These are being laid down right now so there wont be any reason to complain if you get banned, got it?
1. NO REQUESTING, it still applies here just as it does everywhere else
2. NO ASSISTING REQUESTERS, if we see you helping requesters, you get banned too.
3. NO ABANDONWARE. it's simple, its a huge gray area, so the entire lot of it wont be allowed. unless you can show us absolute proof BEFORE you post your link to abandonware, that the software is indeed abandonware and that the current copyright holders have given permission for it to be distributed, DONT POST LINKS TO ABANDONWARE. this means that it doesnt matter if you heard from the developers personally 2 years ago, you post something that shows proof before you post it. be it a post from the devs on their official forum, a press release on the company website, whatever.
4. PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT YOU'RE LINKING TO. ok, you've posted your affidavit showing that the developers gave permission to post links to download their software, thats fine. do not post links that contain links to download other shit as well. many abandonware sites host real abandonware, the problem is that they also host a lot of what they assume to be abandonware so just dont link to them, period.
5. REMEMBER, PORTS OF GAMES ALSO FOLLOW THE ABOVE. Theres some of the oldschool handled games, that have been essentially re-made to be used on a pc or whatever system. They arent excluded from anything. The images and depictions of characters are copyrights that can still be held by companies. And just because its on a different system, dont think nintendo would appreciate you pirating all of their old mario gamewatches and crap.
and that should be it for now, you should have enough sense to realize it applies not only to games, but operating systems and other crap as well. if you do anything questionable and get banned for it, expect it to be posted here also, and just because it wasnt listed here first, you are expected to have enough common sense to not force us to have to make and enforce new rules.
