Yeah, except that abandonware has no legal standing. We were trying to do this work legally, getting permissions from licence holders, and it proved impossible -- not because we couldn't find the people concerned, even after 20+ years, or convince them that preservation was a good idea -- we could, and did. It was impossible because determining for sure who owned the old copyrights was, in many cases, impossible. This is a sleeper copyright issue atm, as far as I can tell, which tends to get subsumed within "abandonware" discourses, as in your reply.
I take your point about treading too carefully around copyright (and in another situation, it's probably not what I'd advocate doing). But the fact is that many institutions do take a careful, conservative approach, and it is important to have such institutions participating in the preservation of cultural content. Because copyright worries them, it functions as an excuse to do nothing, particularly in relation to a set of artefacts (software, digital games), whose cultural worth some remain to be convinced of. So "no-one cares anymore or is making any substantial income off it" = institutions won't touch it. Ironically, it's these very institutions that can make the problems with copyright in relation to preservation go away, because many enjoy exemptions on the prohibition against making copies for preservation purposes. cheers, Melanie Luke Munn wrote: > Yeah I believe that would fall under the "abandonware" category = e.g. > no-one cares anymore or is making any substantial income off it. > > I'm not an IP lawyer or knowledgeable on this topic, so I'm not sure > if there is a legal precedence for this, but it is used on thousands > of videogames, especially, and other media. > > http://www.google.co.nz/search?hl=en&q=abandonware&btnG=Google+Search&meta=&aq=f&oq= > > Imho in some cases people tread too carefully around copyright. Trashy > web example: failblog.org recently did a post on 'record breaking > fail' using the Guiness Book of World Records logo. GBWR sent a cease > and desist style email, Failblog pixelated over the logo and removed a > word, problem solved. > > Cheers, > Luke > > > > -- Dr Melanie Swalwell Senior Lecturer, Screen and Media & Course Coordinator, B. Media Flinders University GPO Box 2100 Adelaide SA 5001 125B Humanities Bldg Ph: +61 8 8201 2619 Fax: +61 8 8201 3635 [email protected] _______________________________________________ Ada_list mailing list [email protected] http://aotearoadigitalarts.org.nz/
