Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: Protek on January 23, 2006, 09:23:25 AM
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As there are probably plenty of Amiga owners without the original Workbench and Extras disks, I've been pondering the issue of software license.
To my understanding, each first hand sold Amiga set has been issued with WB and extras disks. Now, let's say that you purchase an Amiga 500 that has Kickstart 1.3 rom but no OS disks. Does the fact that the computer in question had these disks originally give you the right to i.e. download the disks as adf images from the Internet or to copy them from another source? In other words, is the license for the software in the computer that you buy or not? At least to my understanding the software license isn't attached to the media containing the software. I.e. if you have a valid software license for Windows OS, you can install the OS from whatever installation media containing the OS and not necessarily the media issued with the license.
I'm in a similar situation mentioned above with my A500 but I purchased the AmigaForever bundle to be on the safe side.
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Distributing and obtaining the software from the Internet is not technically allowed. But since the machine will necessarily have come with a copy of Workbench (and therefore a license) then you are entitled to use it. How you go about obtaining replacement disks is up to you.
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moto
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like anyone will care if you have a copy of WB for your a500... the point is that you have the actual machine, and you are entitled completely to use wb with it, be it a copy or an original disk...
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You can make ONE single backup of YOUR OWN disks for your personal use, assuming the software is not copy-protected.
If the disks are software protected then you may not make any copies at all, since breaking the protection for the purpose of making a copy would be a breach of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and possibly lead to jail time.
You cannot download adf's, and you cannot obtain backups from another source, even if you own the original. The 'copy' you use must be the one you made yourself. This is very made clear in copyright law.
If your Workbench disks are corrupted and you don't have backups then tough luck you need to find some replacement originals.
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:rtfm:
Bleh, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, one of the most bloated, and vague pieces of corporate suck up trash of our time. According to some pieces of that, if you as much figure out a way to get a piece of code to run on something it shouldn't, you should be beat up and locked up for 20 years.
True I don't agree with blatant abuses of copyright laws, but the DMCA is one of the most corrupt pieces of legislation of our time. That thing was written to appeal the to greed interests of companies with lots of lawyers and too much money to spend on them. Quite a few projects for the Amiga which require a bit of reverse engineering, that used to be quite harmless back in the day, could be dealt with by death (maybe).
I guess I should stop now , so I don't more or all of my emails, chats, and other monitored MORE closely then they already are for speaking my mind. I'm sorry, I normally don't get into politics, but the DMCA is one such that gets mentioned I have to say something. Its usually stuff like it that gets drafted by crooked politicians, idiotic people that work/worked Escom,Amiga Inc, RIAA, MPAA, the list goes on. Yeah lets crush the little guy and maxamize our bottom line :pissed:
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You have Amiga Forever, so you have a license for workbench. You can make disks for your 500 to use it.
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Lando wrote:
You can make ONE single backup of YOUR OWN disks for your personal use, assuming the software is not copy-protected.
If the disks are software protected then you may not make any copies at all, since breaking the protection for the purpose of making a copy would be a breach of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and possibly lead to jail time.
You cannot download adf's, and you cannot obtain backups from another source, even if you own the original. The 'copy' you use must be the one you made yourself. This is very made clear in copyright law.
If your Workbench disks are corrupted and you don't have backups then tough luck you need to find some replacement originals.
The DMCA only applies for USA and not for european countries.
Besides that, DMCA cannot circumvent what is known as "fair use". Not even in USA.
So go freely and get what you need. You do have the license needed.
And don't get afraid, just because somebody know less than they should.
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the dmca has never been used against idividuals downloading anything. us law concerning fair use law has made it not necissarily impossible but worthless to do so. lawyers usually go after the distributors and have to do so for specific infractions ie a specific instance of a specific pieced of software being placed for download.
search the net for "abandonware" and you will find numerous sites that have lots of software some of which is labled that it has been removed for copyright reasons. the site is still up, the person isnt in jail but they had to take that specific software down.
in otherwords down worry about the law worry about depriving a legitimate active copyright holder of profit (youve already bought af so amigainc is happy)
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btw when you buy a piece of software you dont own it you own a licence to place a copy of it on your machine. that licence is separate from the media which may not even be present (ala microsoft oem deals)
fair use laws allow you to load that software from almost anywere (even microsofts eula allows loading over a network)
fair use laws also limit how much the licensor is allowed to resrict your use of the license. in other words apple, or amiga, or ms can say thet you are allowed to use the sowtware on a specific piece of hardware even if there is no legal way that they can enforce that. that what is meant in most eulas when they say that state or federal laws may change or void certain parts of the eula.
thay can claim anything they want to try to scare you (nintendo)