"hurting the few remaining Amiga developers and retailers"
What?
. In what manner is harming the amiga developers?. How many comercially games for the classic amiga are being developed lately? and i´m not saying about quakes or pc conversions, i refer to original amiga games. Well the answer is nothing. Those classic floppy games are long time shelf out of the shops and developers don´t care about them, indeed, they leave the amiga long time ago so copying these games isn´t hurting anyone. At the other end i think that if the copy of the games is sold for the cost of storage media, who cares?.
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In addition to this quote from someone on page1, which I generally agree with, lemme add a few things for you all to chew on...
1. I am against software pirating, be that known first and foremost.
2. I am also a semi-avid collector/enjoyer of my Amiga's, them currently being an A500 (with a bunch of addons) and an A2000 (also with a bunch of addons).
For my 'era' of the Amiga, there were no CD-ROMS. All games were distributed via 3.5 floppy. My Amiga 500 and parts have been sitting until just this past few months, where I bought my A2k at a yard sale, and unearthed (dug out of the closets) all my A500 stuff. This brings me to the next point.
3. The "AVERAGE" lifespan of a floppy disc is 10 years.
And I was quite pleased to see that 99% of my discs still work fine. There were some, luckily nothing important right now, that in fact were bad. Magnetic media, as used on a floppy again, has a 10 year lifespan. The FIRST thing I've been working on doing is copying/cloning EVERY SINGLE DISC I OWN to ensure that they will continue 'living' on. I paid for them, and I'll be damn certain that they continue working.
That gets us to the gray area.. Selling them.. How would I, an average guy here, treat that auction? Well, first off, I'm in luck because it's not a title I am looking for
However, if it were I'd look a a couple things. First, his history.. Has he sold this game on ebay before? Does he, in fact think he's a software publisher, copying and selling other people's works? Has he done it in the past with other titles, and what were the conditions there?
I know this statement might not be popular. HOWEVER. Sometimes you are going to have to factor in real-life factors into the equation. It's not like you can go out and buy the game in a legit way. The pub. co. is gone, the software maker co. is gone. Just because the "NAME" "AMIGA" is still in existance, means nothing. It is not the same co. as it was, nor do they cater to "our day". And, unless Amiga/Commodore Published the game, even they do not control the software made/sold/created for it. So, weigh your factors. How close till Ami software of that generation is public domain? Is there anyone publishing the game so you can buy it? How long has it been since the game was made/will the original media still work?
Practically every auction has a clause in it "worked last time I used it" or something similar, relating to the whole media age thing.. Why do you think that is. In the blink of an eye your floppy which is possibly 20 years old could fail.
If you (you, the general public reading this, not any one person in particular) are so set in your ways, and cannot possibly consider accepting someone selling copied media, remember how you feel on the day that you need your Workbench 2.x disks, only to find one o fthem bad. Contact Commodore/Amiga for your replacement disk. And let me know if you get one from them, because God knows I, or many other people will need them here in time to come.
The other "right" thing to do would be this. Take it apon yourself to create a foundation which will/can legally buy the rights to all Amiga (Commodore era) games/programs. Your foundation could then reproduce ALL sofrtware, legally. And your foundation could then track down the programmers for all that software and give them their.. ..whatever it's called for actors and programmers after their product is out and checks continue to come in.. Word escapes me but you know what I mean.. That would be the ultimate thing to do. Would certainly keep the Amiga era ALIVE and legal. Yet, to my knowledge, no one has, or is doing that. Someone needs to get hot on what could be a great idea.
Rooster
