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Comment by richrichardsson | Hacker News Reader

I find it somewhat curious that they bundle demoscene productions in their PAID for software, even offering more demos when you pay more. This is completely against the demoscene ethos. A lot of demos even had notices forbidding the commercial PD libraries of the time from distributing their wares.

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that's just one of the reasons why Cloanto has kind of a bad reputation among Amiga enthusiasts.

Don't use them unless you want that warm and fuzzy feeling of having legally obtained the Kickstart ROMs instead of just grabbing them from archive.org...

I still own Amigas, I have no qualms in using the downloaded ROMs since I could in theory rip them myself, so it doesn't feel like I'm committing any kind of offence (not a lawyer though).

You mean it would be legal to copy Windows 11 from one PC, and put the copy on a barebone system? :-D

If I'm not using the original PC why not? At this time my Amigas are ~1500 miles away, I'm not sure when I'll manage to reunite with them, but in the meantime I wanted to get back into demo coding again with emulators.

You didn't have to accept an EULA waiving these rights when you bought your Amiga

I am afraid you are wrong on two points: there was indeed a license agreement with every Amiga sold (whether enforceable or not, I don't know), but more importantly there were no rights to be waived in the first place.

System ROMs were protected copyrighted works well before the release of Amiga in 1985. See the case of Apple vs. clone maker Franklin:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Frankl....

What you describe is piracy. Your other comment about legality having a "bad reputation among Amiga enthusiasts" makes it seem like the Amiga community is one of criminals. That is sheer madness.

Also Cloanto say they own the ROMs, but they can't prove this.

I think Gateway, and then Acer owns it, but who knows.

I used https://aminet.net/package/util/misc/GrabKickDisk to grab ROMs from my Amigas. But you can just as well grab them from random internet site, check the checksum and be happy and guilt free about it.

"Who knows?" Playing the FUD game?

Acer never owned anything Amiga. The copyrights and trademarks can easily be looked up, while the patents expired before Acer even bought Gateway.

https://www.copyright.gov/ https://www.uspto.gov/

No FUD. Nothing I have seen convince me Cloanto own the ROMs. Trademark on "Amiga" got nothing to do with that.

You are right in that this has nothing to do with trademarks. Copyright assignments can be researched on this US Government site (here a sample output for "Cloanto"):

https://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/doctitles.cgi?V3626D795 https://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/doctitles.cgi?V9946D337 https://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/doctitles.cgi?V9943D475

Every demoscene production featured in Amiga Forever was included with permission from their creators. Credits are in the documentation.

Please name one demo that you think should not be in Amiga Forever, and I will check that and report here.

OK, well that changes things. This wasn't immediately obvious from the page linked, nor the demoscene link[1] contained therein. I understood from that page that the links to ADA, Pouet etc. were sources of demos with copyright holder permission (I'm not actually sure this is 100% true), not that Cloanto had sought permission from the demo creators in question for their blessing to bundle their wares with Amiga Forever.

I can't actually find this list of demos in the documentation though, is it online?

[1] https://www.amigaforever.com/demoscene/

Thanks for the feedback. The page [1] has been updated to clarify this detail. The documentation is installed with the package (Help menu, or press F1 to open it), but if you would like to contact me @mikelabatt I can send you a copy.

Me and my colleague Nicola were the ones who asked for these permissions. Iconic demos like Roots 2.0 and World of Commodore could not be included in the historical context for the reasons you mentioned. If someone does not want their work to appear in a commercial book project or in an electronic curation, I respect that. We could do better, like featuring more recent works. Perhaps one day it will be done, like the website (OTOH, some say that it has a Craigslist-like appeal to it). This always was a niche project driven by passion, and resources are tight.

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