[Coco] Coco games copyright

[Joel Ewy]

Ben Jimenez wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I was thinking of converting some Coco games over to a new platform, but was wondering what the copyright was on them now? 
>
> --
> Coco mailing list
> Coco at maltedmedia.com
> http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
>
>   
Copyright is forever.  Well, not quite forever.  It's the life of the
author plus 70 years plus the amount of time since Walt Disney died, or
something like that.

Seriously, it isn't like patents, which expire in 17 years.

There are a number of authors of CoCo games who have given permission
for their programs to be distributed for free, often with certain
restrictions, such as "you may not charge for a copy", etc.  This does
not mean that they have renounced their copyright and put the programs
in the public domain, only that they are using their copyright to
specify the terms under which their works can be copied.

L. Curtis Boyle has received permission to make some of these games
available for download from his web site, and has documented the
permissions he has.  Since these authors have given some enhanced
permissions for their works, they might be amenable to discussing a
port.  You'd just have to get in touch with them and see.

Of course, if you're just talking about writing your own clone of their
original game, you don't need to get any permission or worry about
copyright, unless you directly copy stuff from the game, or use
trademarked names and so on.

Now since these things are pretty old, and many of the old authors
aren't involved with the CoCo anymore, you might get away with just
appropriating it, but of course you'd be doing so at the risk that they
would take notice and threaten a lawsuit.  How likely that would be
would probably depend on how you use it.  If you are trying to sell
copies of a game that blatantly steals their copyrighted materials, they
would probably be more likely to take offense, or take action.  If you
do it for fun and give it away for free, and position it as a fan paying
tribute to a great game of the past, they may not care, and might even
feel honored that their old work has been remembered.  On the other
hand, they might still be perfectly within their rights to sue you.  Do
so at your own risk.

One other factor is that for most of these programs there's no economic
benefit to be gained from suing you.  It's not as if you're depriving
them of any significant potential income from these 20+ years old
programs.  But for some people it may be a matter of principle.

Now, there may be some CoCo games out there that are really Open Source,
or something approximating that.  Those you should be able to port more
freely.  But for those that aren't you are either going to have to
disassemble them or contact the original author and see if the source
code is still around.

JCE