Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
OK, but I still have yet to see a "turntable emulator" or a "vcr emulator."  |
Those are analog devices, not digital. you have gen loss with trying to backup analog items.... (And check out some of those digital DJ software programs...)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
Plus a lot of content was provided via mediums that are no longer available. E.g. you can get an Atari 2600 software emulator, but good luck getting your 2600 cartridges connected to your computer.  Technically you could use MAME and pirate a ROM (or, if truly desperate and/or skilled, make your own ROM), and maybe you can justify your actions, but the ROM distributor is still engaged in piracy. |
Kali, everything is piracy to you. First, I said non-DRMed. I can legally make back-ups of non-DRM'ed programs. If I'm running them on only one machine, does it matter which machine it is? If it is commercial software that I bought, and I still have the original copy of the software, is upgrading and installing on my new machine really evil? Example, I have a legal copy of Word 97 I install every time I get new machine. Since I scrap the old one, I'm only keeping one functioning copy. Or a PD shoot 'em for the Atari ST. Or a copy of Castle Wolfenstein, from the Win 3.1 days. Or...
Now, all of those emulators can use pirated material, and I daresay some of them can only use pirated material (MAME, for example. I don't keep MAME on any of my machines, nor the 2600 emulator), but most of those machines had both PD and unDRMed programs. (I still have a mousepad from START, the Atari ST magazine, which came with a PD disk every issue. So did several Atari 800 magazines. I never use the Apple II, so I don't know much about its PD world, but I know it had one. (By the by, Activision released a bunch of 2600 ports for Win 95. Is that piracy?)
One final thing. The US copyright office has said that software from bankrupt companies for hardware platforms that are no longer being manufactured fall in the "fair use" terms, even under DCMA. Of course, that's still subject to litigation. But remember all of those "retro" Atari 2600 all-in-one game players? If you look closely, you may find they were using that "fair use" loophole for the software.