Preservation and sharing of 5 1/4 games

[Tanman]

My copyright thread answered some questions for me but then headed off in a different direction.

 

Here is what I am wanting to know.

 

I have a lot of Atari 800 games on 5 1/4 floppy. These are not going to last forever. I am very surprised they lasted this long in my garage without one failing to load up. I want to perserve these games and the best way to do that is to make a bunch of copies and give them out to whomever wants them. I just don't want to open myself up to lawsuit in todays world where if you download a illegal song you get sued and become bankrupt for the rest of your life.

 

What legal issue am I looking at here?

 

Example: I have Castle Wolfenstien for the 800. There is NO way whatever game company who now owns the right is perserving the Atari 800 version of this game. So, all we have out there is the limited number of original disks for this game and over time they are going to continue to degrade till the game does not exsist anymore. This is a scary thought.

 

Your ideas?

 

Tanman

[+Mitch]

Many of the A8 games have been backed up already on various sites. Here's a link to one of them. http://www.atarimania.com/pgemainsoft.awp?type=G&system=8

 

Mitch

[Mirage]

Yeah, many games have already been archived, but still many more need to be. I recently sent in a bunch of original disks of games and apps to that above-linked site, atarimania, and they use a VAPI system to precisely archive them. It's a more accurate disk image than you could do with any other system yourself. They're only interested in originals though, and the same will be true of any other preservation site. There is a group for each of many of the old computers that has the goal of archiving and preservation.

 

In other words, never fear, this is something being taken care of. What I would do is find one of these sites (like atarimania in your case), and make a list of all your original disks and send it in to them. They will tell you which ones are of interest to them, then you can send them in for them to archive and send the originals back to you if you'd like. Same thing with manuals.