Oh, abandonware is political. The software is lost because distribution rights lied solely with the copyright holder. The abandonware we still have available for distribution today is what was pirated. Obviously, copyright is antithetical to software preservation.
A capitalist argument on the subject of software copyright goes “the right to distribute software is owned by a company or a businessman because they invested in that software. They have the right to control what they own. If they decide the software is no longer available for distribution, it should be lost.”
But a communist argument on the subject of software says “the means of producing wealth by distributing software should belong to everyone. The people should seize software distribution for themselves and use it for the common good. Pirate software to preserve it, it shouldn’t matter that a corporation doesn’t want to sell it anymore.”
As a communist, I believe in the conservative approach to software copyright.
I am in the middle. I believe a company should be able to make money on its software until they abandon it. Once they abandon the software, it should be free to use.
I hate to see technology go away just because someone stopped selling it.
Well in the old days we would all have copies of the disk to spread around. I still have hundreds of floppies for C64 software. I still have 3.5 for my Amiga.
I am starting to think I am a closet pack rat. I have lots of really old technology I have been carting around for 40 years.
We could push for a law that makes it open source after a certain period of time or make copyrights only useful while it’s being used.
The problem is there is so much on the backend nowadays. I used to play star wars galaxies which was mainly run on the backend. Even pirates can only pirate the front end.
I started to play as a way to keep up with friends when I moved away. We use to play and chat till the early morning on the weekends.
That’s relying on big government to solve our problems for us. And that’s not a reliable strategy when big business wants those problems to stick around so they can make us buy more new crap. Piracy is a solution that we, the people, can implement right now.
Oh, abandonware is political. The software is lost because distribution rights lied solely with the copyright holder. The abandonware we still have available for distribution today is what was pirated. Obviously, copyright is antithetical to software preservation.
A capitalist argument on the subject of software copyright goes “the right to distribute software is owned by a company or a businessman because they invested in that software. They have the right to control what they own. If they decide the software is no longer available for distribution, it should be lost.”
But a communist argument on the subject of software says “the means of producing wealth by distributing software should belong to everyone. The people should seize software distribution for themselves and use it for the common good. Pirate software to preserve it, it shouldn’t matter that a corporation doesn’t want to sell it anymore.”
As a communist, I believe in the conservative approach to software copyright.
I am in the middle. I believe a company should be able to make money on its software until they abandon it. Once they abandon the software, it should be free to use.
I hate to see technology go away just because someone stopped selling it.
Same with movies, TV shows, etc.
How are pirates supposed to get copies of software that’s already been abandoned so they can distribute it?
Well in the old days we would all have copies of the disk to spread around. I still have hundreds of floppies for C64 software. I still have 3.5 for my Amiga.
I am starting to think I am a closet pack rat. I have lots of really old technology I have been carting around for 40 years.
Yeah, but that’s not the nature of how software is distributed these days. Do you have a modern solution?
We could push for a law that makes it open source after a certain period of time or make copyrights only useful while it’s being used.
The problem is there is so much on the backend nowadays. I used to play star wars galaxies which was mainly run on the backend. Even pirates can only pirate the front end.
I started to play as a way to keep up with friends when I moved away. We use to play and chat till the early morning on the weekends.
That’s relying on big government to solve our problems for us. And that’s not a reliable strategy when big business wants those problems to stick around so they can make us buy more new crap. Piracy is a solution that we, the people, can implement right now.