
FAQ
So why go into the trouble of
getting permission to distribute old games when most
people copy them anyway?
Although these games may be old they are still
under copyright for about 50 years and you are still
pirating the software. What we aim to do is to be fair to
the developers & publishers by allowing them to
decide whether a game can or cannot become public
property. If they then agree then you can safely &
legally obtain that game free of any charge from POGACS
or licenced site.
How will this system work, how
can I be sure that what I'm using is legimate?
Whenever we get a game licenced we will
distrubute it in a package with the original installation
and a copy of the public licence agreed between POGACS
and the company with control of the game. This licence
will contain information on redistrubution, copying,
ownership, and other conditions set by the company. I
will be also trying to ensure that other websites will be
able to carry the software as well. You can make sure
that your software is legimate by looking for the POGACS
agreement ('POGACS.TXT') in the distrubution and the
POGACS logo on whichever site you downloaded the software
from.
What role does POGACS play in games that they
sucessfully manage to obtain?
When we gain a licence for a game POGACS will take on the
administration of the game, by organising it disrubution
& policing the conditions in the game's POGACS
agreement. We will not be selling these games &
neither will anyone else except by the terms in the
agreement which will roughly follow shareware agreements.
Does POGACS intend to do anything else apart
from legimise old games?
Yes we have plenty of other thing we would like to
pursue. We are also trying to legimise the grey area of
console/computer emulation by trying to get the BIOS's
publically licenced and also in conjunction with emulator
programmers, get official endorsement of an emulator from
the machine's producer. We would also like to pursue to a
lesser extend the public release of old software that may
still be of use. Another area that we may also try is
getting the public release of old games plus their source
code so that programmers can adapt and learn from old
games.
Is there money involved in any way?
As little as possible, POGACS is a vountary society and
will not resell old games. Hopefully we should be self
sustaining enough that we shouldn't need any money at
all, although if ever do need money to continue POGACS or
to fund public releases it will be done through donations
and/or advertisments, we will never charge for the
software or charge fees for the games or membership to
POGACS.
Who is POGACS and can I help?
POGACS is founder & managed by Douglas Gore. Anyone
can join POGACS and/or help us. If you want to join
contact us (click the contact link), we are looking for
members at the moment. It would be really useful if
anyone can help us by helping to contact and track games
companies and to ask them about releasing their old games
through POGACS. Maybe you work or have worked in a games
company yourself, ask the company boss or whoever takes
care of these matters about release of their back catalog
of games.
Who really benefits from POGACS?
You, the public benefits mosts, but also developers and
publishers are benefiting too, through a controlled
release of their games rather than uncontrolled illegal
distrubutions. Webmasters of games distrubution sites can
also benefit from POGACS work as it allows them to link
to 100% legal games downloads. Organisations like the
IFDA who represent games developers are around just to
prevent the illegal distrubution of games, but they won't
ever be able to stop all the site. They don't attempt the
revolutionary steps we trying by comprimising between
nostalgic games players & developers.
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