Copyrights..... enforced, unenforced, and in between.

[dwildstr@mit.edu (David J Wildstrom)]

In article <6i12n7$iap$1@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>,
Paul Francis Gilbert <pfg@cs.rmit.edu.au> wrote:
>in rec.games.int-fiction if you're interested. Activision, BTW, is (or
>rather was until recently) still selling the Infocom games [witness the
>Lost Treasures of Infocom and Masterpieces of Infocom, as well as several
>game packs], so I do think the Infocom games on Asimov should be removed.

I think that, for the average person on this newsgroup (as opposed to perhaps
"software-is-for-the-people" socialists and "never-ever-copy-a-disk" moralists)
this really is the issue, as to whether thew product is still doing anything
for the company in question.

As two extreme cases, we have the Infocom games and Robot Odyssey by The
Learning Company (and yes, I do still play it, and still can't beat the damn
force field puzzle). The former is (are?) still being sold, and thanks to
platform-independent z-code, the asimov images are, for the most part,
identical byte-for-byte to Activision's current product. In this particular
case, I think there's a pretty good argument that a site whose primary purpose
is historical (which is, as far as I can tell, one of the major purposes of
asimov) should not include such products.

On the other hand, TLC's Robot Odyssey is probably fair game. When specifically
asked about it, TLC denied that such a game was currently sold and in fact that
such a game ever existed. In this case, there's a pretty good argument that
inclusion on asimov is not only morally and legally justifiable, but in fact
praiseworthy, as otherwise it might be completely unavailable. The copyright
owners had not only failed to defend but actively denied their copyright, and
it is thus, I believe, in the hands of third parties to keep it around.

Not everything's so black and white of course. As conversational grist, what
would you all think of:
	1) software not currently sold, but still owned by extant companies,
		who have not made any statement on it.
		(e.g. Infocom's Shogun & HHG, Appleworks (?))
	2) software sold on other systems still.
		(some MECC stuff, I think, and certainly some SSI games)
	3) software not currently sold owned by companies which have
		been bought. (not too sure about examples, but a lot of
		stuff seems to slip through the cracks this way)

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