I haven't read all pages of the thread but let me tell you my opinion.
We live in a world that is dominated by market of free will.In that sense i don't think that pirating such old games is bad.
If you hunt down and chase the guys that sell a cf with 4gigas of old games,then you should also chase the guys that sells a cyberstorm ppc for over a grand with the accusation that they sell it so much while it costed less.
If (and i mean this if) these games were on the budget market or the companies would want to care about them and make profit then absolutely they have the right to go to the court and chase down those that do it.
But loggin on your ebay account and chasing people that do this is not good for me for the following reasons.
Let's not hide.Rapidshare and torrents are everywhere,those who seek shall find.But there are people that are retro enthusiasts that have the greed inside them and want to buy tons of game at once to enjoy their emulated machines.
I suspect less than 2% of you will be people that dont have tons and gigabytes of games on their hard drives.I am not accusing you but i am saying that not all people have the option of finding them on rapidshare or torrent.
And it is not good to log into torrent trackers and rapidshare -download the games,no one knows that you do-,but if you see a game sold pirated on ebay you hit the report button.
Many people DON'T know where to find the games and frankly since they are old games,i dont think the companies care too.
Since i can find anything i want on the internet with google and torrents and rapidshare i would advice them no to give money to someone that sells it unless they can't find what they are looking for.
Of course i WOULD NEVER EVER share or download products that are still on sale and hurt the few remainng software houses or programmers or producers that are still with us.
But frankly selling pirated copies of a lemmings game on a disk or a cf mean nothing to me since the original company stopped caring for amiga ages ago.
2)i will say this again,not all people have the money to buy every original game that existed on 90 or 80 like all the collectors do.Many people want to have emulation running a software ready with hundreds of titles available on one mouse click.And you know what ?from my knowledge many people do so.
3)People that deserve to be punished are people that are pirating cloanto's amiga emulation software for example,or providing torrents of amiga os 4.x,or are selling amiga software that is being made now for amiga.
Please leave all the other guys alone.Everyone deserves to buy what he/she wants,except if you are the guy who owns shares on the electronic arts or psygnosis.
Really there is no point trying to be the cyber-cop.Isn't there another more useful meaning in life?Instead of accusing guys that sell pirated stuff why don't you go and help the police arrest people that are freeloaders or that abuse children?I believe this would make some sense.
I would never go and hurt an ebay seller unless the software that is being sold is something that is on market now and companies make money out of it.I am with you,if someone sold pirated copies of amiga os 4.x on ebay ok sue him.He deserves it.But for games from 80 or 90?
What is ethical and not is a very interesting conversation i guess.
Do not take those comments as attack or something.I wanted to express briefly my disagreement towards such behavior.
Kind regards
