Hello,
This is my first post to amiga.org. I am an ex-Amiga user, having owned an A500, A600HD and A1200 (which is still packed away and I will never sell.) I still use WinUAE regularly though as I'm a retrogaming nostalgia buff and find nothing more enjoyable than loading up old games and reliving the past glory days of the Amiga. It's also fun discovering new software that, if it were not for the preservationists, would likely be forgotten and lost in time never to be seen again. Who really cares about preserving the past except for the nostalgia buffs?
Let me just say that those who are against downloading of old software certainly have the law on their side. Downloading old copyrighted software is illegal under current copyright law - no doubt about it - but I take exception to it being labelled "evil". Jaywalking, not wearing your seatbelt, women walking topless in public, those are all illegal acts in most countries too, but I wouldn't label them evil. Certainly these actions are not comparable to the evil atrocities committed by dictators like Saddam Hussein.
I will even admit to breaking the law a while back. I walked my dog through a school ground late at night, even though I could clearly see the sign reading, "NO trespassing after 10PM. NO dogs allowed." I realize that notice was put there to discourage loiterers and irresponsible dog owners from letting their dogs defecate on the premises. I was doing neither of those things and I definitely didn't feel that I was evil for trepassing. Hey, my dog told me to do it! No, wait, I'll blame it on violent video games.
Like many of you, I pirated software when I was a teenager. The reason I bought a C64 and Amiga in the first place was because I could trade games with my friends and only had to spend money on blank floppies. Granted, I couldn't have afforded to buy the vast majority of those games anyways, but my actions were clearly illegal. When I got into my late teens, I became more aware of the way businesses operate and I started to feel guilty about the copied games I had in my collection so I erased all my disks and no longer pirated. I have about 40 original games in my collection now as testament, packed away with my wonderful A1200. I also do not pirate PC games.
Still, sometimes the pirated versions were useful. For instance, my younger brother spent a lot of money (probably a months allowance) purchasing a copy of Robocop 3D to run on the A1200. I may have the name of the game wrong - it's been a long time. Anyway, the game was not compatable with the machine so it was completely unplayable and could not even be returned because the package was obviously opened. I found a pirated copy which had actually been fixed by the crackers to run on AGA machines. If you look through the TOSEC database you will notice that many cracker groups fixed some of the games to work on newer Amigas. Was it illegal? Probably, since you're not allowed to modify and redistribute software, but I certainly didn't feel bad about it. My brother finally got to play the game that he'd payed a lot of money for and he was happy.
Also, many cracked versions of software contained trainers which can make extremely difficult games much more enjoyable to play. I remember someone commenting that the trained version of Beach Volley made the game so much mroe enjoyable because you could remove the annoying time limit or something. Fortunately these days most modern game include numerous ways to "cheat" so trainers aren't needed. (ex. God mode in Quake.)
As for the TOSEC archive, I feel that they are doing a fine job creating a database of every known Amiga game ever created. They do not offer any copyrighted works on their site, though obviously they are releasing the distributions out into the wilderness for people to spread around. I also understand your concern over some of these ROM sites offering Amiga Kickstart and Workbench versions even though they are still being sold through the Amiga Forever package. I think many of these sites are irresponsible in that regard. Furthermore, many of them probably don't even have a passion for the older Amiga software that us old Amigans do, they're just souless repositories of old software. I must admit though that I downloaded a copy of Kickstart 3.0 and the Workbench 3.0 disks from a web site because I couldn't be bothered to unpack my A1200, extract the ROM, convert all the disks to ADF format and then attempt to move them over to my PC on 720K floppies. It would be a hassle. I do not have KS1.3 though, even though many games don't work in WinUAE because they need it, so I may eventually buy Amiga Forever just for the ROM. (I'm hoping that Amiga Inc. will publicly release it eventually.)
There are a number of Amiga sites dedicated to creating a large database of every Amiga game known to man, with screenshots and information on the authors and publishers, reviews, etc. Where do you think they get the screenshots from for the games? The pirated copies no doubt. They certainly can't own every original copy, and even if they did it would be very difficult to take screenshots of the games using a real Amiga - it's much simpler to download a pirated copy and take a screenshot using WinUAE.
Another, and potentionally more respectable project, is the Classic Amiga Preservation Society (CAPS). They are attempting to preserve Amiga games in their original form using a special file format. They also scan the manuals, box art and disks, trying to preserve as much of the original package as possible. You can download one of these games and you will have an exact copy of the original without crack intro screens. This is a worthy project and hopefully will encourage more publishers to allow distribution of their old games.
Both these projects - TOSEC and perhaps more important CAPS - will most likely be appreciated by historians in a few dozen years. Without their efforts none of this software would've been preserved (do you think the companies, many of whom don't even have copies of their software anymore, are going to do it for us?) Someone on another forum actually wrote that a software publisher bid on one of his old Amiga games because they needed a copy. But who cares most about preservation of old software, the companies or the fans who got so much enjoyment out of it? Should we wait 75+ years for the copyrights to expire before attempting to preserve the floppies? (They will already be dead from bit rot or buried under tons of crap in landfills.)
There are similar projects going on for the C64, Atari and other classic computers. Imagine a kid 100 years from now being able to log onto cyberspace and download the entire collection of Amiga games (copyright now expired) to his brain implant, re-living the glory days of 80s and 90s computer gaming. "Granddad sure had some pretty cool games!" Without preservation, Amiga history will be forgotten, and we shouldn't allow allow that to happen. Thankfully many publishers think the same way so we have great sites like BTTR.
Just my 2 floppies worth...
-CoolCPU-
PS: I noticed that some of the avatars available on this forum contain copyrighted images. Look at the one I'm using right now, Nintendo's Mario.
