Underground Gamer Goes Down Citing Legal Problems (TorrentFreak)
I came across this disturbing news while trying to find out why I couldn't access Underground Gamer.
For those who don't know, Underground Gamer was a site that offered bittorrent files for games with the strict rule that they would not allow anything released in the last 10 years. It was set up to preserve games no longer supported or even playable on modern hardware. It was a treasure trove for unreleased betas and many of the entries included historical information, video footage and all sorts of associated information. Core site members would even track down rare titles and restore and preserve them to ensure they were not lost. In essence this was no Pirate Bay, UG was dedicated to keeping classic games alive. Good luck finding a still playable data cassette of Mission Impossible for the Commodore 64.
In summary the site administrators took the site down after receiving a threatening letter from a copyright focused legal firm because FIFA 98 was available for download on the site.
FIFA 98... As in 1998. The letter wasn't even from the developers or the publishers. Some law firm took it upon themselves to draw up a legal threat over a 16 year old game that is no longer developed, supported or even sold, anywhere, at all.
Also consider that this game ran on Windows 95 and 98 so good luck actually trying to profit from something that won't even run on modern PCs (don't believe that compatibility crap buried in your system settings).
So here is a classic example of what is wrong with copyright "law". When a site that is dedicated to preserving media that is disappearing, and has a dedicated user base that fully supports its ideals, can be taken down because a money grabbing legal firm that isn't even directly representing the company that released a product 16 years ago tasked action against it then some serious reconsideration needs to be undertaken. No-one is losing a sale, no-one is losing money and NO-ONE is profiting illegally from anything on UG.
So, legal firm, go prosecute some real crime.
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