[Coco] ROM Copyrights... copyrights in general...

[Phill Harvey-Smith]

On 07/06/2017 21:26, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote:
> Anyone wishing to use anything still under copyright must get permission from
> the owners. "Abandonware" (known as an "orphaned work") is still protected,
> despite the Catch-22 situation. ("Works published after 1977 will not fall
> into the public domain until 70 years after the death of author, or, for
> corporate works, anonymous works, or works for hire, 95 years from the date of
> publication or 120 years from the date of creation, whichever expires first."
> More at <http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm>)
This is exactly why I took the approach I have with cas loading in 
DragonMMC, to do so I needed to patch the Dragon Or CoCo rom so it read 
bytes from the SD/MMC instead of from tape. So the board has a RAM on it 
and copies the Basic ROMS into that and then patches them. That way I 
don't have to distribute copies of the Basic ROMS which are of course 
still copyright Microsoft. Yes they are unlikely to sue but I don't want 
to take that risk. Paranoid, perhaps?

Another thing to consider is that whilst I realise a lot of of the 
members of this list will be in the USA, some of us are in other 
countries which may have slightly different copyright laws, which 
applies in any particular case may well depend on the country of 
publication and country of infringement.

Cheers.

Phill.

-- 
Phill Harvey-Smith, Programmer, Hardware hacker, and general eccentric !

"You can twist perceptions, but reality won't budge" -- Rush.