[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: Ancient wares and present values
Frank Townsend writes ...
>
> Flaymerz wrote in message <200006260345.XAA10159@anon.cotse.com>...
>
> >If I want to play with Crossword Magic 2.0 from 1981,
> >I'm surely not going to wait for it to show up on eBay or
> >post a wanted-to-buy ad here. I'll download it. L&S
> >Computerware -- the entity being protected by copyright
> >-- would not suffer any financial loss by my
> >downloading it because they haven't been in business
> >for YEARS.
>
> Interestingly enough L&S Computerware is, in a sense, still in business.
>
> L&S was a trade name of HLS Duplication, Inc. In 1995,
> HLS was acquired by, and made a subsidiary of,
> Nimbus Manufacturing Inc. The subsidiary was
> known as Nimbus Software Services until 1997 when Nimbus Mfg. closed the
> plant in Sunnyvale, Ca.
>
> Thus, unless the copyright was otherwise sold or transferred, the current
> copyright holder of Crossword Magic 2.0 is Nimbus Manufacturing Inc.,
> very much a going concern.
>
> Ironically, Nimbus has developed anti piracy tools, and apparently has a
> deep interest in copyright issues..
>
> You can call the company's US offices at
>
> NIMBUS MANUFACTURING INC
> Ruckersville, VA 22968
>
> 804 985 1100
>
rubywand@swbell.net followed with this:
<<Speaking of interesting observations, you might consider how you came to
discover Nimbus (and post a Nimbus mini-commercial on the world's largest Apple
II forum). It was through an interest in a 1981 Apple II product.
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.
Suppose the rights owner should request free access to end. The standard
practice of the archives would be to delist Crossword Magic 2.0.
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.>>
And I reply:
Having free roaming long distance calling - I decided to do a bit of research
this morning concerning the ownership and copyright holder varifications for
Crossword Magic 2.0 by contacting the powers that be at NIMBUS MANUFACTURING
INC. and after a fairly lengthy shuffle around from one person to the next _ I
got thru to a person who assured me they
had nothing to do with software for the Apple II computer platform and had no
interest in pursuing any form of copyright or piracy matters concerning such an
old and no longer commercially available item of software.
So, while having no success with obtaining an 'official clearance' for a
reclassification to freeware for the A2 title 'Crossword Magic 2.0' from the
programs alleged and current copyright holder - I certainly have no
reason not to point out exactly where it can be downloaded from the Internet
for the needs of Apple II users that desire it.
The URL's follows for Crossword Magic:
ftp://mirror.apple.asimov.net//images/games/misc/crossword.dsk.gz
ftp://mirror.apple.asimov.net//images/games/misc/crossword_magic/
On another note of interest - last week - Joe Regan posted on an A2 NG that he
was seeking the author 'Jeffery Stanton' of an old classic book that came with
a 5.25" A2 disk - titled "Apple Graphics and Arcade Game
Design"
Here's Joe's post with the request:
-------------------------------
Subject: Jeffery Stanton
From: Joseph R Regan <JRRegan@msn.com>
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 03:16:57 -0700
Organization: Tamra E Regan
Reply-To: jrregan@zdnetmail.com
Message-ID: <02e6ls8eta6b14dan1g6qmnimrn9gjlrdj@4ax.com>
X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.8/32.548
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2.programmer
NNTP-Posting-Host: 1cust190.tnt1.san-antonio2.tx.da.uu.net 63.14.132.190
Path:
lobby!newstf02.news.aol.com!portc01.blue.aol.com!portc03.blue.aol.com!news
feed.cwix.com!cpmsnbbsb04!cpmsnbbsa08
Lines: 17
Jeffery Stanton wrote a book called Apple Graphics and Arcade Game
Design. I have that book and have tried to track him down to ask if I
can scan and put it on the web. I have had little luck. The last
'occurances' of Jeffery were stale. I would appreciate anybody helping
me out. I have scanned 50% of the book for _personal_ reasons, but
want to finish it all.
thanks,
Joe
P.S. I plan on getting more involved in Apple // emulation as soon as
I get my 30 Gigg'er online. My goals are to disassemble Apple
Galaxian and MouseTalk, with Conan, Chop Lifter, Rescue Raiders, and
some of the Ultima Series as backup. Any input would be appreciated!!
----------------------------------------------------------------
Well, I located the author 'Jeffery Stanton' for Joe - with a brief amount of
Internet research - emailed the author and got his full consent to OCR
his Apple II book - 'Apple Graphics and Arcade Game Design' and his consent to
also make a ShrinkIt archive of the 5.25" Apple II disk that came with that
book - to put up on the Web. I sent a copy of all of those emails between
myself and Jeffery on to Joe Regan for his needs also.
I have the consent email retained - to include with the OCR of the book and the
disk archive - when I'm able to make it available on my own web site in the
near future also!
I've requested Joe Regan to send me a zip archive of the OCR text files and
graphics of the Apple II book titled 'Apple Graphics and Arcade Game Design'
and a ShrinkIt disk archive of the 5.25" Apple II disk that came with the book.
And, on another related matter of Apple II reclassifications - I had also
posted some time back on a personal project I'd undertaken to get about 2300
Apple II software titles reclassified as freeware to archive on our major Apple
II ftp sites - from a parent company that has absorbed full copyright ownership
for such companies as; MECC, The Learning Company,
Broderbund, MindScape, SSI and Scholastic, etc.
At this time - although I have not yet received any clear confirmation with
consent from the parent company legal dept. - things are looking very good
with this project and I'll be sure to keep the Apple II community posted on the
progress and final out come of it all.
Anticipating that many (if not all) of the titles I've submitted a formal
request to the parent company for freeware reclassification - will be granted
soon -- I've aquired and have personally donated a larger and newer 4.3
gigabyte SCSI-2 hard drive to Steve Nelson for use with the Apple II 'Ground' -
ftp/http site, to meet the needs of the many expected freeware
reclassifications that I hope to be able to archive and upload to the 'Ground'
site - during the balance of this year.
Cheers,
Tom