I went to bed and when I woke up American Nightmare was a free flash deal that ran ~30 min.

All in all I managed to collect all the freebies (Omerta City, Torchlight, Still Life 2 and American Nightmare) without losing any sleep. I got real lucky there! :)

I somehow woke up at the right moment to check on last giveaway and got that one for free, was hoping it would be Banished, and had already gotten it free during Spring Insomnia sale. Damn you GOG!

Err, any particular reason why so many are expecting Banished to be one of tomorrow's freebies ?

I don't have the link at hand, but an enterprising user managed to dig up images of all the daily deals and a few extras that hadn't shown up...Until the flash giveaway. Banished wasn't included with these, and hasn't appeared at all so far, leaving many suspecting it will emerge in these last few days, possibly as a giveaway.

I hope that user gets Banished for such enterprising behaviour.

In the US, at least in theory, copyrighted works do automatically become public domain after a period of time. Unfortunately in practice that period of time keeps getting extended by one act of congress after another, obviously under the pressure of lobbyists representing companies that hold significant amounts of copyrighted material which they hope to be able to squeeze money out of indefinitely. And this effectively infinite copyright term is in direct contradiction to the intent of the clause in the US Constitution which permits congress to create copyright laws in the first place:

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries"

Furthermore, when they extend copyright law, they extend it not just for new works but for existing works, thereby effectively taking material directly out of the public domain. As someone who (from an understanding of economics and human nature perspective) absolutely believes in the benefits (to society) of having a copyright period to encourage the creation and publication of new works, the current situation is absolutely nuts, and the only reason it persists is because the American people are, for the most part, a bunch of ignorant baboons.

That is incorrect. If the owner actually gave up their rights to the material (which in the US can be done by a simple published proclamation that you are placing your work in the public domain), then the material can be used for any (legal) purpose, including for profit.

For example, a data structure I have used a number of times in the past is the splay tree. One of the inventors of the data structure (Daniel Dominic Sleator) created an implementation (code) for the splay tree and placed it in the public domain in 1992 as can be seen this code where they even have a comment in the code saying "Based on public domain code from Sleator.". (Note that they could and probably have also used the splay tree code in their non-open-source code as well, but obviously I can't provide links to that.) I based my splay tree code on Sleator's just as Apple did.

Even if the owner doesn't give up all their rights, that does not necessarily prevent commercial use. Some well known licenses that permit commercial use include the MIT license, the BSD licenses and the Creative Commons 'Attribution' license.

Please note that photocopying copyrighted material is not always a violation of copyright law. There is such a thing as "fair use" and other exemptions. For example, see here.

Note that recording music and movies and TV so you can listen/watch them later is perfectly legal. See Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc.: "Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984), also known as the "Betamax case", is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States which ruled that the making of individual copies of complete television shows for purposes of time shifting does not constitute copyright infringement, but is fair use."

I'm not saying youtube is exactly the same case (as the presumptions made by viewers can be fairly stated to differ), but just as food for thought: If you change your TV to a given channel, and you watch a movie, and it turns out the broadcaster did not have the rights to broadcast that movie, do you think you have violated copyright law? Do you think there is any chance in hell a court (at least any sane one) would rule in favor of such a law suit against you?

And just one more reason why copyright terms need to be slashed at least back down to the original 14 years (plus 14 more if renewed -- can only renew once). Considering the current rate of innovation, an even shorter time would seem appropriate. (IMO, 7 years + one 7 year renewal would be a more reasonable period for software, though I'd by happy just to see the return of 14+14 rather than the "to infinity and beyond" mess we have now.)

Yeah, I had a similar thought but mine was "Oh crap, the Postal 2 mega update finally hit!" to find out it was Dragonsphere but I already updated Dragonsphere yesterday. :) There was a glitch in their update notifications, not sure what yet though. Kind of funny in the end. :)

Yes, the flash sale was reverse engineered and of the 230+ games determined to be in it, all but 8 of them appeared in the Flash sales day to day. Since then on special days 4 of the remaining games appeared as freebie giveaways as predicted (last Tuesday), one was a discounted DLC for one of the freebies, one was a discounted game, leaving 2 remaining unknowns. Banished, and Omerta Gold or something like that.

So, we predict that /something/ is happening with Banished, either it will be a freebie or a discounted game in the flash sale, or some other unknown but freebie or discount are the most plausible.

Yes, copyrights expire but in the context of the conversation regarding video games on abandonware sites it isn't relevant because the length of time copyright law grants a copyright to the creator of an original work is far far greater a length of time than the release date of the oldest video game ever written. That is to say that sometime 40/50/80 or whatever years from now the copyright on Atari Pong might start to expire assuming the laws don't change to extend that longer and longer as they seem to do.

No video game is in the public domain right now as the result of the copyright on it expiring naturally according to the law.

I hate to ask this to some degree because the price on GoG is great but...has anyone seen any bundles including Shadowrun:Returns? My will to wait it out and see if it shows up in a flash giveaway or super discount on Steam is dwindling down so any links would be greatly appreciated.

PS-I know it's $3.74 on Steam right now, I am just wondering if any bundle sites have it AND the DLC for similar prices, or if it can be found in a group of other games.

In fact if anyone DOES find it in a bundle I'll gift them with a code of their choice from that bundle:)

http://isthereanydeal.com is one of the quickest ways to stay on top of any game sale/deal/bundle out there pretty much, as well as http://www.epicbundle.com and http://www.dealzon.com which are the main 3 I use. There are many other useful sites too, but these 3 pretty much cover it all. They all have Steam groups which will give popup alerts too, and also they have email notifications for deals available as well.

HTH

That would be cool :) I already had all of the other freebies so it would be nice if Banished turns up since I don't have that one yet. But either way this has been a good sale and I got a lot of great games already :D

Are there gonna be more freebies tomorrow? In the afternoon?

No one knows for sure, but I think we're all hoping that Banished makes an appearance as a freebie!

I was in this boat as well - when Dragonfall was close to release Hairbrained Schemes announced an actual retail bundle that would include Shadowrun + DF for a markdown. When it never appeared I ended up buying Shadowrun proper for around $5 off I think? If you can catch it in Flash I'm pretty sure the base is actually $5 LOL. While I never turned around and picked up Dragonfall, I can see (based on what I've read) why that seems to be "the campaign to play" - even though I did enjoy the base game campaign.

Sorry I can't help though :(