Re: Ancient wares and present values

[CUTblakeney@home.com (Jeff Blakeney)]

On Mon, 26 Jun 2000 06:24:53 -0500, Rubywand <rubywand@swbell.net>
wrote:

>     Obviously, the game itself has zero commercial value. At the price it
>could be sold, the costs of dealing with any orders or shareware fees would
>far exceed the revenues from sales.

I doubt any company would make an  Apple II title available
commercially anymore as it would be financially unviable.  They would
either keep it as a commercial title not make it available, keep it as
a commercial title and distribute it through someone else (like Joe
Kohn for example), make it available as shareware, freeware or, least
likely, as public domain.

The not making it available, freeware and public domain options would
cost the company nothing.

The shareware and third party distributor methods would cost them
little to nothing as all they would do when the fees came in would be
to send the payment to the bank with the rest of their normal income.
There is nothing saying they have to provide tech support for that
product if they make it available again.

>     Suppose the rights owner should request free access to end. The standard
>practice of the archives would be to delist Crossword Magic 2.0.

They shouldn't have to ask for sites to "delist" it as it shouldn't
have been there in the first place.  However, it is their right to
re-ask that people not illegally distribute their stuff and get their
products removed from sites.

>     Once the product were delisted it would, at last, be just about totally
>worthless to the rights owner. Commercial value would still be zero and there
>would be no opportunity for new users to download Crossword Magic 2.0 and
>wonder about "L&S Computerware" and discover Nimbus and think about buying
>Nimbus software.

Commercial value doesn't matter.  Ownership does.  If they wish to
retain ownership and not allow anyone to get that product and make no
money from it or getting any advertising benefit from it, that is
their right.  If they wish to try to make money from it, that is also
their right.  It is not the right of FTP site administrators or users
to decide what to do with someone else's property.

Why you keep bringing this stuff up is beyond me.

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