David and Goliath? Oh, don't be so pretentious. 06/11/98

It's not unusual for multi-million dollar corporations to chase small groups of individuals for breach of copyright and disregard for use of trademarks. From Sony's halting of illegal distribution of whole albums on MP3 sites, to Fox's crushing of unofficial fan sites of popular TV shows such as The Simpsons. It happens daily, and the Internet press thrives on reporting such occurances. What is unusual, though, is when a multi-million dollar corporation insists on the closure of an Internet site, based on the contents of an unpublished and private HTML page.

As was the case on the 27th October, when Aqcom, Lazarus' ISP, received an e-mail from Gateway 2000, Inc.'s Internet Staff Councel. Gateway, acting on behalf of Amiga Development LLC, had demanded Lazarus' immediate closure, insisting that it was carrying copyrighted software, of which they were the rightful owners. Both Aqcom and Lazarus immediately sprang into action in an effort to determine which were the offending items, by requesting either the filenames or titles from Gateway, so that they could immediately be removed, and to discuss any further action. In the meantime, it was necessary to suspend Lazarus whilst the investigation took place. Lazarus' normal index page was replaced with a simple, sober announcement about the temporary closure.

This lead to a story in the Amiga Web Directory - the Amiga community's most-read source of news - in which they accused Lazarus of being a pirate site, and claimed that Gateway 2000 had had it 'shut down'. Within hours of that report, the Amiga newsgroups were buzzing with mis-information and gossip concerning the matter. In an effort to redress the balance, Lazarus responded harshly to AWD's item by insisting they amend their story to demonstrate facts rather than the partial and damning report they had previously published. They complied with our wishes by printing our original e-mail to them in full, but claimed we'd threatened to sue them - our intention was merely to gain an injunction against their story, which portrayed Lazarus in a poor light, during an investigation which could potentially have lead to legal action.

When Gateway responded to our request the next day, they stated that they were referring to their "Boing!" logo, a registered Amiga, Inc. trademark, which appears on any number of Amiga-related web sites and motifs without explicit permission from Gateway. Lazarus has used its own interpretation of the Boing design, as drawn by an ex-contributor, since its launch in July last year. Our logo is not a direct copy of the original, so we felt it wrong to attribute its tradmark status to Amiga, Inc. Nevertheless, you won't find the Boing logo at Lazarus anymore. Be advised - if you're the webmaster or maintainer of an Amiga-related site and your page contains an Amiga trademark without permission (such as the Boing! ball or rainbow double-tick), save yourself time and disruption by asking for permission or removing it now.

On the 31st October, Aqcom granted us access to our server, which was suspended during the investigation, so that we could continue with our pre-arranged week of giveaways, scheduled for the last week in October. A record number of e-mail entries to the prize draws were received, and we're pleased we were able to go ahead with this worthwhile competition - you can thank Aqcom for that.

On the 2nd November, almost a week after the original demand from Gateway was received, and whilst our giveaway competition was still running, their ISC now insisted that Lazarus was 'back up', did contain 'Kickstart 1.3 and Workbench 1.3' (the first time such items had been mentioned) and was displaying their 'trademarked Boing! ball'. Since Lazarus was, in fact, now composed of less than 10 pages, none of which offered any downloadable items or contained any of our regular graphics, could this specially-created mezzanine really be the cause for such concern?

Apparently not.

A closer inspection of Gateway's most recent e-mail revealed the URL they'd been using to access Lazarus. It was not the official URL, nor the one shown in the subject header of every e-mail we'd sent and received concerning this matter. It was, in fact, not Lazarus at all - but, instead, a link to another server on which our files are stored at Aqcom. In the root directory, there are a number of HTML pages which, for one reason or another, never made it into Lazarus proper, or have since been discontinued. Gateway, all along, had been referring to those. Unfortunately for us, one such page contained a valid, working link to our own personal copies of Kickstart 1.3 and Workbench 1.3, situated on the same server - but it wasn't a part of Lazarus.

Alarmingly, since the announcement of the temporary suspension, rumours have started circulating which suggest Lazarus as a source for illegal copies of current and very recent software. This is not the case. Sure, we've been on the receiving end of copies of Directory Opus Magellan, Deluxe Paint 5, GP Fax, Miami, AWeb... to name a few, but whether the .lha and .lzx files which bore those names actually contained that software, we'll never know - they were instantly deleted and never made it past our FTP upload area. There have been mistakes in the past, which were quickly rectified and, hey, even Aminet, the world's most respected Amiga file resource, until recently erroneously contained an 'illegal' patch for a PPC version of ClickBOOM's AmiQuake (see the entry for game/patch/QuakePPC.lha). Because of this, ClickBOOM now say there won't ever be an official release.

But the most puzzling part of this whole fracas is how Gateway 2000's ISC came to be directed to a private, unpublicised URL in the first place. The address they were using was certainly never promoted by us - we're Lazarus at http://www.aqcom.com/lazarus or http://www.therealamiga.com - as most of you will undoubtably know. Having disclaimed responsibility for the contents of this URL, Gateway have conceded that Lazarus are in compliance with their wishes and an amicable conclusion has been reached. Indeed, Gateway have been courteous throughout, and I don't think there was ever any question that legal action might result. In fact, they've helpfully supplied a guide to Amiga registered trademarks (there are others which aren't registered, but still qualify as protected). You can find it here.

There could even be a silver lining. Jeff Schindler at Amiga, Inc. was said to be 'shocked' about the closure of Lazarus, so Gateway weren't acting on direct orders from Amiga, Inc. and, in response to a comment from Gateway 2000's ISC on granting 'limited licenses', Lazarus has made an important proposal to Gateway, to be passed on to Amiga, Inc., on behalf of the Amiga emulation community. It's reproduced in full here:

"If you want to demonstrate dedication to the many thousands of people who join the Amiga emulation community daily, you should strongly consider making Kickstart and Workbench 1.3 public domain and promoting this fact by uploading them to Aminet. Commodore UK once granted UK Amiga magazine CU Amiga permission to publish Kickstart 1.3 on its cover disk after Amiga A1200 owners complained they weren't able to run older, classic Amiga software."

If you support our suggestion, please let Amiga International know. They will listen. We recommend you copy and paste the following text into an e-mail, and then send it to ptysch@amiga.de with the subject "Please support the UAE community".

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Dear Petro,

I'm not a current Amiga owner but have, in the past, enjoyed many years of proud Amiga ownership. These days, I prefer to run my favourite Amiga software by means of emulation on another platform. UAE is a fabulous project which deserves the support and attention of Amiga, Inc., and this is why I'm writing to you.

Classic Amiga software, such as those titles no longer being published or easily available, must be kept alive so that future generations may enjoy them. I support the efforts of Lazarus, who are working to preserve such items, and would urge you to release Kickstart 1.3 and Workbench 1.3 into the public domain.

It's all that's necessary for ex-Amiga owners to relive their fond memories of the most magical era in home computing without infringing your copyright. Perhaps you would consider donating these items to Aminet or making them available for inclusion within the archive distributions of UAE and Fellow - such a gesture would be universally appreciated within our community.

I don't expect a personal reply, but thanks for taking the time to read this e-mail.

Signed: [Your name & e-mail address]

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Well, we shall see what happens... DeeJay99