1 Dec
1999
1 Dec
'99
6:55 a.m.
On Wed, 1 Dec 1999, John Foust wrote:
I think you're mixing two factions. Certainly a
relatively great
number of people are opposed to the free distribution of someone's
copyright works without permission, and a much smaller (if any)
are opposed to the creation of emulators. I've never heard of
anyone complaining about the creation of an emulator. What
they complain about is the redistribution of some company's
ROM code to go along with the code that someone's written.
17 years ago, when I wrote XenoCopy, Some folk [who may not have fully
represented the corporation] at Intertec (Superbrain) told me that they
would sue me if I included the Superbrain format in XenoCopy! They felt
quite strongly that the ONLY possible reason why anybody could ever want
to transfer files to a different format would be to steal their
proprietary software!?! Such as "FORMAT"? or maybe "PIP"? Needless
to
say, addition of the Superbrain formats became my highest priority. But
they never kept their promise to provide me with free ink in the trade
journals.
BTW, the Superbrain formats are especially hard to transfer reliably,
partially due to several weirdnesses, and the difficulty on the 765 of
reading anything that is too close after Index.
I think it's important to respect copyright.
Certainly the field
of antique computers and the rapid evolution of this market causes
copyright works to seem abandoned much more quickly than books,
music or Mickey Mouse.
On the other end of the scale, I have encountered people who insisted that
works became public domain the instant that they ceased to be commercially
available (which seemed to mean that they couldn't find them in a good 5
minutes of looking - such as a changed address or telephone number)
--
Fred Cisin cisin(a)xenosoft.com
XenoSoft http://www.xenosoft.com
2210 Sixth St. (510) 644-9366
Berkeley, CA 94710-2219