Re: Software on Old Disks

[pausch@saaf.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <dh3oeb$a9i$1@ottoman.cs.fiu.edu>,
Zorin the Lynx  <yakko@zorin.org> wrote:
 
> Great Hierophant wrote:
>> The are two difficult problems to easy disk backup and transfer.  The
>> first is copy protection.  It was designed to make copying difficult,
>> if not impossible.  To effectively back-up a program, you have to
>> essentially eliminate the copy protection without also making the
>> program non-fucntional.  Next is a related problem.  Many programs use
> 
> Luckily, this has already been done for most of the classics. Sites like 
> Asimov have a huge library of old Apple II games that have been cracked, 
> thus preserving them forever.
 
...or at least as long as those who are interested in the Apple II still
are alive - which definitely isn't forever..... :-)
 
Sites pop up and vanish.  And http://www.archive.org seems to have
stopped archiving Internet sites - perhaps they ran out of disk space.
But who knows how long http://www.archive.org will last?
 
Nothing lasts forever.... not even preserved Apple II games.... :-)
 
> Unfortunately, there will always be less popular games that were missed
> and are still out there, uncracked, deteriorating. Lots of educational
> programs have this problem, as they weren't that popular outside of schools.
> 
> Unfortunately, most folks with older software in their posession don't 
> have the necessary skills to crack the copy protection, so we may end up 
> losing some of it forever.
 
I don't think this is a problem really.  You can't preserve everything.
And so much has been preserved for the Apple II already that it gives
a very good view about computing on the Apple II.
 
A much bigger problem is the scarcity of preserved software for other,
less popular but nevertheless interesting computers.  Anyone knows a
good large software archive for e.g. the Jupiter Ace ?
 
> This, by the way, is why I get so annoyed when folks whine about Asimov 
> and piracy; I think letting this software languish and become lost to 
> history is a much greater crime than pirating software that is no longer 
> commercially viable and not distributed by its authors.
 
An interesting problem -- which btw applies to other areas too.
Suppose an author of a literal masterpiece demanded that he'd get all
printed copies of that masterpiece so he could destroy them.  After
all he's got the copyright on that literal masterpiece - should we
let him do it?  Or should we hide some copies, wait until he dies and
then print a new edition and distribute it?
 
Pointing to US law - or the law of any other single country - does not
help much, since the Internet is international, and laws are widely
different in different countries.  So it really becomes a question
about ethics.
 
-- 
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