Workbench Disk Sets... What Would Be The Best Way To Obtain Them...

[antonvaltaz]

Not really though... Amiga Forever only includes complete ADF sets for Workbench 3.1 and 1.3. For the other versions it only includes the initial 'Workbench' ADF, not Extras, Locale etc.

[antonvaltaz]

I have now been in touch with MediaFire to inform them that later today my Solicitors will be demanding from them proof of the legitimacy of Cloantos complaint and if no proof has been provided then I shall instruct my Solicitors to begin taking legal action against all parties involved here...

Franko... are you just using the free MediaFire service, or do you have a paid contract with them? If it is the free service (and even if it's not) are they actually obliged to host any legal file? Perhaps they're within their legal rights to decline to host specific files, even if said files haven't been proven to be illegal?
 
Just thinking that this could be a loophole, perhaps to get round it you'd need to be hosting the files on your own webspace?

[antonvaltaz]

Why did I not contact Cloanto... simple. they do not own the copyrights for Workbench or have the ability to sell or issue me with a legal distribution licence...

They do however hold the trademark for 'Workbench' in relation to a computer OS however, at least in the US where I think Mediafire is based?
http://aminet.net/package/docs/misc/Amiga-Trademarks So it seems you're infringing their trademark, even if not their copyright?
 

Anyone owning a classic hasn't had any moral problems downloading the WB adfs before.

On the other hand, they might well prefer not to have to resort to illegal sites in order to have to do so.

[antonvaltaz]

So either their claim to this trademark is false/wrong, they don't have a claim for the Workbench trademark here in the UK or the UK Governments Intellectual Property Office is wrong...

I suspect it's not registered in the UK, however the company hosting your files (MediaFire) are based in the US where it is (apparently) registered. Won't that be an issue? (I'm not a legal expert so I don't know...)

[antonvaltaz]

in order to try and dig themselves out of the very large hole they now find themselves in Cloanto registered the Trademark "WORKBENCH" on the 19th of April 2011...
 
Strange how they only got round to registering it on that date after trying to have us all believe they had owned such things for years previously.

They've only just registered the trademark 'Workbench' because it has only just been awarded them as part of the Amiga Inc vs Cloanto settlement.
 
http://www.commodore-amiga.org/forum/2-welcome-mat/1924-amiga-inc-vs-cloanto-uspto-proceeding-91183272?lang=en
 
It was for this reason that Commodore USA were unable to call their Amiga-themed Linux distro 'Workbench 5' as they had planned.
 
Don't think this is as much exciting news as you seem to think it is Franko.
 
EDIT: When did they ever try to convince anyone they held the trademark for Workbench in the past?

[antonvaltaz]

It's occurred to me... most of the time posters have been talking about a 'copyright holder' in the singular, with the assumption that Commodore was the copyright holder of Workbench/AmigaOS and it got somewhat murky after 1994.

But I'm not sure Commodore WERE the only copyright holder. For certain aspects of Workbench they were a licensee... for example, Commodore's license for the Narrator library expired in 1991 - which is why it wasn't included in later versions of Workbench. Cloanto had to license that independently, which they did for the first time in 2002. I think there were other components of Workbench for which Commodore was a licensee, e.g. ARexx and Memacs?

So to get the original Workbench disks released into the public domain, you'd probably need to get a whole list of copyright holders to contact, not just the entity which has inherited all of Commodore's copyrights. I get the impression Cloanto have done this.

Otherwise, even if you did work out who has inherited Commodore's copyrights, you'd only legally be able to distribute specially modified disks (or ADF images) which removed any component for which Commodore had only been a licensee, and not a copyright holder.

[antonvaltaz]

Cloanto's false claim that their trademark was infringed upon ie: "WORKBENCH" has nothing to do whatsoever with the claim they have made for the deletion of my Workbench V2.04 files from Mediafire and was issued knowingly or not under false pretences...

On the basis of what you have just copy-and-pasted, Cloanto are not talking about trademarks being infringed, but copyrights.

You see Cloanto's only legal claim to the term "Workbench" being used as a tradmark, was issued under the word Workbench being written entirely on it's own

So are you saying they don't have any trademark rights over the phrase (for example) 'Workbench 2.04'? Only 'Workbench'? Bizarre if true (again I'm no legal expert so can't really comment). But in any case this now doesn't seem to be about trademarks...

The above is the only way Cloanto would have had a genuine legal complaint for infringement of their trademark but as Cloanto are in no manner whatsoever the Copyright holders of Workbench 2.04

They may not be copyright holders of Workbench 2.04 (I don't know) but it seems they are co-copyright holders of Workbench 3.1 (which I think you were also hosting?). According to Michael Battilana of Cloanto here:

In the early 1990s we had also done some operating system  improvements, e.g. to printer drivers and DataTypes, among others. This  resulted in our code being included in the 3.1 release. So, technically  (and legally), we are co-authors of 3.1.

They do not contain the HP Deskjet printer drivers that Cloanto registered for copyright in 1993...

Although presumably the Workbench 3.1 ADFs you put up for distribution do?

So you see Cloanto you made these claims under false pretences whether knowingly or not and should have checked first, so now I'll leave it up to my Solicitors to put together a nice wee legal case for you to look forward too, like I said before Cloanto I really hope you think this was worth it...

It is interesting that (from what you have copy-and-pasted) Cloanto have not made any reference to the Workbench 2.x ADFs you uploaded. As your copy-and-paste suggests that they say Amiga Inc are the (primary) copyright holders of Workbench 3.1, I guess they'd also say Amiga Inc are the (primary) copyright holders of previous versions of Workbench?

[antonvaltaz]

Look it's very obvious that yourself and "Steino" are associated in some way with Cloanto so I'm not going to even bother commenting on your flawed and pointless remarks here, for the simple fact that both of you strangely enough have only recently joined and your only posts on this site have all been made in this thread..

Well...

(a) my join date was Mar 2010;
(b) I am much more active over on EAB (same username), but have been reading Amiga.org as well more lately;
(c) I have commented a few times on this thread because I find what you are doing very interesting. In fact in my first post in this thread I stated :

I have every sympathy for what you're doing, it is absolutely ludicrous that they are not distributed for free.

I admit I have become a little less sympathetic in your demonisation of Cloanto, but I still respect that you are trying to get to the bottom of a very murky copyright maze, and I hope we all have a little more clarity as a result of what you're doing.

So I'm not really sure why you're getting personal with me...

So read this carefully and try and understand the Cloanto clearly tried to make the only part of their complaint that had any chance of being valid as being based on an infringement of their trademark "WORKBENCH"...

I've read that email from MediaFire again (with Cloanto's email pasted in), and it reads to me that they are saying:
(a) they claim your ADFs infringe on (at least) three US copyrights which are either owned by, or licensed to, them;
(b) they claim that your ADFs ALSO infringe on their 'Workbench' trademark.

In the other stuff you copy-and-pasted (at 10:52am today) it only talks about two specific copyrights, and doesn't mention trademarks, granted.

But it's not true that in the e-mail you've just re-pasted now (at 11:40am) that they only refer to their 'Workbench' trademark.

Anyway, will watch with interest as to what happens next...

[antonvaltaz]

ADF's are just a way of making backup copies of you're floppy disks just like DMS was, they weren't created just for the use on a PC running an Amiga emulator... comphrehende...

No, but I suspect the problem may be that if you put copyrighted ADFs up to download for people who legitimately have a right to them, i.e. owners of actual Amigas like yourself, then how would you prevent people who don't have the right to download them from doing so (e.g emulator users)? A service in which actual floppy disks are posted out, however, would be useless to anyone who doesn't own the hardware.

Now admittedly:
- it's pretty petty that anyone should get upset about sharing 15-25 year old software which hasn't been on sale for years (and which doesn't look likely to be sold for this purpose ever again);
- even more ridiculous that there is no legal way for genuine owners of Amiga hardware to get hold of Workbench disks or disk images.

Nevertheless, from a technically legal perspective I am not sure you're going to get anywhere with this.

And realistically, does anyone who needs a Workbench ADF, for whatever purpose, really have that much difficulty in acquiring it for free with Google's help?

[antonvaltaz]

I wasn't being personal with you I was just telling you what I thought about that particular post you made

No, you claimed I was associated with Cloanto, and that I had specifically joined Amiga.org to defend them against you.

A point you really need to take notice of in regard to quoting posting times, it's ruddy pointless due to the simple fact of things called "Time Zones" the post you gripe about and give a time of 11:40am doesn't show up here as 11:40:am it shows up as 04:40 am. So quoting posting times is useless  it's much simpler to type the actual post number or quote the post or provide a link to the post...

Fair point, I should have used the post #, although in my defence when you actually go to create a new post on Amiga.org, the post # doesn't appear on the 'review' of recent posts.

Between your fetish for "Copying & Pasting" giving exact time of posts and stating the bloody obvious, I can only come to one conclusion... you're weird man...

Can we keep to the actual topic and stop with all the ad hominem attacks?

I still don't understand what your legal case against Cloanto consists of, when their complaint about your file hosting consists of:

(a) they claim 'Workbench' is their trademark (I understand your argument that you don't believe 'Workbench 2.04', 'Workbench 3.0' or 'Workbench 3.1' to be a trademark, but find that hard to believe - although willing to be corrected)

(b) they claim that they are one of several copyright holders for Workbench 3.1 (as co-authors)

(c) they claim that Amiga Inc are copyright holders for Workbench 3.1 (and I assume Workbench 3.0 and Workbench 2.04 as well)

Out of these, (a) would seem to be a fact, (b) would surely be very easy for them to prove. The only slightly questionable aspect is (c) - http://sites.google.com/site/freeamiga/ raises the possibility that perhaps Amiga Inc have not legitimately inherited Commodore's copyrights for Workbench, as they have been claiming all these years. But given that even the recent ruling in the US in favour of Cloanto against Amiga Inc seemed to suggest that Amiga Inc DO hold these copyrights, it seems that Cloanto are acting in good faith in requesting these copyrighted materials be taken down.

So what, exactly, are you legally accusing Cloanto of?