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[Razor2]

Maybe he laws of the country apply where it was made, but in most cases laws can only be applied on citizens of that country, or non-citizens within its borders. If you are not any of them, they can sue you, but in case of a smaller law violation (ie: violatation some copright laws with abandonware) they won't come too far. Of course if you are a really big fish, like an operator of a real warez site or selling games downloaded from warez sites, they can give the case to the authorities of your country which will than deal with you by the laws of your country.

In any case US laws only apply for US citizens or other citizens within the borders of the USA, nobody else!

[JJXB]

according to someone i know in sweden, file sharing is still legal there so this shouldn't be illegal there (im in britain so it is illegal for me )

[Eagle of Fire]

So does going above the speed limits, and I rarely find someone going at the indicated limits unless a police car is around... :whistle:

[Morrin]

It's kinda tricky you know. Let's see about HOTU for example:

1. Games are abandoned
2. Games are free to download
3. But they make hell of a money with adds and other stuff

So they still kind of make money.















Kind of

[The Niles]

As far as I know there is no excess money being made of the advertisements on tHotO. On abandonia we are certainly not making money of the advertisements (they are of course less invasive here). Server rent is high. Much more so then you might think. As the site grows more and more bandwidth is consumed and that also costs money.

[Sebatianos]

Look - even if we'd be making money with adds that doesn't count!
We're not getting payed by the number of downloaded games - and we don't charge for them. We could put up ads even if we only had a forum.
About different countries - I doubt that there's a country that actually alowes piracy - but here in Slovenia for instance the law in tact was made backi in 1975 and is only now in the updating procedure. There's no talk about illegal copies of VHS tapes even - a CD or a word software was virtually unkown back in those days in Slovenia (not that there weren't computes - but only a few companies used them at there'd be no profeit in stealing the software...).
So I could actually put up every single bite of software for all of you to download and Slovene laws could not really touch me - but there's the matter of the international law as well.
So don't make such a big deal of it - remember you're inocent until your proven guilty and no-one has even started a case against a real abandonware site. Let's just make sure no-one ever does!

[Rogue]

no, no...

you all are guilty and will go to jail! :bleh:

I don't have to tell much about the laws in states, as they protect copyrighted software even donwloading it is illegal.

But prices for old stuff are very low, so I own most of games that I have interest in.