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Comment by franzb | Hacker News Reader

Imagine my surprise when I came across the full C++ source code of UEFA Soccer 96 for DOS on a demos CD that shipped with a magazine!

I never saw that leak mentioned anywhere. I think I still have the code. Should I share it, and how?

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I would share it with Archive.org for preservation. Not 100% sure how to do so, sorry, but here might be a good start:

https://archive.org/create/

Just got in touch with Archive.org (by mail)!

Here is the game in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQjT2qE4u98

And a partial file listing of the source code I got: http://imgur.com/F6XVLP0

> on a demos CD that shipped with a magazine!

You can submit an image of the CD to the Internet Archive, exactly the kind of stuff they're collecting: https://archive.org/details/cdbbsarchive

No accidental source code as far as I know, but if they're collecting magazine CDs in general I have a bunch of mid-90s cover CDs which I'd be happy to rip. (Sadly not the one coverdisc I'd really love to be reunited with, though it must be in my parents' attic somewhere...)

Is there a guide to the best way to rip the disc image, preferred formats for inlay scans, etc?

And do I need to do anything regarding copyright? I would definitely not want to cause any legal trouble for archive.org as it is a v valuable resource.

> Is there a guide to the best way to rip the disc image, preferred formats for inlay scans, etc?

Not sure there's any magic involved, I did this on Linux with dd if=/dev/cdrom of=file.iso. For scans I just did the highest resolution my scanner did.

Re copyright, I wouldn't be overly worried. I mean this stuff usually contains shareware, demos and other software that was supposed to be copied. The Internet archive will probably take it down if there's a legit complain, but given that mostly "nobody cares" it should be okay.

dd won't rip any hidden sessions or audio tracks. There was a fascinating patch for the 2.4 (2.2?) kernel that created a cdfs where mounting a CD gave a directory of all of the sessions and tracks, so you could recover earlier versions of files that were replaced by a later session on a multi-session disc. Not sure how to do that now.

Oh man, I have every PC Gamer Magazine and CD from the era where the binding imagine combined to spell PC Gamer. I was actually thinking of throwing them out, since they take up a lot of space at my parent's house and I don't really want them in mine.

The leak appears to be mentioned here: http://assemblergames.com/l/threads/1997-fifa-partial-source...

But all the links are dead.

There's a MEGA link here that still works:

https://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=369679&sid...

Indeed, that's exactly what I got.

Talk to @frankcifaldi and @textfiles (works for internet archive) on twitter

Done: https://twitter.com/franzbeaune/status/833922527999127552

Please, please get in touch with archive.org

At the very least, make (and test) an ISO of the CD image, since there was discussion recently about how CD media degrade after ~10-20 years.

It's been on my (successive) hard drives for the past 22 years :)

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There is no such thing as a video game that has accidentally fallen into the public domain. The entire field isn't old enough to outlast copyright expiry (currently 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation for collaborative works like video games usually are).

The only thing that can be said is that the owner may not be enforcing it anymore.

I suspect it might be theoretically possible for ancient computer games, of the SpaceWars or Adventure eras, to have lapsed into the public domain by omitting copyright notices or lapsing registrations.

This was possible before a change in copyright law in the US in 1988 when copyright became more or less automatic. The cutoff date was January 1st 1978, which does exclude most modern video games, and people didn't much care about copyright in video games, or software generally, prior to that date.

There are a few films made relatively recently - Night of the Living Dead being a prominent example - which are public domain through oversights in the handling of the film's copyright. Whether there are actually any video games that went public domain by this route is left as an exercise for the reader...

You lose copyright if you fail to put a notice on it? I thought that wasn't the case and you have copyright on something as soon as you create it.

Proving you have copyright can be another matter...

> You lose copyright if you fail to put a notice on it?

Only for pre-1978 things.

Kind of, Sort of.

A title change from Night Of The Flesh Eaters to Night Of The Living Dead caused all kinds of problems for Romero and Russo.

They finally "solved" the copyright problem with Night of the Living Dead by doing a new restoration, with a fresh digital transfer and some fixed audio. So they can claim copyright on that, just not the original material. I suspect it'll be released on blu-ray soon enough.

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