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Thanks for all your input guys. It seems to me this is all just another example of the law worldwide making an ass of itself, just to create more JOBS FOR THE LEGAL BOYS. In practice what organization if going to make a complete fool of themselves, hiring expensive lawyers to sue anyone individual like me for making use of such ROM images? This is especially in view of the large number of emulators around deliberately inviting use of such.

The same applies to modifying 20+ year old programs originally written for the early home computers. This is why I host several hundred of these along with my own programs in a variety of BASICS for all to freely download from my site. I did email an old magazine company asking permission to do this having used legally bought registered software, that does not in fact need ROM images to compile old BBC BASIC code into EXE files. ----------- as usual NO REPLY.

Gordon http://sionet.mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/npage4.html

Quote:

Kevin_theprogrammer Wrote:Unless the UK has different copyright laws than the US or BBC renewed the copyright, the copyright has expired for that ROM IIRC.

As SJ Zero said, US copyright lasts 75 years after date of publication and UK copyright lasts 70 years (Software comes under literary works) after the death of the author. I doubt many software copyrights have expired yet.

Thank you for clearing that up for me. I thought I read somewhere something about copyrights lasting 20 years. I should probably stop skimming.

In the US, patents last for 20 years.

But they're discussing copyrights, not patents.

Er, I know....I was just telling Kevin where his "20 years" figure came from.

So what do you guys think about the current copyright laws as they relate to computers?

In view of the rapid speed or ever new technology, do you think it makes sense someone designs say a ROM or a program specifically to work on a computer made in the early 80s, should be allowed to prevent it being used on totally different computers around 25 years afterwards.

Gordon

The theft of the public domain by companies is stealing our past. My grandmother can't give me a copy of a tune she enjoyed as a little girl without finding someone to sell her a copy.

From a moral standpoint, I don't think it's right that companies can hold our childhoods hostage. It should be 20 years on copyrights. If you can't make money in 20 years, then you probably didn't have something worth copyrighting. If you are still making money after 20 years, odds are you've made plenty of money on it already.

Think about it this way: I get paid bi-weekly. I will NOT be getting paid in 20 years for the work I did this week, and my kids sure as hell won't be getting paid for my work after I'm dead. Why should a musician or author be any different?