Here you can post any questions you are asking yourself about ESA.

1.Can we open a petition to get back those games?
2.Can we pay ESA to let us host those games again?
3.What would happen if we didn't remove those games?



And please, don't close this topic! :ok:

I know answer only on number 3.

ESA would contact local USA authorities, which will force our host to shut abandonia down.

They at least now are contacting sites first, as they used to contact hosts before, and got smacked as some sites had permissions from developer to host games. (Such happened couple of years ago with Back2Roots.org)

I don't think any of the first two stamenets stand either, as ESA is payed to keep a close eye on the abandonware scene.So you would have to overpay the the company that has a contract with ESA.Even in this case, i doubt ESA will let you host the games they protect.Also signing a petition wouldn't do much.

A petition wouldn't help at all. In fact it might even worsen the situation. A company that has the copyright would see that a lot of people want the game and might decide to put these games up for sale again - thus it would be even harder to download them (and I don't think they'd put the games out on the global market again - probably just US & Canada, so we still couldn't get them in Europe).

To pay ESA... Well as I understand it ESA is just suporting the copyrights - I don't think they have them. So we'd actually be bribing them to look the other way. We'd need the authorisation form the company that made the game (or the one tha tbought the copyrights).

No 3 - I don't even wanna know! As Kosta is the owner of the site and he has Croatian citizenship (at least I'm fairly certain he has it), that this would mean the site falls under Croatian laws and the international treaties that Croatian has signed. But even if this would give us a loop-hole it would still create numerous problems as this is an international comunity. So some people could leagaly download the games, while others couldn't. We'd have to prevent visitors form countries that need to respect ESA to get the games, as otherwise this could actually be seen as smuggling the games into a certain country... It's extremely complicated really - so unless laws change...

Seba,
in the case of number 3, it matters where server with web site is located. In this case I believe it is in USA, and in that case, it is under USA copyright laws.

second that.. it's where the servers are LOCATED that matters..

Nuby & Titan:
Not quite.
The server on which abandonia is doesn't own abandonia - it only hosts it. So they might prevent the hosting on abandonia on this server, but that's about it. Abandonia could be moved to another server... And even if the server would be let's say in Iran (I believe they didn't sign all the copyright treaties) it wouldn't make it any more or less legal.

It's just that if the server would be in such a country ESA would have a harder time (if not impossible) to prevent the downloads.

But just a fact an illegal activity can't be stopped doesn't make that activity legal.

Perhaps you don't know all story regarding Iran. As far as I know the main reason that Iran does not accept copyright is that a part Irainan wealth which was invested in Ameraica was confescated after the revolution. The approximate vaule of the invesment was around 10,000,000,000 or so and 30 years past since then.

So thats why The-Underdogs is still alive......

option 4. You gotta let go and be happy no other charges where made against us.


I vote for 4.