Unofficial Tex Murphy

Maybe we should all come over to your yard and kneel down and give many praises to you....then we can all rub your belly for luck. Or not.

The problem with Turning the Games into Digital copies for people to download is, you are technically changing the Original Manufacturers Product, which is against the law if you try to distribute it in the new form you have changed it to... Unlike Items on eBay, which are still in their Physical Form and have already been bought, thus the Manufacturer has already received their dues from the original sale...
It's a lot like downloading music, even though there are still Free Programs that allow you to do it without paying, like WinMX for example, it is still Illegal to do it without paying for it... The Songs were produced to be on a CD that you buy and pay for in a store or online and have shipped to you, not for you to Download without paying for it... The games were the same way, they were produced and sold in a store in a Physical Form, not a Digital Form...

This information comes from a friend of mine who works mostly with copyrights and other forms of property laws and protection...



Now if you keep it on a quiet level and privately message people you see inquiring about Discs and then do a transfer through an Instant Messenger or email or something, then I don't think anyone would be the wiser and you shouldn't have to worry about anyone catching on, because you wouldn't be doing it on a public level, like on a website...

Jim the old guy wrote:Here in Michigan anyone can install a burglar alarm system without having an alarm license AS LONG AS IT IS NOT DONE FOR PROFIT!!! These games are long gone and can only be found by resellers who put all profits into their own pockets. I fail to see the legallity issue. Is there anyone out there - specifically MS - who is watching, tracking and/or pursuing those who resell their games? I doubt it. Where's the harm in loading games on a website for others to access (bad pun) for free? On the other hand, I'm not an attorney and have no specific knowledge of copyright rules.

I see where you're coming from I agree that the chances of someone keeping watch over the net to make sure that these rights are not infringed upon are pretty remote. MS's disdainful attitude toward TM speaks in volumes there. If it was a worthwhile commodity for them (or at least in their minds), they'd pick it up. BUT, on the remote chance that somebody does catch a wiff of this, there could be issues. Legalities aside, I agree that this is a scenario where logic should prevail.

1) The games are no longer available on the market
2) They are many compatibility issues
3) The genre is dead
4) Access are dead

It's a wonderful idea. However, there are those legal issues which could create a problem and I thus wouldn't advise it. It would be really neat to have AC drop by very briefly to give us a few words on what he thinks.

James, I know we're not really meant to ask, but you couldn't shoot AC a quick email by any chance could you and ask him to quickly pop in? I know he's busy and he recently made a visit, but i'd be really interested to know where we stand on this. It just makes sense to get it from the horses mouth so we can have a final word on this rather than endlessly speculate.

Yeah it would be good to get AC's input. Mainly in regards to the following:

In many cases people either lose or damage their hard-copies, or receive hard copies of the games with missing CDs, and this often results in one of the members here helping out by snail-mailing a copy of the missing CD to the person in need.

I am aware that Access no longer profits from the sales as they are no longer sold through distributors, rather; they are distributed by private sellers who keep the profits themselves.

I am aware that no profit can be made from selling or distributing modified on unauthorized copies (.i.e copies that have not been paid for).

An so the main question is, for those who do have official copies of the game and require a replacement disc, is it okay to allow them temporary access to an online archive (which I will create) where they can retrieve the required ISO image and make the replacement disc themselves?

I am pretty sure it will be okay, as we are technically not profiting, nor making the game freely available to anyone. Only those who already have paid for their copy.

-Cub. =o)

Cubase wrote:Yeah it would be good to get AC's input. Mainly in regards to the following

This is the sort of thing that would be better handled by fans alone. If there's "legal" stuff involved, do not drag the writer into it. Everyone's better off that way. There should be no visible connection between anyone involved with Tex Murphy and such activities, even if they were legal because being seen condoning this would limit that person's credibility and hinder the Tex series' ability to appear profitable. And that's potentially even more important than legality itself.

If people want ISOs or discs, do it by PMing and email, problem solved. No need to talk about it. In fact the need to talk about it is best registered in negative digits.

Maybe I am just being paranoid, but this is how it looks to me and I feel unusually sure about it.

AC already commented on the freeware/abandonware thing somewhere. Either on this forum or the previous one. You would have to dig it up. At the end of the day though I think joilet_jane is right in that AC etc. would not feel they have the right to say either way. Although he owns the Tex Murphy concept etc. he doesn't own the rights to the games themselves or really have a say as to their distribution unfortunately. Otherwise I think he'd of done something with the older games by now if he did have any rights, whereas the people who do have the rights seem to have pretty much forgotten about them.

These are true things.....

I got a little reminder yesterday that you never know who the "guests" on the board are.



Actually my 1st impression of the fidgit article was hey....I feel a little violated, this came from our little neck of the woods, but what can you do?? The internet is VAST! Numma-numma guy never expected his little webcam to hit EVERYONE!

Well, this is unofficialtexmurphy.com. We can just go about our business and create trouble all we like. If we do something wrong, they can say "Who are these crazy internet weirdos? We know not what they do!" because they don't; their hands are clean-- and that makes us free to get ours dirty.

If I were them I'd keep me at arms length just to be safe (but I don't know if that goes for everyone)

Making the individual game discs available as free downloads on your web server, but requiring a username/password (available by request), sounds reasonable to me. Discs do get scratched, cracked, lost, or missing from an order (Tex Murphy: Overseer disc 5).

I thought about putting UAKM disc 1 on my private ftp for nondaj to replace a damaged disc, but the download speed over the internet would of been horrible.

I also agree, that there can be no profit, not even for bandwidth usage unless you were to own the rights or be an authorized distributer.

Cub um hate to tell you this but this is actually rather pointless when you consider Tex Murphy already has like 3 different torrents going already. Would you like me to PM the links to you? they are really reliable contains the entire series (includes MM, Mean Streets, UAKM, PD and Overseer). Not that I condone this kind of thing.

Well my two cents worth is that when you buy a copy of the game it will depend on what the small print says. You used to be able to make a 'backup' copy of software with some games and software in the past, but mostly it's been that you have bought a licence to play that game - ie you still don't own the game as such, but you have permission to install THAT copy on one computer.

Again, it depends on what the Ts and Cs of the game are (and I can't remember them).

So technically, you cannot take someone else's disc 5 and use it, but on a practical level, no one probably cares if you have discs 1 - 4. Even the manufacturers would usually send you replacement discs if any were fault.

As for Joilet Jane's question about when a game becomes freeware - the answer is almost always never. A few manufacturers have made obsolete games freeware, but that involves explicit consent and usually even then has a few strings attached (old Psion organiser software went this way).

There is something referred to as 'abandonware' which we have discussed on this board before, which is where people have posted games and software online from companies that no longer exist or where the games are so out of date that most people wouldn't buy them anyway. The rights to the Tex Games are still owned by someone, which means that they will have ultimate control over both what happens to existing games and what will happen to the name of Tex and the future of Tex.

If for example you bought the rights to make Star Wars (is anyone still awake and reading this??). You wouldn't be happy if someone was making copies of the original movies (ie before their revamp). It probably wouldn't matter to you whether that person was making a profit or giving them away. You'd still not be happy. It's just whether you do anything or not.

A lot of companies would probably turn a blind eye to this kind of thing at this kind of a level, but there are some who will take it very strictly.

So I guess to summarise - I reckon it's illegal, but as to whether someone will do something about it is anyone's guess. My 2 cents is that if anyone was annoyed they would write in the first instance rather than do something about it.

mr_cyberpunk wrote:Cub um hate to tell you this but this is actually rather pointless when you consider Tex Murphy already has like 3 different torrents going already. Would you like me to PM the links to you? they are really reliable contains the entire series (includes MM, Mean Streets, UAKM, PD and Overseer). Not that I condone this kind of thing.

Yes but most people who are coming to this forum to request a copy of the CD usually do so becuase they either don't use Bit Torrent, or don't/don't want to know how. As we all know, people that are experienced in torrents would search there first anyway. But look at Tex Murphy's target audience; most of which probably have not heard of, let alone wanted to use Bit Torrent.

Providing an easy to access online link removes the need to install Bit Torrent and the need to go searching for the one with enough seeders to get a decent speed. Not to mention the fact that the online server I plan on using sustains a 600kb/s transfer rate.

-Cub. =o)

Are you a lawyer, Demonlawyer?

joliet_jane wrote:Are you a lawyer, Demonlawyer?

Yes he is, and our resident legal adviser.

-Cub. =o)

I'll chip in with my two cents (however much wanted or unwanted). Doing what you're proposing is a clear violation of copyright law. You are making copies of a work, distributing a work, and perhaps creating a derivative work (by transforming the form of the work).

The real question (from a legal standpoint) is whether your proposed use of the work meets the test for fair use. I'll be brief so as not to bore everyone, but basically courts look at 4 things when determining whether something is fair use: 1. the strength of the copyright (dependant on how creative a work is); 2. the amount of the work taken by the use; 3. the transformative nature of the use; and 4. whether the use is commercial. In the instant case, I think the first three factors cut against fair use. The games have a very strong copyright, the use would be taking the entire work, and the use is not transformative. The fourth factor would be in favor of finding fair use, as you are not seeking to make a commercial venture out of the use. It used to be that the fourth factor pretty much controlled a court's decision. However, there have been some disturbing trends recently. One example (and the case hasn't been decided yet) is that Georgia State University has just been sued because a professor copied materials from books and didn't pay a licensing fee. Some other decisions have held that even if the user (i.e., you in our case) doesn't make money off of the use, if the copyright holder could have made money, then the use is not fair use. (It's my opinion that if you think about how this would play out logically, then almost no use would ever be fair use, but I don't think that courts have addressed this just yet).

There are some different factors in our case. For instance, in many of the course-packet cases, there is a licensing center that a professor can contact and get the fee that should be charged for using a particular work, and I'm sure there's not such a center for Tex Murphy games.

The second part of the issue is the practical question of will anyone who has the ability to do anything about the use actually complain? The chances may be slim, but the internet is a vast place and I would never count on someone not enforcing their rights.

The bottom line is that I don't want to be a kill-joy, but you may want to tread lightly here. Copyright laws have been tipped in the balance of rights holders and are not as friendly to users.

ALSO NOTE, my analysis is just of U.S. law. I have no idea what Australian law says about this (and don't even want to get into the forums involved in something uploaded to a U.S. server from a foreign country), but I would image that it is similar to U.S. law.

Like I said, this is just my two cents so feel free to ignore it or tell me to be quiet.