Do some games get recopyrighted?

[Anarchist420]

I noticed on abandonia that a lot of games that were once downloadable on their site for free are now only available for purchase on places like gog and in some cases, don't even have the original audio quality (the music was originally uncompressed and now it is being resold with lossy files instead of the original wav or CDDA files).

What is happening precisely? Are these things being recopyrighted so they can be resold after the original copyright has expired?

I don't know whether online companies are buying the source code and then taking advantage of the copyright system by reselling what would be free in a free society, but if they are... then I urge a mass boycott of those places. If the original source code owners dont mind people contacting them, then I'd be happy to donate to them for rerelease of their source code... and then I'll pay to have it modified the way I want it to (if I want it modified at all and if someone is willing to) but I won't be buying from digital redistrubtors that only exist because of copyrights. There are plenty of utilities that could be made so that these older games would work on modern systems without abuse of the copyright system.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

The copyrights did not expire. US copyrights last for the life of the creator plus 70 years. No video game is that old, ergo all video games are still copyrighted.

Abandonia is simply ignoring the law.

 

[Anarchist420]

The copyrights did not expire. US copyrights last for the life of the creator plus 70 years. No video game is that old, ergo all video games are still copyrighted.

Abandonia is simply ignoring the law.

i didn't know that, but some of the publishers went out of business. I really don't think that they're ignoring the law because they wouldn't have any downloads if they were all still protected... however, I'm not sure, so maybe you should explain further

 

[Lonyo]

Abandonia is as its name suggests, a site for abandoned games.
When people "unabandon" their games, such as by getting them on GoG, they are removed from Abandonia, because they are no longer abandoned games.

The games were never out of copyright, they were just unavailable to purchase new on commercial terms, so they had effectively been abandoned by whoever owned the rights to the game.

In basically all circumstances, as mentioned above, the copyright was still owned by SOMEONE, but they were not making use of it, or not allowing it to be made use of, so people said "fine, if you won't let us buy your product, we will make it available for free because this does not harm you".
When these products are then made available for money (as the rights holder is allowed to do), they remove it, because it would then be harming the rights holder, and that is not what the site is about.

See also their FAQ:
http://www.abandonia.com/en/faq

What is Abandonware? Is it legal?

Wikipedia: "Abandonware is computer software which is no longer being sold or supported by its copyright holder. Alternately, the term is also used for software which is still available, but on which further support and development has been deliberately discontinued."

Since the software is no longer sold or supported, the copyright holders are not directly harmed in any way. This is why abandonware sites are, for the most part, ignored by the law.

The distribution of copyrighted software however is, and will allways be, illegal!

Since GoG sells these titles, they are not abandonware.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

Copyrights don't disappear when a company goes out of business. They get transferred to another entity - either sold or auctioned off, or otherwise transferred. But those copyrights still exist, and someone still owns them.

What they are doing is putting up copyrighted games - it's basic piracy. But as that's a civil offense, not a criminal one, the only way they'll get in trouble for that is if a copyright owner takes legal action against them. In most cases, these are old properties of little value, in many cases the owner of those copyrights doesn't even know they have them, or otherwise have little interest in taking any legal action about it.

They take down things when companies start using those copyrights again because suddenly someone cares, and they're trying to avoid getting sued.


None of that stuff is public domain, or freeware or anything like that. It's just that the copyright owners don't care enough to do anything about it. If Good old games starts selling it, suddenly someone has a reason to care, and Abandonia doesn't want to get sued. Plus, their basic rationale was that it was OK since no one was selling it anyway, the moment you can get those old games elsewhere it stops being a morally gray abandonware area, and just plain old fashioned piracy and they stop.

And that's all there is to it - Abandonia is offering downloads, knowing it's illegal but figuring no one is going to care.