Albion - legality advice needed
 

Some time ago M-HT statically recompiled Albion (some 15 years old DOS RPG game) for GP2X (http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/...,0,0,0,20,2404). I've spent some time porting his code to N900 and it runs pretty well so I'd like to make a package...

I'd like it to be as easy as possible for people to install it. Its not exactly straightforward to set it up with files from your own CD (and, for instance, my CD ceased to be readable maybe 10 years ago and I may not even have it anymore). Albion is abandonware, and downloadable from the internet. I've read the rule...

... But still I'd like to ask (if there's someone who can give me an authoritative answer here? alternatively, who am I supposed to ask?) if it could be possible to include a disclaimer in the installation process stating that if the user continues, he agrees to be an owner of the copyrighted material and that its illegal to continue otherwise. After agreeing, it would automatically download the game files and set up the installation.

Would that be possible? Since the user needs to agree to the disclaimer before getting anything copyrighted, it should be ok?

Please don't hit me :)

Re: Albion - legality advice needed
 

I don't know, legally there is no such thing as abandonware, but if you want a technical solution, I guess you could use "maemo-confirm-text" in your postinst file. Look it up.

Re: Albion - legality advice needed
 

'Please don't hit me :)[/QUOTE]'

:( I think it is a sad reflection on us that when users post a decent question or comment that they have to ask readers to be nice to them.

Re: Albion - legality advice needed
 

I know, its more like a status of the game. I just mentioned it so that people know what's the situation :) One thing about it is that its quite hard to get a hold of a copy nowadays since its not being sold anymore. So if you wanna play it, there's not many options even if you are willing to pay.

Thanks! that's exactly what I was thinking to use but couldn't find it. Can't get it to work though, says "No such file or directory" no matter what I do (the file exists of course)

Re: Albion - legality advice needed
 

Well... I'm kinda afraid to get a "no pirated material and stop asking about it" reception...

Re: Albion - legality advice needed
 

Albion was owned by Blue Byte Software which was purchased by Ubisoft in 2001. Ubisoft owns the copyright to the game and downloading it off the internet without paying for it is illegal.

That said, there is NOTHING illegal about making a program that will install a "valid" copy of Albion to your n900. By valid I mean that the user MUST provide !!!!! ALL !!!!! Albion files and your program just installs those files to the n900.

Since your goal seems to be to make it easy for the user to install it, your best bet to do this and stay legal is to make a program that takes a valid CD or .iso file and install it, but make the user provide that file or cd. Then any copyright infringement is placed on the user.

Re: Albion - legality advice needed
 

Or download the files after it is installed. This way the user will only get a downloader (which should be legal) and would ensure by herself that she has the right to download them.

Re: Albion - legality advice needed
 

I'm not sure what you're talking about. There is nothing to install (as far as I know) that isn't copyrighted. Providing a downloader of any sort would be aiding copyright infringement and could make you liable.

Forcing the user to get all copyrighted materials ready and just streamlining the install experience is not copyright infringement and is legal.

Re: Albion - legality advice needed
 

That's not a bad idea... except that the N900 has no CD-ROM drive :) The ISO is a bad idea because not only would the user have to create it (more work) but I would also have to make dependencies on packages to read it and go through that extra work myself too.

Also, I'm not sure what's involved in making it work with just the CD (I can't test it as I said), but the original instructions (for GP2X) say you need to install the game on your PC (on linux you'd need dosbox, on windows it may work natively, not sure), copy the files over and change a path in a configuration file. And I'm not sure what version of the game is on the CD, maybe you'd need to patch it to get the latest one. A lot of things can go wrong here and I'm not very patient in providing support unfortunately..

Or you can just download it, rename one file and it works (that could be done automatically, unlike the above).

So you see that no legal owner would want to go through all that hassle with the CD when there is so much easier way...

Also note I am myself (not sure about Maemo in general) only interested in EU laws, I don't care about the US ones... I'm not sure if its different or not.. So providing a downloader even with a disclaimer would be illegal, in EU too?

Re: Albion - legality advice needed
 

It is sad that the illegal way is the easiest these days.

The way I told you to do it would protect you in any lawsuit and would probably discourage lawsuits.

The way you are talking about doing would leave YOU directly responsible for all the copyright infringements and responsible for all the monetary compensation Ubisoft could demand from you.

If the repositories of Maemo Extras held your software it would open them up for liability as well.

If you're going to go that route you should just provide an ANONYMOUS .deb file and let people install it on their own without going through a repository. The only protection this route provides is anonymity though. Its still illegal and unscrupulous.