underground gamer is offline for good

[Nyukki]

Terrible news, what a shame...

[fastbilly1]

Well damn. I hope we find out what all went down with it.

[Ivo]

When Bitgamer went down I didn't really miss it. With UG, although I barely ever used it anyway, I think it is a strong blow to software preservation.
It was a really great resource and knowing it existed made me feel better about the preservation of gaming history.

I have always found it interesting that it is often through "piracy" that some games get preserved for the future - stuff that would otherwise be "locked" in physical media destined for obsolescence.

Thankfully now we have GoG, but there were still a LOT of old games that UG was preserving for the future. I'm sure there are other places where most (or even all?) are preserved, but I still find it sad that with the permanent loss of UG, the redundancy just went down significantly.

[Retrodude]

It's the last nail in my personal torrenting as well.

Don't say that, man. That's exactly what the copyright nazis want. I never used UG, unfortunately, but for those of you who did, the best way to honor the site's memory is to take what you have from there that was never available anywhere else and upload it to Kickass Torrents or The Pirate Bay. Set it free. If we allow this stuff to just disappear, the bad guys win. We can't allow that to happen. This is not about piracy, it's about cultural preservation by any means necessary. Are you with me?

[fastbilly1]

Don't say that, man. That's exactly what the copyright nazis want.

Well yes and no. If copyright holders do not enforce their holdings, they can lose them. A company I use to work for had to send out a C&D to another company on the other side of the USA for starting an event with the same name. Per their lawyer if they did not, the startup could send a C&D/sue them, even though they were well established.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Don't say that, man. That's exactly what the copyright nazis want.

Well yes and no. If copyright holders do not enforce their holdings, they can lose them. A company I use to work for had to send out a C&D to another company on the other side of the USA for starting an event with the same name. Per their lawyer if they did not, the startup could send a C&D/sue them, even though they were well established.

That sounds like a trademark dispute, and I do not think copyrights work that way. (I have done some IP work, but I by no means specialize in it.) My understanding is that, if you copyright something and take the steps to renew it, it is yours. There is probably some obligation to protect copyrighted materials against infringement, but I think that protecting a trademark requires a lot more dilligence. (I do not specialize in this area, however; so, I may be wrong about that.)

[fastbilly1]

Don't say that, man. That's exactly what the copyright nazis want.

Well yes and no. If copyright holders do not enforce their holdings, they can lose them. A company I use to work for had to send out a C&D to another company on the other side of the USA for starting an event with the same name. Per their lawyer if they did not, the startup could send a C&D/sue them, even though they were well established.

That sounds like a trademark dispute, and I do not think copyrights work that way. (I have done some IP work, but I by no means specialize in it.) My understanding is that, if you copyright something and take the steps to renew it, it is yours. There is probably some obligation to protect copyrighted materials against infringement, but I think that protecting a trademark requires a lot more dilligence. (I do not specialize in this area, however; so, I may be wrong about that.)

Fair enough, as a food scientist that sells fiberoptics, you are far more likely to know more about it than I do. I do remember the lawyer stated copyright, but he might have meant trademark.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Copyrights and trademarks blend together a bit, but I can assure you that whoever you used for the dispute probably know more about than I do! I have only been involved in one trademark dispute, and it was messy litigation to say the least...

[Aarbron]

Most of the movies and most of music (if not all) can be bought, sometimes for ridiculous prices, but can be bought, so if music or movie (or porn ) trackers are shut down it's not that tragic imo.

But there were so much stuff on UG that is not available anywhere else, even for sale, it can not be compared with any music/movie tracker. Manuals, complete sets of gaming magazines, books, ancient games and software, all with perfect descriptions, tested and working...retro-gamers' paradise. It's a horrible loss.

[Retrodude]

Most of the movies and most of music (if not all) can be bought, sometimes for ridiculous prices, but can be bought, so if music or movie (or porn ) trackers are shut down it's not that tragic imo.

Actually, more than half the stuff on my external hard drive is stuff that was either never available or only partially available (old tv shows mostly), but the folks who have them were generous enough to share. For example, since WB has stated numerous times that there won't be a dvd release for Freddy's Nightmares, some nice person went out of their way to compile high quality tv rips of the entire series during its run on Chiller. That's the kind of stuff I go looking for (as I said, I think preservation is important), and there's quite a lot of it out there.

There's one torrent site I frequent (won't say which one) that specializes in obscure shows that no one remembers and they have quite the archive of 1980s era MTV footage taped from the original broadcast. If that site ever got shut down (doubtful, since their policy is to remove torrents once a dvd release is confirmed), I'd be mourning it for quite awhile.