So what if you have the original disks? Are you allowed to transfer the content of the floppy to the hard drive and make an archive? Where are the Amiga owners who grew up to become lawyers?
Some years ago I wrote to one of the creators of 'Take 'Em Out' in Sweden. He has very excited to hear that in this age that his game was still was being played. He did not have the authority to freely release the game.
IANAL, but I did an 8 hour exam on IT-law earlier today, where a lot of the questions were about copyrights, legal view on downloads and such.
so here goes:
If you own the original disks, you are usually entitled to make a backup copy for personal use.
But you are not allowed to share it to other people.
This however is usually defined within the consumer rights, which can be different depending on the laws in your country.
There was a courtcase a few years ago, in France, where a consumer was sued for copying a movie from DVD to VHS, in order to use it in a video player at his mothers place.
He won, the court then said that a consumer had the right to copy a movie so it become usable for the consumers needs, and showing the movie to his mother counted as "private use".
That was a few years ago though, this is a grey area where laws and rulings changes every year.
If there is a copy protection, then it is a different matter.
It is normally not legal to go around or hack a copy protection (that would defeat the whole purpose of the copy protection.)
In this case, what you can do, is to request a new copy from the company who has the rights to the disk or cd/dvd.
And this is the big dilemma, what to do if the company does not exist anymore?
The copyright is still there.
But, I have only seen court cases about file sharing, none about downloads (yet), so as long as you just download a copy of the disks for personal use, you should be fine.
