[Coco] MAMOU bug?

[J.P. Samson]

On Feb. 2, 2013, at 6:52 PM, Steve Bjork wrote:

> Thanks Bill for spelling it out again. I been in the computer  
> hardware and software business for over 35 years.  Most of my  
> software is licensed to very large corporations and they not only  
> take action on those that have no rights to the software, but also  
> on me for not doing so.  That's right, If I find someone that action  
> should be takes and I don't then they will take action on me.

I would imagine that Steve might not have the rights to sell his CoCo  
software pertaining to certain franchises such as Zaxxon and Pitfall?   
These appear regularly on eBay, so it is easy enough to get a legit  
copy.

I remember when my father bought a copy of Zaxxon on tape from our  
local independent CoCo retailer.  Because the tapes were apparently  
all defective and wouldn't load, the retailer had to provide us with a  
version with the copy protection removed that was normally used for  
doing demos in store.

-- JP


> On 2/2/2013 5:12 PM, Bill Pierce wrote:
>> If I remember right, and I'm sure Steve will correct me if I'm  
>> wrong, the reason he holds his copyrights is that he still markets  
>> his software. Steve often does ports of his software for game  
>> companies to build "retro" game collections for PS3, XBox, DS etc.  
>> You have to remember, Steve wrote (and currently writes) software  
>> for much more than just the Coco. Most of his Coco games were ports  
>> from other systems. Some of his software is currently lisenced to  
>> large game companies so to post these games not only violates  
>> Steve's copyright, but you could be violating the copyright of  
>> large ccompanies that have lawyers on retainer that shut little  
>> websites down for fun while they're drinking their morning coffeee.  
>> The only thing I've known him to release was the "Mouse" software  
>> he wrote for Rainbow. That's currently on RTSI and I'm pretty sure  
>> I remember an anouncement from Steve himself on the old bitlist  
>> server that he was putting it there.