Kahle v. AshcroftScorched Earth
originally submitted by Scott Rubin:
There is a very old computer game that was made for the DOS operating system known as scorched earth.
http://www.classicgaming.com/scorch/
Stifled uses
Scott Rubin:
Scorched earth is an old and popular game for the DOS operating system. The game IS downloadable, however it is in its original format. It is also only the demonstration version. The full version is no longer available, and it is very difficult to play any of the versions without a computer running DOS.
I wanted to get the full version of this game, but especially the source code. I wanted to get the code so I could re-write an identical version of the game, with the same rules and physics, to license freely. I would also make it run on modern operating systems like Linux and Windows XP. And I wanted to add the feature of network play so that you could play against others on the Internet. When this game was made there was no Internet in the home like today, so 5 friends would gather around the computer to play. I e-mailed the copyright holders about my interest, they replied saying that they would get to me, and they did not. I did not go through any more effort than that.
There are also many other old video games which do not run on modern platforms that can be used as an example. X-COM, Mechwarrior 2, the list is incredibly long. If we could somehow legally modify these works we could create exact replicas of these games that run on modern equipment. Old functional equipment is hard to come by. Also when people make "clone" games which are in the same vein as the original but are not exactly the same game it does not bring back the nostalgia in the same way. Good feelings among video game players are destroyed by copyrighted abandoned games.
Pipian:
There is an old piece of astronomy/university software for the Macintosh called "Gravitation LTD" wherein you make planetary objects and can experiment with mass, velocity, and such. The game came out in the beginning of 1993. Unfortunately, the software was never updated again, and thus I wanted to make an update of the game and port it to Windows, OS X, or Linux/Unix. But to do this, I need the source code. However, because the owner can no longer be contacted (The email is long since disconnected, and there are no traces of his whereabouts as far as I can tell) I can not do this. The software is very facinating, and somewhat educational as well and I would love for it to be available to others, but I can not do anything legally like disassembling the code, or anything of the sort. I believe that if I had the abillity to do so legally, (Provided I tried everything to contact the maker), Many, Many more people would enjoy this software, and learn about astronomy.