On Aug 28, 11:50 am, Roy Schestowitz <newsgro...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> ____/ Mark Kent on Tuesday 28 August 2007 14:48 : \____
>
> > [H]omer <s...@xxxxxxx> espoused:
> >> Verily I say unto thee, that Roy Schestowitz spake thusly:
>
> >>> US Copyright Office grants abandonware rights
>
> >> This might have been relevant ten years ago, and still is to a certain
> >> extent for things like old games, but IMHO the future is in Free
> >> Software, where the concept of "Abandonware" is largely moot.
More often than not, "Abandonware" is not actually abondoned. On the
other hand, the copyright owner has often realized that the real cost
of
producing and publish software is the support and maintenance.
Several "Cheap CD" software publishers offer a whole CD full of
games. Often, the licenses for these programs are based on 6% of the
total price divided by the number of games included on the CD.
Publishers often make the royalty payments through agents such as the
Software Publisher's Association, the Business Software Alliance, or
through direct agreements with the current owners.
In most cases, a disk with 300 of these games - for the Atari 2600,
Coleco, and other "Orphan" systems, are included. The cost is usually
around $10 per disk. The royalties would normally be less than $1/
copy which would be distributed to the owners. About 1/3 of a cent
per game/copy. Of course, if the publisher sells 18 million copies of
these old games, that could be around $10,000 per game. If Atari had
10 games for the 2600, that could be $32,000. Nothing to sneeze at.
Revenue would be $180 million, the 6% would be $960,000, and 1/300th
of that would be $3200 per game. Of course, If they only sold 1.8
million copies, that would be only $320 per game. The thing to
remember is that, for the author, it's pure profit. They don't have
to advertise, they don't have to provide support, they don't have to
do anything but sign the paper and wait for the residual checks to
come in. You'd get about $200 per game for every $1 million the
distributor makes.
Some publishers like Walnut Creek are very good about dealing with
their authors and copyright owners.
> > As a future-looking thing, I think you're right, but it's worth noting
> > that there is a vast amount of binary-only software out there for all
> > those 8-bit and 16-bit machines from the 1980s and 1990s, including
> > arcade games and so on.
Yes. And if the same game is packaged by 5 different distributors,
and each distributor is offering similar $200/$million rates, that
might be enough to pay the taxes on a Mobile home in Colorado or
Arizona.
The cost of "going after" $1000 in royalties would far exceed the
amount that would actually be recovered. It's unlikely that a Judge
or Jury would award much more than that. Remember, the guy who
collected $1 million, would be able to refer to similar contracts with
similar authors/publishers and show that this was a "typical"
royalty. Finding evidence for $1/copy on a 20 year old game would be
a real challenge. In fact, there are probably good strategies for
showing depreciation, $/line of code typically earned, and other
formulas that would make the code worth even less.
On the other hand, I don't think you would be finding copies of 1985
Microsoft Flight Simulator for MS-DOS on these packages. Microsoft
might fight for injunctions and punitive damages based on the loss of
sales of it's current version of Simulator, which DOES still sell for
$50/copy.
> > There's something about computer games which means that even the oldies,
> > if they gameplay is good, are still very playable, and with the
> > continuing growth of portable hardware capable of running emulators,
> > these old games have some value. I have a spectrum emulator on my Nokia
> > 3360 and had one on the 6630 before I dropped it into a puddle, and my
> > N800 and N770s and the lads' GP2Xs do a good job of running gameboy
> > emulators and the like (another Z80 machine). Of course, gameboy games
> > are hardly in the abandonware category yet, but you know what I mean, I
> > hope.
>
> > I do not condone copyright violation.
Nor do I. On the other hand, I d ofind it a bit amusing when some
owner of a 25 year old piece of software written in 5,000 lines of
code wants to collect $3 billion in royalties for software it licensed
on a nonexclusive basis.
What's even more amusing is when the defendent has contributed over 30
million line of code to a product which is being distributed by the
plaintiff.
The myth of the "Software Cornicopia", the program you would write
once, post to a BBS or web site, and get royalties of $3 million/day
without any additional effort, has been pretty much blown to pieces
decades ago.
Even Microsoft has to work very carefully with OEMs and major
Corporations to maintain their $18 billion/year revenue base on MS-
Windows, MS-Office, and MS-Project. Even then they have to pay almost
$2 billion/year in legal fees and settlement costs, just to continue
business practices which are "questionable" at best. Most of them
have been ruled illegal by the courts.
If drug dealers could be guaranteed that they would only have to pay
10% of their revenues and would never have to go to jail, but could
continue to make $100 profit per gram of cocaine, there would be drug
pushers on every street corner.
> ~~ Best of wishes
>
> Roy S. Schestowitz | "I think I think, therefore I think I am"http://Schestowitz.com | RHAT GNU/Linux | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
> run-level 2 2007-08-06 21:07 last=
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