Is Abandonware Piracy?

from the greedy-companies dept

A Wired News article looking at the popularity of abandonware sites. These are websites that offer downloads of old software that is no longer sold anywhere. It's not hard to figure out where the legal questions start to come up, but the supporters of abandonware say they're obviously not pirating anything. Since no company is even selling the product, they're certainly not taking any money away from a company. However, companies that have plans to rerelease certain programs (mostly games) don't always see things that way.
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  • identicon
    msykes, 21 Jan 2002 @ 5:57pm

    Seems like a good thing

    This seems like something that companies could turn into a good thing. If nobody is selling the game (or whatever) I think it makes sense to allow it to be downloaded. Then companies could actually use these sites to gauge interest in their old software... and rerelease the most popular items. When they commit to rerelease they could then ask the sites to remove those downloads, since it would then be piracy.

    Wishful thinking naturally.'

    msykes

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      xiaoeee, 3 Jan 2018 @ 8:40pm

      Re: Seems like a good thing

      There is no reason to host abandonware. No reason at all. Every copyright for every software should be respected, even the software that is discontinued. And freeware in fact should also be illegal, cuz money rockz and rollz, hahaha (:

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    xiaoeee, 3 Jan 2018 @ 8:38pm

    Just give up abandonware. There are a lot of the software being made these days. Give up your nostalgia and enjoy new games. And if they don't work on your machine, just give up and get over it. There are a lot of other ways to entertain yourself.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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