[Coco] Copyrighted ROMs

[Salvador Garcia]

 I think that we as a community worry too much about the distribution of copyrighted material because we don't know the expectations of the content owners. They can fall into 10 groups:

1: They care about their content and prefer to not have it distributed
2: They don't care.

The only way to be sure is to have a statement from them which we don't. (Exceptions apply). The common factor for this copyrighted material created while the Color Computer was  a commercial product is that it generated income. Copyright infringement meant loss of that income and thus was classified as theft. Now that none of these products are generating income though commercial channels it is up to the copyright holder whether s/he wants that copyright respected or whether the content can be made available for distribution.

Although Herculean, I think that the solution to Rietveld's question is to contact each copyright holder, or their estate and ask whether it is ok to distribute the content or not. At least we can then stop worrying whether we are stomping on someone's toe :-) Salvador



    On Wednesday, November 14, 2018, 12:01:54 PM CST, RETRO Innovations <go4retro at go4retro.com> wrote:  
 
 On 11/14/2018 11:41 AM, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote:
>
> It's abetting copyright violation. It was covered by court decision way back
> in the early 1980s.
>
Well, I spoke too soon.  Fair enough.  IANAL, which is probably the only 
person who is competent to truly answer your question.

Jim



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