by K. Charles

Created on: June 02, 2007

There is no such thing as abandonware, both legally and morally. Software THIEVES AND PIRATES who want to pirate software came up with the flimsy concept of abandonware to justify their own illegal and immoral actions.

In fact, there is no formal definition of abandonware. Most accepted the term to mean that the software is no longer offered by a publisher for sale to public. If you accept that definition, however, it means the term have lost its original meaning, and should be called something like "not-for-sale-ware".

The term originated from the concept that certain software companies have "abandoned" their product as in "no longer support them". Indeed, some software companies have simply disappeared or went bankrupt or simply closed and its assets gobbled up by creditors. So what happens to their intellectual property? Abandonware proponents claim that the intellectual properties were abandoned, and thus free for the taking.

However, that's not good enough. Soon these "proponents" claims that as soon as the software was no longer sold, it should be considered "abandoned" and thus "free for the taking". In fact, one of the "alternate" definitions of abandonware is software of a certain age, usually about 5 years, "abandoned" or not.

There is a big problem with both definitions: copying copyrighted software without permission is a violation of the copyright owner's copyright and is a Civil Code violation in almost every country in the world.

The primary "justification" abandonware proponents use is that "because the software is no longer for sale to the public, it would not hurt them for us to copy them, as they can't lose any sales from it." In other words, "no harm, no foul."

This is legal fiction. Copyright is either violated or not. There is no doubt that a crime was committed. And this is hardly "extenuating circumstances." A company can choose to re-publish older software at any time, or rewrite for newer computers, or use older versions to promote a sequel, and so on. It is THEIR copyright to do what they wish, and no one else should be able to take that away from them (except government, but that's another story).

The secondary justification abandoneware proponents use is that "the intellectual property was 'abandoned' and thus free for the public". This is a misunderstanding of the copyright.

One CANNOT abandon a copyright. One can abandon a patent but a patent is NOT a copyright. Also, a copyright will expire after a length of time, usually 76 years,

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