Is Amiga Inc's claim to AOS valid?

[lsmart]

Defending the rights to various kickstarts & defunct OS versions seems to me like claiming copyright over the Ox drawn plough - It might still have it's uses, but you're never going to make money from selling them.

Defunct? Are you out of your mind? What do you think is the main reason Amiga Forever is so popular? The demos or the ridiculous games? No, it is the best source to legally obtain all the Kickstarts & Workbench files.
Without them Amiga Forever wouldn´t be worth talking about.

[lsmart]

...one of our legit disks went bad and we downloaded a copy.  While that isn't illeage you were glad to find it.

I don´t think it´s legal, but I believe copyright should be modified in a way that it becomes legal. You´d be a real tuna head to sue for such a copy and if I were a judge I would urge the parties to settle so that the infringer pays no more than the cost of the media & shipping for the new disk.

Law should advance to the point it actually makes sense. However AInc paid for the AmigaOS IP and they paid the one, who paid for it to the one who paid for it to get it from ESCOM/Gateway. (I am a bit confused about all the details, there may be some confusion along the way) So that is a very strong indication that these rights are not in the property of Joe Random and they certainly aren´t free of rights or public domain.

[Franko]

Joining this debate late, but here goes .....
First let me say I agree with Franko, who's point (I think) is "who REALLY owns the copyrights/IPs, etc. & not who THINKS they own them." Like he says, we'll never know until it's tested properly.

Bingo... At last someone actually gets what I'm talking about here...

Good now I can find something else to moan about....

(Now where's them threads on "they who shall not be mentioned" or AROS or MorphOS or The Price Of Cheese In Afghanistan...)

[Fraggle1]

Glad to oblige, Franko.  :-)  Maybe I understand you better than most because my family are from your part of the world & consequently I speak fluent Glaswegian. (Ach, awa & bile yir heid, ye wee sumf !) LOL. ;-)

Ismart - I take your point & I admit I could have worded that better. By "defunct" I meant that they are no longer in development, have no 'future', & are of interest only for their use in emulation of an obsolete machine. (and Yes, I DO own/use a number of Amigas)
Also, I didn't mean that they have no value, but that the figures that AI & others have placed on that value is (IMHO) far in excess of their real commercial worth.
However popular Amiga Forever may be, I'm willing to bet that no one at Cloanto could live for a month on the money they make in a year from AF, hence it might be a nice hobby job, but you'd hardly call it "profitable", a factor which largely determines something's commercial value.

[Iggy]

Glad to see this topic losing steam.
What started as a discussion about what I thought was a legitimate point, has gotten rather off topic.
My only interest was seeing how many of you thought that the botched Escom transfer rendered later IP claims invalid.

[psxphill]

Dammy, how does C= exist after liquidation?

Escom bought commodore international from the liquidators.

[kolla]

Defunct? Are you out of your mind? What do you think is the main reason Amiga Forever is so popular? The demos or the ridiculous games? No, it is the best source to legally obtain all the Kickstarts & Workbench files.
Without them Amiga Forever wouldn´t be worth talking about.

Uh... what? I see it totally the other way around.

[Argo]

The some subsidiaries still existed. Notably Commodore UK, which had plans to purchase the remnants of CBM in the bankruptcy liquidation.

[Iggy]

The some subsidiaries still existed. Notably Commodore UK, which had plans to purchase the remnants of CBM in the bankruptcy liquidation.

A good point. I'm sure their contract would have been better written than the Escom contract (which fails to mention software IP).

[Dandy]

Isn't there a new law passed in the USA that allow authorities to shut down any website guilty of hosting unauthorized copyrighted content? Don't you think anyone with legitimate claims to IP would use such a law?

They could shut down such sites as long as they are hosted somewhere on US territory - but how could they shut down websites hosted in e.g. Russia or China or the like?