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[The_Power_of_the_Ginger]

Should whoever owns the 1.3 ROM legally and freely release it on the Internet to allow a world to easily pretend their PC/AmigaONE/Mac/XBox is an Amiga 500?

Or should users be made to buy Amiga Forever 6 to get anything in the way of ROMs? Not that people who want to play Amiga games do that- they tend to use Google and get the ROM illegally...

What do you think?

[mikeymike]

It won't happen, and I'll give an example of the reason why. Currently the rights to ancient games (talking Atari 2600, Coleco 'ancient') are being bought up for the mobile market. Simple games with limited system requirements will always have a place in modern technology, even though while today's mobile technologies (mobile phones for example) are becoming more advanced and will someday be able to do handle more advanced software, all the old software will get its place on whatever new gadget fills the spot that mobile phones once had.

Amiga ROM to free use on the Internet *could* mean a loss of rights (maybe some, maybe all) to the operating system, and that may or may not include more recent released. The way things are currently, everyone is holding onto software IP like it is solid gold, which may or may not be a good thing to do (I personally hope software IP gets done away completely, it's a stupid idea - patent/licence software implementations, not ideas), but that's the way it is.

I was about to say that I felt the better approach might be for Amiga Inc to just turn a blind eye to unlicenced use of Amiga 1.x kickstart ROMs, but they can lose their right to defend it in cases of their choosing if they do that.

[Darrin]

Nobody is "made" to do anything, you are not FORCED to run UAE. If you WANT to play Amiga games then you should own legal copies of the ROMS and download an emulator or buy an Amiga off eBay. The fact that you decide to go for the cheap route and download UAE instead of buying an Amiga does not give you the right to PRIATE the ROMs or the SOFTWARE.

You can try an turn this into your right to receive a "free meal", but what you are trying to do here is justify piracy. Nice try, but hard luck.

If you want to play a game then pay the fees involved. If you don't want to pay then bugger off and try something else. This is one of the major rules of life. Live with it instead of crying over it.

Sorry if I sound harsh, but the "something for nothing brigade" really piss me off at times.

[mikeymike]

Sounding 'harsh' and 'laying down the law' does not generally help convert people to a more legal/moral way of thinking. In short Darrin, improve your sales pitch :-)

To the original poster, you ought to be thinking about supporting the Amiga in some way or form. To legally use 1.x ROMs, all you need is an A500, how much on ebay, ten quid/dollars or less? Even less at a car boot sale. It's not too much to ask is it. Or you could buy an emulator product which has the licenced ROMs with it.

[bloodline]

Personally, I think the 1.3 ROM should be released into the public domain. Both the Kickstart and the source code.

At least then it could go towards some good.

But as others have said, Companies like Amiga Inc./KMOS would never consider such a move, even though the source to 1.3 (it might have been 1.1) was published and publicly available during the commodore years.

A more interesting question is who actually owns the Amiga Kickstart 1.3 IP? If you trawl back through the legal mess that was the Commodore break up and the Escom purchase... you will notice the lack of information regarding the AmigaOS IP... interesting, no?

[Cymric]

No. The only ones allowed to distribute the ROM code are the owners of the IP. No end user with an Amiga is the IP owner, so what you'd effectively be doing is mass piracy. Bad, bad, bad.

I do hope, however, that the current owners of said IP will eventually open up the code to the public in another five to ten years or so, to sites like The Underdogs, or Back 2 The Roots. These play an important role in collecting and preserving some of the best games and programs ever made for the small home computers, so why not add ROM code to those?

[Darrin]

@ MikeyMike,

Sorry about that :-)

My problem is that even though I still own 3 operational Amiga computers (plus 1 more, sold 1 and burried 1), I have also BOUGHT 2 copies of AmigaForever including the latest release. With regards to the latest release, all I can say is that it's worth every penny/cent/chrome-pressed-latinum. It is easy to install, comes with practically OS3.9, all the ROMS you need, some really great software and doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

Why pirate when a legal product is available so cheaply?

It drives me nuts!!! Grrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!

;-)

[Ilwrath]

I kind of agree. Just purchase AmigaForever. It's a great product, and gives legal license to all the ROM versions.

It might be a nice gesture for the owner of AmigaDOS 1.3 to release it to a few legal sites (like back2roots) to be distributed free for personal use... This WOULD NOT hurt the owner's right to charge for it in a different form (say cell phones or joystick style emulators) in the future. So really, it wouldn't hurt the owners, and it would be a nice gesture.

But it really isn't necessary. There is no shortage of legal ways to get a dump of the ROM for cheap. :-)

[Argo]

Hey, I'm all for it. It's old. Not much good except for really old games. Don't suppose you'd be wanting AmigaOS 1.3 to go with it now would you?
I don't see it happening but you never know. Like anything, those that want it (bad enough) will get it one way or the other.

[Darrin]

Argo wrote:
those that want it (bad enough) will get it one way or the other.

I know what you're saying, but that is like saying that those who want cocaine bad enough will get it so let us legalise it or (if taken to the extreme) someone who wants to kill someone badly enough will find a way to do it so let us legalise that too.

Oh dear, I think I've opened a can of worms here... ;-)

[mdwh2]

mikeymike wrote:
It won't happen, and I'll give an example of the reason why. Currently the rights to ancient games (talking Atari 2600, Coleco 'ancient') are being bought up for the mobile market. Simple games with limited system requirements will always have a place in modern technology, even though while today's mobile technologies (mobile phones for example) are becoming more advanced and will someday be able to do handle more advanced software, all the old software will get its place on whatever new gadget fills the spot that mobile phones once had.

A good point, but this only applies if Amiga have any intention of doing so at some point. I'd love to play old Amiga games on my mobile phone, but I'm not aware of any plans for this to happen so it seems a bit of a weak argument for continuing to charge for the old OS.

Amiga ROM to free use on the Internet *could* mean a loss of rights (maybe some, maybe all) to the operating system, and that may or may not include more recent released.

No it wouldn't.

I'm not sure what you are saying here, but no rights are lost, and later OS versions are competely unaffected.

They don't even have to make it freely distributable - they could make it freely downloadable from their website (a potential way of advertising the more recent Amiga happenings to ppl), but still make retain full copyright and it would still be illegal to distribute anywhere else.

The way things are currently, everyone is holding onto software IP like it is solid gold, which may or may not be a good thing to do (I personally hope software IP gets done away completely, it's a stupid idea - patent/licence software implementations, not ideas), but that's the way it is.

Well, copyright which we're talking about here only covers implementations, not ideas. I think software copyright should still exist, but be far less restrictive, and I'm against software patents.

I was about to say that I felt the better approach might be for Amiga Inc to just turn a blind eye to unlicenced use of Amiga 1.x kickstart ROMs, but they can lose their right to defend it in cases of their choosing if they do that.

No they can't. You're probably getting confused with trademarks.

@Darrin, Cymric:

The question is should it be made free, not "Should I pirate it" - so whilst there are reasonable arguments for copyright law being less restrictive, no one is trying to justify piracy in this thread.

[Darrin]

@Darrin, Cymric:

The question is should it be made free, not "Should I pirate it" - so whilst there are reasonable arguments for copyright law being less restrictive, no one is trying to justify piracy in this thread.

A good point. In reply then all I can say is "No, because someone has paid for the rights to them and they are easily available for the cheap price of $29.99 along with a bundle of wonderful software that makes them a joy to use".

How is that ;-)

[Sethy]

Ideally, it should be given to the community, along with it's source code. Whatever company now owns Amiga clearly has close to no profit left in the 1.x series of ROMs. Like all old software, it should be released under a very non-restrictive license. It generated free press, fosters good relations with the community involved and the company can monitor whatever happens and learn from it, if given some thought.

Then again, that's an ideal situation... Not likely to happen, but imagine if the 1.3 ROMs for example are released under a non-restrictive or perhaps even open source license? Can bet that someone, somewhere, will make it work on x86 eventually so you can use Workbench on your x86 machine without emulation :P

[Belial6]

<This is written in the US>

The IP arguments are poor. IP (intellectual property) is a new idea. Copyright on the other hand is an old idea. The constitution allows for "limited" exlusive use to be assigned to the creator of an artistic work. If you read the constitution, it becomes abundently clear that the writers did not create copyright as an ownership issue. They created it to give a limited monopoly as a reward for bringing greater culture to the public domain.

Over time greedy companies have done their best to get the timeframe of these copyright monopolies extended. The most recent being when Disney sucsessfully lobbied congress to extend it past the old 70 year mark. They did this because they were going to loose their monopoly use of Mickey Mouse. So truly they were the "Pirates", stealing "IP" from the people.

Of course we all know that the term "Pirate" is an attempt to redefine language in such a way that the very reasonable argument of "Should copyright exists", sounds like "Should people be allowed to be pirates".

Do not take any of this as a statement that copyright should not exist. I believe it should. I just believe that it should be reasonable.

As for the "free lunch" argument that is consistantly used by people who believe that copyright monopolies should be enforced by law forever, you should keep in mind that what one should get for free is a definite grey area. For example we all would be quite upset if we had to start paying for the oxygen that we breath, even though the oxygen comes from plants that are owned by other people. The only differences between "IP Pirates" and and "Oxygen Pirates" are that a law was written (and could be revoked) by people, and that with "IP Pirates" there is no shrinkage.


So, as for the question of should the 1.3 roms be released for free...Yes, they should. They are a over a decade old. Their value is no longer based on the quality of the code, but on the nestalga value that the users create.

It is a sad day when pieces of the worlds culture is lost, and with the current trend in copyright, we will loose large parts of our culture. The worst part of this is that we won't loose our cultural heritage because we cannot preserve it, and we will not loose our cultural heritage because people will not preserve it. We will loose our cultural heritage because of greed. The greed that has convinced the populous that copyright should last long beyond the real commercial value that lead to the creation of the work. That it should last forever because it MIGHT someday be worth SOMETHING.

And this I challenge to any of the holyer than thou "artists" who rant about "Piracy". Create a single non-derivitive work. Make just one thing that is not built upon the creative works of those before you. I have never seen a truely 'original' piece of work, and I doubt that one exists.

[mikeymike]

mdwh2 wrote:

No it wouldn't.
I'm not sure what you are saying here, but no rights are lost, and later OS versions are competely unaffected.

Presumably you are a lawyer, not only a lawyer but Amiga Inc's lawyer who is completely familiar with the situation?

Thought not. Perhaps you shouldn't suggest that something is definitely so (or not so), when you don't know?

Note to everyone thinking about contributing to this thread: Let's not have a thread where people act like they're lawyers.