[spr93]

If that "company" owned the copyright, they would almost certainly win, but damages could be low or negligible negligible as long as the distributor wasn't selling the abandonware and as long as the suit was only for one copyrighted work. Attorneys' fees and costs could be a problem however. (US law, statutory damages, assuming the plaintiff couldn't get the jury outraged about giving away something that would otherwise bit rot.)

I'm a lawyer, but this is my meaningless drivel. It's not legal advice. You shouldn't listen to me. In fact, you shouldn't listen to anyone on HN about legal issues, ever. The copyright discussions here quickly devolve into complete nonsense. I've done software copyright for a long time, but I sometimes have to read posts five times to kind-of-sort-of-think I know what they're trying to argue. And it's almost always wrong.

(grishka, this is not an attack on you at all. Your post is fine.)

[grishka]

Just a curious question. What are you supposed to do, legally, if you need a piece of software that is no longer sold by its developer? And you need a particular old version because that's what your hardware is capable of running. Are you supposed to just pretend that artificial scarcity is a thing and accept "you can't get it" as the answer? And can Apple really accuse you of pirating OS9 because you're supposed to download macOS Big Sur instead?

(I'm not from US, and I only have a very vague idea about how the US legal system works)

[PeterisP]

"Artificial scarcity" is indeed a thing - the author of software or a book or whatever has exclusive rights to authorize making copies, and if they choose not to authorize any (more) copies, then the legal answer is indeed that you can't get it. They can make a limited print run, they can make a time-limited offer, and they're also free to authorize just one or ten or no copies ever, and that's their right to choose so. Compensation to authors is essentially just a side-effect, the core copy-right is the right to control most (there are exceptions) making of copies.

But that's not really related to US legal system or 'western countries', the core principles of copyright are the same almost universally across the globe - here's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention#/media/File:B... a map of Berne convention signatories, there are just a few countries where that doesn't apply. The strictness and likelihood of enforcement of those laws varies a lot, though.

[fsflover]

You are probably out of luck, which is why free software was invented: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html.

[gattilorenz]

> What are you supposed to do, legally, if you need a piece of software that is no longer sold by its developer?

Buy it second hand on eBay or craigslist or whatever, I guess. Or reimplement it.

Of course neither of these are good options, just the "technically legal" way.

[spr93]

Apple can absolutely accuse you of pirating something it doesn't want to sell. The real question is whether they will spend the time or money to do anything about it. The answer is complicated. In your scenario, Apple will technically "win" without question. But it might be a phyrric victory because a jury may well agree with your reasoning and refuse to award any substantial damages. In fact, Apple might be shooting itself in the foot if the lack of damages encouraged other would-be "pirates." Apple would also risk bad PR, the Streisand effect, and have to spend a lot of money upfront on attorney fees and costs.

Note that under the law of some countries the right not to distribute a copyrighted work is viewed as a sort of natural or "moral" right to control one's creation. The US doesn't generally take that view; we think of copyright and copyright damages mostly in economic terms. Thus, if your "pirating" isn't actually doing economic harm to the rightsholder, you're somewhat unlikely to owe massive damages. Countries with more moralistic copyright regimes may have stiffer penalties in your scenario.

You might have some pity for Apple in your scenario (I do) because the law strongly encourages rights holders to bring a lawsuit in order to protect their rights. It's a use-it-or-you-might-lose-it-to-some-unknown-extent scenario, and lawyers and companies hate uncertainty. This can lead companies sue for copyright violations even when they don't really care. For example, a book's and publishing house probably don't care about a fanfiction blog. They may even like fanfiction because it's grassroots promotion of their product. But they may still feel forced to sue to stop fanfiction so that their rights aren't questioned the next time they need to sue, e.g., a bootlegger that's passing off unlicensed copies of their product as the real thing on Amazon.

On a more positive note, I like TFA because it highlights a company that did The Right Thing. WordPerfect made its Mac product (WordPerfect 3.5e) freely available when it stopped selling Mac software. WordPerfect 3.5e was released in a responsible way too (IIRC) by creating a special freeware license, which minimized the risk of losing the right to enforce the copyright in the future. Open source would've been even better, but there are many good reasons why businesses wouldn't want to do that where a product integrates third-party-licensed code (WordPerfect 3.5e for the Mac does, according to its "About" screen) or if the product is still being sold commercially on other platforms. The WordPerfect 3.5e approach won't satisfy open source fundamentalists, but it solves the problem you identify, and it does it with minimal legal risk. Keep it in mind and tell your lawyers or managers about it if you're ever faced with the question of what to do with your company's unsupported commercial software.

(Again, not legal advice, random online ramblings, don't listen to me or anyone else who posts on internet fora.)