AFAIK I agree with most everything you have written. And I love all the intelligent comments posted by most of the other ppl in this thread. I see some of you guys have been doing your copyright monopoly homework. But...
As far as abandonware, it doesn't exist as a legal concept.
What you mean is, the word "abandonware" is not defined as a legal term in any standing laws right this second.
The word exists in the English language and has a definition that society more or less agrees on (as much as with any other word).
The
concept of abandonware
does exist as a legal concept.In every legal system I have studied so far, in every nation, every state, every province, every county, every city, every town has many different laws that state that
if you abandon your property it is no longer your property. Abandoned property can and will be legally stolen from you.I did not write the abandonment laws. Some of them I agree with and some I do not agree with.
I am just saying that claiming that abandoned property law doesn't exist as a legal concept is a logical fallacy.
Every kind of property that you can own can and will be taken from you (and its all legal) if you abandon it.
In some situations it is legal for any random person to sieze your abandoned property. In other cases only the police can do it. In other cases only a judge can order your property revoked from you. It can get very technical since there are a zillion different abandoned property laws and they are each written slightly differently.
The general concept that has operated for centuries in our society is that any person who abandons their property loses their property rights. The only thing to debate is how long must the property be abandoned before it can be legally stolen from you.
Some laws are clearly written with clear time limits. Some say "Immediately" and if you have bad luck that could mean 60 seconds. Though normally you would have around 30 mins. Other laws say "5 minutes". Other laws say "15 minutes" or "30 minutes". Some laws say "1 year".
AFAIK there are no laws that say how long software must be abandoned before the copyright monopoly is lost. Though I would not be surprised if there was one somewhere. It would just take a lot of work to find it.
Just to be clear, abandoned
real property can and will be stolen from you. In some cases you can get it back, in other cases you can't. It all varies according to the circumstances. But we are not talking about
real property in this thread. We are discussing a copyright monopoly protection privilege granted by the government to certain persons or corporations. Some ppl refer to this as imaginary property or intellectual property or whatever term they use. We are not discussing stealing anyone's property when we talk about abandonware. We are only discussing when the copyright monopoly should end, due to abandonment of the work.
The main thing to debate is how long must software be abandoned to be considered abandonware. Going by what is written in this thread so far, 10 years is a reasonable amount of time as determined by the ppl of the Amiga society.
I would propose that 10 years would be considered reasonable by most ppl.
That is going by what I have read on many different forums written by hundreds of different ppl.
10 years is an incredibly generous amount of time compared to real property rights, which AFICT always expire after 1 year of abandonment or less.
I am not trying to push any particular amount of time. And I am happy to read any opinions that the time should be shorter or longer. By discussing it maybe we can a reach societal consensus.
