Sorry if the title is a little misleading Derby, you're free to change it

The reason I'm back is because a lot of people mistake abandonware for freeware, which in all meanings is cow dung. That's why I've written this little thing. I'm merely putting it up for proofreading, so additions can be made at any time.

Copyright
To put it bluntly, everything you create is protected by law to prevent others from copying your creations. That goes for anything, down to the little pencil you draw with. If another company wants to use your creations commercially, they'd have to pay licensing fees or "royalties". Names however fall under a separate category called "Trademarks". Just to get this out of the way: copyright does expire, but only after 70 years if it's not passed on or updated. Should a product have more than one copyright date it means it was adapted from a previous release one way or another. Asking patents is the surefire way to really protect ideas from theft.

Freeware
Naturally computer and video games all fall under copyright laws, and as said before, copyrights only expires after 70 years if not updated! That's why Nintendo and Sega can keep releasing those Classic 8-bit and 16-bit era games commercially. However, a special kind of software is "freeware": free to use software, no obligations, free to spread around. The original company still holds the rights to the designs, but not the content. Only the original company can declare something freeware by changing the "Terms of Service" to "Free to Use".

Abandonware
Contrary to popular belief, "Abandonware" is not Freeware, at least not all of it (I'd say a fairly smal part)! In fact, there's no such thing as "Abandonware." People like to think that when the support for a game suddenly stops, it's freeware. Although it is true that freeware games hardly have customer support (if any) from the original company, that doesn't go the other way around! Games, even "abandoned", still fall under copyright laws and Terms of Service no matter how old they are, thus making them illegal to spread around, unless they've been declared freeware.

Jazz Jackrabbit
Now that's out of the way, let's focus on the current state on the Jazz Jackrabbit games. As of now, both Jazz 1 and 2 and all related games (aside from the Shareware Demos) are not freeware as the companies still hold the rights to everything in those games: content, designs, source code, etc. The rights to the different kinds of content are held by different companies, and most are either out of business or bought up. Epic Games currently holds the main rights to the games, but it takes more to declare any of them freeware. As for the source codes, figuring it out is one thing, getting the rights to it is another.

Jazz Jackrabbit 3, the game that never was...
The Jazz Jackrabbit 3 demo deserves a special mention because it was never meant to be released for the public. The demo was a special "Publisher Test Demo" to show off features of the game and entice publishers to release it, as JJ3 was far from finished when the demo was made. As it's not a public demo (they're made when the game is just about done anyhow) it's illegal to spread around. Just so you know, JJ3 was abandoned because no publisher was willing to take it in. That doesn't make it less illegal though.

Comments are welcome.

- JelZe GoldRabbit =:3