Game Copyrights, Bakcups and cleaning out your collection

Since the original Commodore Amiga not longer exists, can you legally own a copy of the game? I guess the same could be said for any computer/console that has come to the end of its lifein terms of production. Most of you (like me) will have all your games on 1 dvd these days rather than 3000+ 3.5 discs sitting in your cupboard and therefore is this not re-engineering of a product??

The copyrights are generally held by the game's company such as EA games but would they really care about 10,000 copies of Archon floating around?

Would like to hear from any of the game writers or companies that were involved with the Amiga age to get a real understanding of this. I mean you see DVDs with 1000s of games on it been sold around the traps and you ask yourself, can that be legal...

When I had my C64 I had bought lots of tapes and discs for it, and now they're all worthless, andjust recently threw them all out because you can can't afford to have all this stuff in you cupboard, sad I know, but what do you do?? Looking at my Matrix cassette and Attack of Mutant Camels brought back memories though.

All I know is that owning a copy without owning an original is illegal whereas owning a copy when you actually own the original as well is legal.

If I'm wrong then, please, correct me. :)

It's a real grey area , it's never legal to own a copy of a game.

However, there are in certain countries provisions for changing the format on which acontent is held , as the 720k floppy is a dead format holding the game on CD /DVD shouldn't land you in any trouble.

it's a myth that you can legally create back ups ... you would however have to be sued by asoftware company for holding the back up and if you can prove that they don't adequately protect you with a replacement of your media is damaged thenyour back up is technically legal. ... again different rules in different countries.

Then there is abandonware,if the company that holds the copyright has gone bust, or simply doesn't exist anymore then this software although not legal to own has noonewith the legal right to prevent you owning a copy.

There are many abandonware sites around and they explain many of the complications in more detail than i ever could.

But at the end of the day retro software really isn't going to be something people come after you for.

Irve, you are 100% right mate.

I got loads of my Amiga games back when there was no copywrite law in my coutry, so although they are not original, they are legal, cause, when I bough them, it was legal in my country, and law works backwards only in genocide cases. The other thing is that noone cares, cause most of thosefloppy discs don't work or are worthless...

And still it depends on a country where you live. If you are Chinese, you can own modded X360 with not original games, and its cool, the same with Russia and most of the South American countries AFAIK.

From more advanced countries, where law is obeyed France seeems to be the most reasonable and Spain couldn't care less :)