community today. And let's face it, most people who downloaded UAE probably obtained the ROMs by means other than from their existing Amigas (me for one). I think ultimately piracy of legacy ROMs has been a positive thing and done very little, if any, harm at all.

All the harm would appear to be being done at the top, by the few companies still in some way involved in the future, or lack thereof, of the Amiga as a viable platform, not those seeking to emulate the machine to run legacy games and applications, most of which long-since abandoned, who to my mind should be encouraged and facilitated in their thousands, not hindered.

Take a look at recent ebay auctions, Amiga hardware is still selling well and attracting good money, emulation has done nothing to hurt that. Perhaps some of the buyers are people who'd got into, or back into, the Amiga via UAE.

* I do not personally run UAE, I have many times and always found it a cumbersome pain compared to booting up a proper Amiga.