Larian Studios Forums Beyond Divinity (English) General Re: CaRPG

http://www.the-underdogs.org/company.php?name=Larian+Studios
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no, they're NOT a English Stidio. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />

its legal to download?
why??!?!


Larian still can make more money off it to further fund our new generation of project X games! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/disagree.gif" alt="" />

Abandon-ware is distributed on the principal that no further money is being made from the sale of the game, therefore free distribution will not hurt profits. A number of sites, The Underdogs and Classic Trash included, go out of their way to try and find out if the owner of the game objects to the distribution. If they cannot find any entity that can claim ownership of the game, they assume that no-one is receiving revenue from it anymore. If The Underdogs have followed this code of conduct, they will have asked Larian and the publisher, Ionos, if they are still trying to sell the game, both will have said no, and The Underdogs made the download available to the public. I believe there is a law structure around this, I'm unsure of the specifics, though.

They might as well let the game go out for free. With the amount of more modern options available, including budget games, there's no point spending the money to compete on the market. Let the people download it at their own expense and enjoy it!

well said....
i downloaded it, (for a filler, while i wait for <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/beyond.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" /> )

[color:"orange"]I believe there is a law structure around this, I'm unsure of the specifics, though.[/color]

Unless the copyright holder specifically grants permission for someone to modify or re-distribute something, then anyone who does so is in violation of the law (in just about every country). The only thing a piece of software being abandoned does for pirating is to make it much less likely the copyright holder would take any action against them. That said, it is easier to justify re-distributing abandoned software.

FYI; 10 Big Myths about copyright explained

Interesting article!

So does copyright always belong to an individual person, or can it belong to a company? If it belongs to a company, what happens if they disband?

Copyright can, and often does, belong to a company. If nobody buys the intellectual property of a company that goes out of business, then it would be unlikely there would be any civil repercussions for pirating the software (if it was being sold there could be criminal charges). There is probably some kind of expiry date on copyright, but I don't know how long that is. I know for books copyright remains with the author, and then their estate, for something like 100 years after their death. Software would be less than this, but probably long enough the program would be pretty much useless by the time the copyright was up.

70 years, if i'm not mistaken. Goes for music,film etc. too.

And computer games. In 70 years downloading the games of today will be legal.

But I remember that Lar once said he wanted to make the L.E.D.-Wars available for download on the Larian site (I think that was even before the release of Divinity). He wanted to recompile it to remove the copy protection, but used Visual Studio, which produced some 1000 errors (it was originally written with Watcom), and said he wanted to have a look again, when he had the time (which obviously never happened <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" /> ).

Jeez, why do I always remember this kind of stuff, but not the things I *ought to* remember?

What people often don't even know is that copyright is slightly different from countryto country - at least in the laws.

In the USA, for example, you can sell the copyright to something COMPLETELY. In Germany, that's not possible. Law says that the rights can be sold, but the work as such still remains the "brainchild" of the originator.

It's difficult to describe what I mean, but basically it's like this : An Invention arises in the mind of someone.
Therefore you can sell the invention itsef, but not the mind or or the "spiritual core" of an invention, what is meant in German Law by the term "geistiges Eigentum" (which is quite difficult to translate, because "Geist" ist one word, but has several possibilities (words) to translate into English, depending on the context; I used for example "spirit" or "mind" above).