Copyright

[Akela]

I am not a lawyer. I don't even play one on TV. However, I have a good friend (from high-school) who is a Trademark/Patent/Copyright lawyer and if people are really interested I will ask him if he will do me the favor of weighing in here. He is not a gamer though so he will laugh at me (again).

That being said, as far as I understand from conversations with him, copyright (and patent and trademark) is an area of the law that is often misunderstood by the general public (he means me). The general crux of the misunderstanding seems to revolve around the fact that the general public (including me) has a simplistic view of the law where things are either legal or illegal. Apparently to those "in-the-know", the world is not that simple.

The primary complication being that the "law" is composed of two components; that which is written and that which is established by previous judicial interpretations.

So as far as I understand ( and I repeat, I am not the expert here) with copyright law (as well as patent) the State itself does not protect the body of work against duplication, it merely enables the Copyright Holder to enforce their "exclusive rights" to the work in question. The difference is subtle, but simplistically a copyright work is available for duplication unless the holder is claiming their exclusive rights. The same thing is apparently true for a patent. If you (the patent holder) do not actively attempt to defend your patent, the State considers you to have given up your claim to exclusive rights. It doesn't defend it for you.

So if you go to some abandonware site and download an old game my guess is that you are in pretty safe territory. It is definitely not considered illegal unless the copyright holder (and there almost certainly is one) actually cared (and they almost certainly don't), and even then it is not a criminal offense (most likely) merely civil. In other words the copyright holder could sue you for $5.99 but the FBI will not come and put you in jail. (Remember, I am not a lawyer, have I mentioned that? If you get put in jail for downloading Temple of Apshai don't come crying to me.)

Now all that being said, none of this has any bearing on what you can or cannot discuss on these forums. Our First Amendment rights prohibit the government from restricting what we can say, but those dimwitted forefathers left a huuuuge hole in there for Shrapnel to exploit. If only they had known.

Akela

P.S. I think this is the first time I have ever written a post like this where I actually *don't* expect to get flamed. This is a great site. If there are any lawyers out there, though, I do expect to be exposed for a fool. I'm used to that.