MAMEWorld Forums - The Loony Bin - Pirating myths - one more to put next to the 'delete before 24 hours'

Some of you old enough might remember getting some game or software in the old days and reading something on the lines of 'this is distributed for testing purposes, you must delete it within 24 hours'. Some of these notices even made references to the USCA (which seems to be the general corpus of the law in the US) exemption of copyright infringement for non-profit libraries on check-out of software (sic). Of course, none of this is true, as far as I know of.

Specially the 24 hour period was held by some BBS owners I talked with back in the day as justificatiexcuse for having pirated games on their BBSes; and it ensued arguements about the reality of such a law which amused me, unless I wanted to move to another subject and pointed that real or not, that's for the USA and we were not living in the USA and here we didn't have those laws. Heck, we still don't even have fair use, and our backup right for our owned material has been recently regulated by law - which diminished our rights, not enhanced them. At least we don't have anything like Mickey Mouse to eternally extend copyright terms.

I used to collect the little intros for pirated stuff (part of my extensive demo collection before I knew things like Hornet Archive or Pouet existed), and looking around it, I found this, from a 1997 release, which again has amused me:

Well I'm not a lawyer, but today the resources are easy to find and there's no mention at all for this provision in there. So I still wonder why they bothered posting these notices. Did they think no one would sue them? Or that they made their work look more legitimate?

Time changed things, those silly notices aren't there, I think. Yet I was not too long ago in a gathering with people specialized in ripping and distributing TV Series (I called the police, but they came late

) and one of them said that she didn't think of herself as a pirate or delinquent. Again that reminded me of the old twisted thinking that 'pirating means earning money by duplicating games, if I don't earn money I'm not a pirate'. Well good for you if it makes you feel better, but I prefer to keep my mental feet on the ground for materialistic stuff.

Other than that, it is just a little curiosity thing I leave here for your boredom, as I was bored and I tend to write too much when I'm bored. I was going to post a hot gal pirating software, but she didn't allow me to share those pics

So instead, I'm going to have an army of monkeys throw their poo poo towards DMCA and any modern copyright laws.

Wound up, can't sleep, can't do anything right, little honey / Oh, since I set my eyes on you. / I tell you the truth.
I can't get it right / Get it right / Since I met you...