adamantyr

I actually bought all three parts back in the day--I think the only piece I din't get was the character program. I'll have to check my disks to be sure. . .and that was a sucky protection scheme, but it was possible to copy them with Copy-C, which is what I did for my working copies.

adamantyr, on Wed Jan 11, 2012 7:09 PM, said:

It's life of the author plus 70 years in the US, and for works for hire it's 120 years after the date of first publication.

IOW there are no home computers with software out of copyright due to expiry. Due to explicit release, I'm less sure. There are at least two console game systems (Vectrex and Jaguar) that were officially released to public domain.

Copyrights last for the life of the author + some # of years or some insanely long time (thanks to Disney) for corporations unless they are recinded.

For the record, I do not post any software on the Gameshelf that is currently being sold legally. Retroclouds released Pitfall! to the public domain from the onset as a free download. There is a cart now that is available from 3rd parties for sale, but that is only for those who want to convenience or the collectible value of a physical cart. I however have absolutely no qualms about posting downloads for long obsolete or commercially abandoned games, and without a single exception all the authors that have contacted me since the creation of the Gameshelf were extremely happy to have their work on display and being enjoyed once more. Furthermore, I also have not had a single request from anyone about pulling a game download off the site. Not one...
I'm getting real tired of those people who keep throwing long tirades about copyrights of long extinct games and would rather let the creative works of former authors stay buried than have them re-discovered by another generation of TIers.