The way I read it is that most of the people who think they own the rights to things actually do not - Bob was tripping out SAMCo Revelation titles for years without anybody picking him up no teh fact that he didn't actually have publishing rights for them.
You can all sit and bicker abotu who owns what and why certain copyrights should be protected, but unless there is action quickly to put software that no longer has commercial value (ie. anything before 1994 or so) then people who tinker around with WinCoupe will quickly move elsewhere. As good as the SAM is, without proper support from those of us who can offer it in the form of releasing games to the public domain, any new users recreuited via the emualtor will very soon dissapear. The facts are these: Nobody in the SAM scene save for Colin P and his new batch of software etc, is marketing SAM software. If I wanted to buy a game tomorrow I would not be able to. Therefore, unless we start taking some risks and reasoning what is game for distribution this very small SAM scene will peter away into nothing. WOS started out by doing the very same thing - publish and be damned! Most people who once owned or wrote for the SAM have moved on - it is only us who are stuck in the past - and probably don't care if 'Advanced Colour Clash Simulator' for the SAM still has a couple of sales left in them - if nobody knows who is marketing these things, then nobody is going to know where to get their royalties from. So why not a compromise? What's say that when we get around to getting this wonderful SAM Coupe website set up (and if somebody wants to grab the name www.samcoupe.co.uk then I recomend they get along to www.freenetname.co.uk and register it for nothing) we should have a download page, accessed only by password, and with the passwor dbeing given out after people have regiesterd. That way, if anybody does come back and claim they want royalties from a breach of copyright, we would be able to have efverybodies addresses to contact them and inform them that we were collecting for the programmer. A bit like selling the software, but only if the programmer asks for funds. I know there are tonnes of flaws in this,and the usual assbandits will rip the idea to shreds, but at least it is throwing something into the arena so that we might try and get a few morte years out of a computer that has done so well for each and every one of us. Oh, and this way we might also be able to distribute WinCoupe so that the people who wrote it get some sort of reward. Go for your lives. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Andrew Collier Sent: 29 April 2000 18:41 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Re- Response please >Thank you Andrew and Wo from Womo-team for replying to me. > >(1) To Andrew. I guessed the situation regarding MasterDOS etc, but surely > Dr Andy Wright could clarify that situation. He probably could, but I don't have a current address to contact him. > Also why does no one quite Know if copyright belongs to them or not. Because a lot of the contracts were made with SamCo, which went into liquidation. IANAL, but as far as I'm aware the liquidator holds the copyrights on the software unless it was bought by another company. The rights are unlikely to have reverted to the authors. So who bought the rights? Bob says he owns all the Revelation titles but I am informed that this is not the true. In short, I don't know - but because I'm not directly involved, I don't exactly have a case for finding out. Just as complicated is the case of Persona. No-one seems to know what's been going on with any of their software since the tragic death of Malcolm MacKenzie, and that's over a year ago. I don't know anyone who's managed to get a reply out of the family at all. In this case, I do have a direct link though - Syncytium. My initial (verbal) contract was with David Ledbury for Phoenix, but when Persona started distributing Persona's software I was happy to go along with it. So who has the right to distribute that software now? Probably not me, but on the other hand it would be immensely hard to prove anything either way. The reason I haven't put Syncytium on- line so far is out of politeness. Just on the off-chance that Persona do start trading again, I wouldn't like to be accused of breaking my agreement. But I have to admit, that really is looking increasingly unlikely. Maybe I can take the protection out and upload a copy, if I have time. I would *love* to see a WOS-like site devoted to Sam software, but without someone who know more about who owns what, I don't think we'll ever see it legally. Having said that, I'd be very willing to help with HTML, and design, and such-and-such if people thought this project was feasible. Andrew -- -- Andrew Collier ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) -- Life is -- http://mnemotech.ucam.org -- somewhat dissimilar -- Part 3 Materials Science, Cambridge -- to a bad analogy -- Peace, Love and Kisses... JohnnaPig Teare - ICQ 53764545 Get paid to surf the net - no catches... http://www.alladvantage.com/home.asp?refid=ebq212
