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Posted By
SVS
on 2003-07-12
 |  Re: Game over?
... when we say "Commodore" we mean "C0mmod0re" then whre is the problem?
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Posted By
JamesC
on 2003-07-12
| Re: Game over?
Or C=ommodore, or CBM, or MOS Computers..... 
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Posted By
Gaia
on 2003-07-12
| Re: Game over?
It's really like a joke... I am curious what they mean on 'the official C64 emulator'...
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Posted By
Lavina
on 2003-07-12
 | Re: Game over?
hm, strange and annoying, but it also can be promising...
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2003-07-12
| Re: Game over?
It is kind of like a joke, but I'm not laughing. How do they expect people to pay for something that they already have for free? I just hope that they won't be trying to shut websites down. It will only force the scene to go underground.
Also notice that they never once mention the Plus/4. Good.
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Posted By
JamesC
on 2003-07-12
| Re: Game over?
Well if worse comes to worse Lando can redo the graphic logo at the top of the page, simply calling this site "Plus/4 World".
The articles states that 6000 commercial websites use the Commodore name. That simply means that there are 6000 'dot com' websites that use the word Commodore, not that they're making any money at this. I know I haven't made any money yet.....
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Posted By
TMR
on 2003-07-12
 | Re: Game over?
There's some ongoing discussion on Lemon and CSDb about this; generally speaking, fan sites should be fairly safe because they're tributes and it comes under fair use i believe. Chris Abbott and i have both emailed them asking for more information regarding that article (i emailed Tulip and lunchpr.com, Chris emailed Ironstone) so more news as it comes in.
As for their official C64 emulator... Tulip apparently only own the brand, not the ROMs so they're going into some *very* dodgy territory if they try to shut down VICE, YAPE or CCS.
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Posted By
J. Robertson
on 2003-07-12
| Re: Game over?
Another firestorm of discussion is also over at the comp.sys.cbm newgroup and also at amiga.org.
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Posted By
Gaia
on 2003-07-13
| Re: Game over?
After reading all these posts... yeah... being small (as we are) has an advantage here maybe...
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2003-07-13
| Re: Game over?
I wonder how many of the 6,000 are like these: Commodore.
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Posted By
Ulysses777
on 2003-07-14
| Article on The Register...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/31715.html
Although the title contradicts the rest of the article, this states that Tulip/Ironstone only own the Commodore brand name & logo. They don't own any copyrights on the ROMs or hardware.
Apparently, they're only going after sites which are producing Commodore branded merchandise.
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2003-07-14
| Re: Article on The Register...
Good find! I was happy to read the Ironstone guy's comments. "Couldn't stop them if we wanted to", ain't that the truth? This is good news! Horray for Plus/4 World.
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Posted By
Mosh
on 2003-07-15
| Re: Game over?
Quote:"Indeed, quite apart from the validity of reverse engineering, there's the thorny question of who actually owns the core C64 firmware. While the Amiga was sold off as brand plus technology, Tulip only bought the C64 brand. Now no one knows who has the rights to the firmware. Suing for brand infringement is the only weapon Tulip and Ironstone have - they can't fight on copyright infringement grounds."
I read somewhere (comp.sys.cbm??) that Gateway bought the rights to all the MOS stuff.
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2003-07-15
| Re: Gateway owns MOS?
Could be. I just hope that whoever it owns either A) releases it to the public domain, or B) is too big to try to deal with such a small issue (so we're left alone).
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Posted By
JamesC
on 2003-07-15
| Re: Game over?
Copyrights to the Commodore/Amiga software programs and documentation were transferred from the estate of Commodore Electronics Limited to Escom AG on 3 November 1998. Subsequently (actually the same day) Escom AG's bankruptcy estate transferred these copyrights to Amiga Development LLC, a Gateway subsidiary.
This information is from the US Copyright Office online lookup at www.copyright.gov.
Gateway is enforcing copyright on Amiga programs, as referenced here: Amiga Emulator.
However I find no online reference to Gateway enforcing copyright on the 8-bit software.
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Posted By
J. Robertson
on 2003-07-15
| Re: Game over?
Shortly after Commodore's bankruptcy a company called "GMT Microelectronics" bought Commodore's entire semi-conductor division - even moving into the CSG building[1]. So if Gateway doesn't have the tech. rights then at the least I'd say "GMT Microelectronics" have the MOS rights - however their site has been gone for a couple of years and they haven't been active since.
[1] Morristown, PA, USA
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Posted By
J. Robertson
on 2003-07-15
| Re: Game over?
Sorry, I meant "Norristown" not "Morristown"...
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Posted By
Gaia
on 2003-07-16
| Re: Game over?
In my opinion anyone who is willing to make money out of this retro-thing (let that be Commodore, Spectrum or whatever) is entirely lunatic. Even the Amiga (that still has a very loyal user base) can hardly sustain one single commercial company. The retro-movement is driven by nostalgy and freedom. Once freedom is gone the whole scene will just go deep underground.
I think that companies like Ironstone will fail miserably within a few years (if not earlier). Maybe Tulip has already suspected that it's not that great business at all so opted wisely to ask royalties instead from others who are eager to have their hands burned
This was broadly discussed in comp.sys.cbm, where one can get the impression how most retro-sceners feel about "official emulator" and such bullshits.
Maybe that best would be to collect some money together buy all the rights and release everything to the public domain forever.
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Posted By
MC
on 2003-07-16
 | Re: Game over?
yep, Attila's right...
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Posted By
Gaia
on 2003-07-16
| Re: Game over?
Here's a quote from a guy at Ironstone in this article:
"There are big companies on the high street selling C64 emulators and games and they shouldn't be doing that. Those are the kind of people we are going to stop," said Melbourne, who is an ex-C64 developer and a regular visitor to the specialist sites: "Am I going to close down sites like Lemon64 after they have put seven years of work into building the site? No way. I have been reading it for the past few years and it is fantastic."
1. I don't know about ANY big company selling C64 emulator.
2. If there was any why couldn't he sell that? Removing the brand 'Commodore' is kind-of OK... but selling? This suggests to me that noone may create an emulator anymore?
3. He's not going to close Lemon64 down because for long there have been no downloads on Lemon. So everyone, start downloading your C64 favourites until it's too late and you can only do it thru the "official" site for a subscription fee.
4. If the guy was a regular visitor to these sites, he should have known how real sceners would feel about this.
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Posted By
TMR
on 2003-07-16
| Re: Game over?
In the U.K. there are about three or four CDs on sale full of C64 games and emulators, as well as equivalent packs for the Amiga, Spectrum, just about anything that had a lot of games and that's what Ironstone are referring to. The pack i saw was about twenty quid and all they'd done was dump the contents of a couple of FTP archives on a CD and then the Commodore logo on the cover, their profit margin for such a product must be pretty high and these things are for sale in high-street stores like Game and so forth.
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Posted By
Crown
on 2003-07-16
| Re: Game over?
There are a few commercial C64 emulators... People tend to forget that CCS64 is also one like that, tough there you are not forced to pay.
There is Power 64 and Power 20, a C64 and Vic20 emulator for Macs, and Pocket C64 for Pocket PC...
Actually Ironstone did a pretty good deal I believe, and whatever they say, their focus is definitely NOT the enthusiast community. They have two game development studios, one which develops games on console platforms, and an other one which does that for mobile and ITV platforms. They can easily do the same thing what Infogrames did with the Atari brand. Launch new games for console and other platforms under the Commodore brand, if they can get copyrights to some classics that's even a bigger plus for them... These are the guys BTW who made the Atari TV games, this is the joystick with 10 embeded Atari games.
A lot of people think that the Commodore brand is dead and is worth nothing, but that's not true, brand awareness is definitely big, the other day I had an american girl over 30+ something, and she saw my C16, and asked : Is that a Commodore? She is definitely not technical, but still knew the brand.
So if they want to do money, and they want, then they have to reinvent the brand, and has to do some tip toe-ing around the commodore community very carefully, so they generate buzz but no bad press...
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Posted By
Gaia
on 2003-07-16
| Re: Game over?
Funny, I actually own such Atari TV game! Never knew it was from Ironstone, though. Was it a great success? I really doubt it!
You are right about those commercial emulators but they are no big companies (except maybe for the Pocket64 emulator, but its days will be counted as soon VICE is ported to the PocketPC). Actually I still don't understand why someone could not sell his/her emulator if he/she wanted to... not that I'd agree.
Commodore's brand awareness is indeed very high. Anyone I asked of my age has at least seen a Commodore once. What concerns making money, the target group could be those less computer-literals and not really the sceners. Probably the same group that was targeted with the Atari remake. And those profits are at the moment indeed exploited by the noname CD-collections mentioned by TMR (even E-bay is full of them as I saw).
Actually the PR has already turned out to be pretty well, even such local newspapers as the Brabants Dagblad ( ) sported an article about the "resurrection" of the Commodore 64. While we all know it's never been dead.
If it's a good deal, we shall see, but I am still not too enthusiastic about it.
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Posted By
Crown
on 2003-07-16
| Re: Game over?
I wonder what will they do about the intro movie of Rockstar's GTA Vice City.... It starts with a C64 screen where someone types LOAD"VICE CITY",8 or similar...
That could be interpreted as an unlicensed use of the brand, they would just need a good lawyer....
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Posted By
Luca
on 2003-07-16
 | Re: Game over?
Yeah Tibor
That presentation fascinated me: a working c64 screen with keys sound fx and a far radio playing Video Killed the Radio Stars. The tape loading starts and continues like an Ocean-like SID loader, but with the R2 logo....great!
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Posted By
Ulysses777
on 2003-07-16
| Re: Game over?
The "*** COMMODORE 64 BASIC V2 ***" part had been changed to "*** ROCKSTAR NORTH ***" (or something similar) in that intro, so they can't get them for the brand name
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