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NAGI Legal Disccusion

A very old article about how legal NAGI really is. I've received some emails about the subject and one day I'll update this article.

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Digger

When I started, I was under the assumption that this was semi-legal because another programmer used the exact same technique to re-create Digger which is an old game, just like AGI. However, this is an excerpt from the Digger FAQ

(http://www.digger.org)

Q: Is this legal?
A:Strictly speaking, no. According to intellectual property law, a work copyrighted by a company continues to be copyrighted for 75 years.

I have no moral objections to violating Windmill software's copyright by re-releasing the game, and I feel you should have no moral objections to playing it (unless you're doing it when you should be doing something else). Copyright exists to protect intellectual rights, not to prevent people from having access to software. I can think of two reasons why Windmill software would want to protect their intellectual rights:

• To ensure that they are recognized as the true authors of Digger.
• To ensure that they make as much money as possible.

I have retained the original copyright messages in the game and I take pains to ensure that Windmill are credited properly whereever possible so the first of these concerns is taken care of. As for the second - Windmill hasn't made any money from Digger for a long time, and if they insist I will relinquish all rights to Digger to them to do with as they wish. Having Digger restored and working on modern computers, they would be in a much better position to make money from it than they would if I hadn't remastered it.

In conclusion, therefore, I think that Digger Remastered follows the spirit of the law, if not the letter. And since laws, being so rigid, can never be perfect, the world works much better this way (as any Digger fan must concur.)

For more information about abandonwarez and the associated legal problems, have a look at this essay.

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