New subject: Software Piracy [again] and

3 Jan 1998

At 06:20 PM 1/3/98 -0500, you wrote:

...
 Well, frogger is a good example of why not. I see
they're bringing it out
again. 
Okay, so you own a new computer, maybe a P200 mmx and you have this old copy
of frogger, from your XT days... If this old copy gets out on the internet
or elsewhere, is it going to affect sales of the new Frogger version? I've
seen screen shots of this new game... It's alot different, majorly different
than the older versions. Alot of 3d stuff going on in there. Now say someone
finds that copy of frogger on the internet and downloads it to play on his
XT. How does this affect the sale of the new version? You could technically
say it does, because if this XT user really wanted the new version of
frogger, he'd have a major upgrade path ahead of him, maybe as much as 20
times as the new frogger game costs.

...
 Copyrights are what? 37 years? As someone who produces
intellectual
property (Photos and -- occasionally -- software), I appreciate copyright
protection. 
Sure, I have no problem with recent software protection, but in this case,
the game isn't even being sold in it's original form anymore, running on
computers that aren't made anymore. Maybe if software companies would take
these old titles and put them up on the internet, maybe take online orders
for them and charge a very low cost for the games, maybe around $1.00,
people might just buy them instead of making "illegal" copies of them. But
they don't. Most companies don't even offer support for software that old.
I've had that happen numerous times when I'd try to contact a company to get
a replacement disk for one that went bad. No dice. Some of the people
answering the phone didn't even know they had published the game.

- John Higginbotham
- limbo.netpath.net

operating systems