[Coco] [Color Computer] Re: Scepter of Kzirgla

[James Diffendaffer]

There seems to be two schools of thought on this topic.
1. Respect all copyrights and don't release it without permission.
2. Release it and not worry about it because it's old, unsupported and
you are unlikely to get sued.  

Current copyright law supposedly (based on discussions in other
forums) takes abandonware into account and makes it legal to copy
after a certain number of years.  However, this was copyrighted under
older rules and should still be protected.

Current copyright law allows copy protection of old works to be
cracked for archival purposes and preservation.  It doesn't allow
distribution.

Given the age of the software and the fact that the author makes no
money off of it the most that will happen is you will receive a letter
telling you to cease and desist since it would cost more to take you
to court than it's worth.

If you chose to distribute it I suggest you just upload it to
rabidshare and then post the link.  It will let plenty of people grab
it so it won't be lost and then the link will become inactive once
people stop downloading it. 

To be honest, most authors like the fact that someone still
appreciates their work.  However, companies that might be able to
license a remake usually ask for their programs to be removed from
download sites.

Some of the coders that worked for Atari have actually passed on the
source code to many of the games they worked on.  Some of the games
were never released in spite of being very close to completion.




--- In ColorComputer at yahoogroups.com, "winwolf3d" <winwolf3d at ...> wrote:
>
> Thanks, I did manage to get it saved to a DSK file.  I figure that's a
> bit better than have to wait for a CAS image file to load.
> 
> I guess that since this game is under copyright, there is no legal way
> to distribute it, correct?
> 
> --- In ColorComputer at yahoogroups.com, "James Diffendaffer"
> <jdiffendaffer@> wrote:
> >
> > You'll want to make a .cas file.
> >
>