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Is sharing a freeware game deleted by its author(s) accetable?


Plk_Lesiak

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Sorry for linking the twitter instead of making an on-site poll, but I don't want to further dilute the results (probably not that many people will vote in the first place). Some of you might know what game I'm most directly referencing here, but I know of a few cases of "dead" free VNs and other games that were effectively removed from the web, sometimes without clear reasons behind the move or because of some petty conflict. Do you think the will of the author should be respected in these cases, even if the license don't legally prevent anyone from sharing the game?

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If there's no legal reason which would prevent it I don't see a problem of it being shared.
The moment the author put it on the internet he indirectly agreed to the game never fully disappearing.
Instead of letting an illegal source profiting from it, a fan sharing it because he wants others to be able to play it would be the preferable option.

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27 minutes ago, onorub said:

Going into a similar discussion: in a case like Shira Oka, where the game's downloading website became unavailable because the publisher went down, would you say torrent is acceptable?

Legally it's never justifiable (in that way it's very different from freeware stuff), but ethically speaking yeah, I think abandonware in general is free game. If you can't buy something and no company offers to sell it to you, you don't harm anyone by pirating it.

14 minutes ago, Clockwork Loli said:

Isn't mentioning or directing to torrents on this forum against the rules though?

I think linking and asking for torrents is, not acknowledging their existence. :)

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2 hours ago, Dreamysyu said:

It may depend on a country, but, from what I understand, it's still considered a copyright infringement. The copyright holders actually do have a right to stop a work from circulating, and it doesn't matter if it's free or not.

Hah, this is interesting. I wonder whether there's any conflict between this rule and some of the licenses allowing free, non-commercial distribution of the IP (like Creative Commons, probably what most freeware VN devs use?) being irrevocable. I guess I should go to some kind of copyright law forums with this. :P

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20 minutes ago, Plk_Lesiak said:

Hah, this is interesting. I wonder whether there's any conflict between this rule and some of the licenses allowing free, non-commercial distribution of the IP (like Creative Commons, probably what most freeware VN devs use?) being irrevocable. I guess I should go to some kind of copyright law forums with this. :P

Open source products are an exception to this as far as I know, it might still depend on the region though.

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  • 2 years later...

Yeah I think it depends.

Legally I think at the time the game is published, the author cannot have the full control of the game at those terms, for any reason (and I have my fair share of criticism towards copyrights laws, but that's another matter). So in this context, people shouldn't ever be sent to jail for that.

Legality aside, I think it's considered a bit rude towards the author to not delete it when he asked. It depends on what's his reason for it, on a hypothetical case, if the author wants his work deleted just because it received bad reviews, then I think that's lame on his part.

If it's a more serious reason, then yeah I would consider it very rude.

Another issue is the popularity of the game, if it's very obscure then we wouldn't miss it, and the author's wish might be easily granted.

If it's hugely popular, then I'm sorry but I would not side with the author, regardless of his reason (maybe), a lot of people have great experiences in their lives with these games, it might sound silly but that's how I honestly see it :P .

Another point to reflect is why should we tie the author so strongly (almost "spiritually") to the game? At the moment that he shares his story, it might not be important only to him anymore, lots of people feel strongly attached to any work of fiction emotionally, and this is not a bad thing, so why granting the author almost a monopoly on that department? I mean, there are a lot of fans of Harry Potter that regard the series as much more important to their lives then J.K Rowling herself, and we don't discuss if these same people should have a say if HP should be published or not. "Oh but he's the one who created it", Yeah but why? Why creating the thing in the first place is this big of a deal? I'm starting to reflect on it, because if the answer to my last question is about "emotional attachment to the work", then I already have my opinion on that.

 

Edited by Soul Hunter
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