Would you believe Developers or more importantly Publishers of games would come after people hosting DEMO's of their games? I mean to say, I have a large collection of Biohazard and Resident Evil demo's from the hayday, many that havent really been seen by many. Im pretty sure its within their right to come after us but I was just curious if anyone here has had any experience with such situations? If it does come to legalities would it be possible to host such files on a server not based inside my home country and everything would be A-ok? All out piracy im against, hosting full games etc but I dont really have any moral objections to hosting Demo's, as they are mostly giving away free and meant to introduce a game to someone.
Depends on the company, capcom in particular isn't afraid to shut someone down just for using the Resident Evil logo...
Hmmm if it is PC demos, I think the piracy problem is out of the way, since that is what I would do, if I had some serious packs of beta pc versions that were available, on old PC CDs, since I remember back in the days, I had Powerslave as a beta from an old PC CD, so as long it isn´t other stuff than PC demos, I wouldn´t say you would have a big problem. But I don´t know really.
Even if the server is outside of US jurisdiction, it is the origin of the material that matters. The law doesn't care if the material ends up elsewhere, only that the person who uploaded it and the transmission originated within the US. Those damn bits always come back to byte you in the ass.
Well thats not really a problem, I can get a friend outside of the US in a country that has piracy stands right on the streets to upload said files to the server if its needed. I was referring to all kinds of demo's, PS2,GC,PC etc. I'd really like the bring them to the audience who DOESNT know how usenet works. It would be a lot more convienent anyway.
I would recomend you uploading the Pc demos, since then it wouldn´t be the biggest problem, kf you could say, that it was from a PC CD rom, that you had got from an old PC games magazine of some sort, but I don´t know...
Nobody will come after you for hosting a demo. If they do it'll be in the form of a cease and desist, at which point you'd take the offending ones down. So long as you're not selling anything you won't get into any serious trouble.
We certainly wont charge for them heh. Our aim is to just get them out to the most people possible, those who didnt have access to them when they were released especially. Anyone know about magazine scans from old games? IE Which companies to avoid? How about magazines that are long since dead (Gamefan)?
Don't look for which magazines go after "scanners," look for which publishing companies do. Even though a magazine like NextGen is dead and buried, the publisher still owns and retains the rights to it.
The question here is whether there'd be anyone paid to go searching for copyright infringement on such works. Again, even if someone was (and for any magazine that's been out of print for more than 5 years, it's got to be extremely unlikely) they'd just issue you/your webhost with a cease and desist and get you to take down the material. That's what they do to people who upload scans of current magazines, so I can't imagine anything worse occurring for older material.
If its PlayStation demos you plan on hosting then they'll definitely stop you for that. For OPM you can buy older magazines for their demos and any other issue you might have missed.. However if it is just the game, like you take out all the files pertaining to that demo and just host those files, not the whole demo disc, then it falls in the grey area.
Well the demo's arent even from any magazines, they are all direct from Capcom. Most if not all given away free. Good to hear it will only be a cease and decist, I really couldnt afford a legal battle right now
