New pirate eBay goods: demo DVD

[Tomas]

wish the Mindcandy guys would hurry up and finish their (legit) Amiga demo DVD project. Are there any other fan compilations out there besides the Amiga Museum DVDs that can be downloaded?  There is a link at that other message board to two C64 demo DVDs you can download via BitTorrent.

So what is the difference in the legal status with this project and the Mindcandy one? Do the mindcandy project somehow get permission from all the demo makers? I dunno what this guy is selling them at, but i thought it was perfectly legal to distribute public domain stuff, as long as he/she only take charge for the media costs itself and shipping..

I was thinking of doing something similar myself, but instead host them on the internet for free in either mpeg2 or some mpeg4 format. I dont see how this would be illegal, as long as i dont make a profit from it. All i want to do is make them avaliable for the people without an Amiga.

[Tomas]

j_tramiel wrote:
Hmmm, I read this thread after I was informed of it and COULDN'T BELIEVE what the first 3 people who posted were spouting about!!!

Amiga Demos were released into the Public Domain, I am not even offering the code for sale, I am offering a nostalgic bit of video.  So please explain how this is piracy?

As for my other Amiga related DVD, well its full of PUBLIC DOMAIN software.  No kickstart roms, no commercial games, just PD from my personal stash, that I decided to convert into ADF's and create a compilation, heck there are even some of my own PD creations on there.  So just what is your problem here?

The only reason I have them listed at such a cost is to cover listing fees, paypal fees, media costs, postage costs, printing costs and of course my own hard work that went into these.

It was supposed to be a kind of service for people who had Amigas in the old days, but didn't have the means of reliving their youth, by which I mean an Amiga / Emulator and the demo files.  You must remember, not everyone who loved the Amiga and the Demo Scene is still 1337, many people wouldn't have the first idea about running an emulator or even creating a DVD.

And another thing, the whole essence of the Demo Scene was to show off what you could make an Amiga do and things like this can only help to spread the word about the talents of the demo coders.

There, thats my rant over.

I really cannot see what your problem is here, and whats more I seem to be getting blamed for single-handedly bringing down the Commodore empire!!

Its people like you 3 that actually damage the scene, because everyone is sh*t-scared of being called a theif / pirate / etc..

PS  I didn't even know about this Mindcandy thing until I read it here.  I made a similar thing on VHS back in the mid 90's and thought it would be cool to do a more up to date one using the technology of the day.  Who says though, that my DVD and the Mindcandy DVD's cannot exist in the same market?  Aren't we living in a democracy where freedom of choice is the order of the day.

Whups, I'm ranting again.  Sorry for the length of this post, but I just had to get it off my chest.

Thanks for reading, I will shut up now.

If what you say is true, then i totally agree with you and respect what you are doing. This sounds perfectly legal to me and actually is something that i think is a good thing for the community. If this would be illegal, then what about the amiga demoscene archive, back2roots and all other websites hosting public domain stuff?? Sad how certain people like to scream piracy over everything..

[Tomas]

The problem, in my not so humble opinion, is taking the work of others and selling it for a profit. I sincerely doubt that demo creators created content so that other people could take and make money from it.

I dont know what he is charging for these demo dvds, since the link was removed by a moderator. But if he is telling the truth, then he is simply not making profit but instead only take a charge for the media costs, shipping and such.. This is what they do with free linux distributions as well.. You can download it for free over internet, but you must pay a small charge to have a cd shipped over to your address. Without this charge, this would not be possible without getting economically ruined.

[Tomas]

Like I said, he had five DVDs listed at 4 GBP each, 20 GBP total, approximately $35 USD.

Does that include shipping? if not, then i agree that this is a bit much if this is supposed to be a non profit project, unless he pressed the cds professionally instead of burning.

I can understand why Mindcandy must ask permission, since that is more of a commerical project.
The sad part there is that alot of the groups are now broken up and probably very hard to reach these days.
I already bought their pc demo compilation a couple of years back. My only complaint there was that it was ntsc only, which is in my opinion a very inferiour standard compared to pal. Good to see that they are now doing it in both pal and ntsc format.

[Tomas]

I usually have no problem with my demos and stuff being included on DVD's, but I do think the authors of these DVD's should have the common courtesy of asking for permission, especially if they're going to sell these disks, no matter what amount of money is involved.

So what should you then do when this said group does not exist anymore?? let the demos vanish from the face of the earth? Taking charge for the shipping and media costs does not equal selling, since the person who is doing it earn zero profit for the job of transferring the demos to video. Also this would mean that it would be just as illegal to host most of these older demos on the internet for free, as it does not state in the copyright that these files can be hosted on the internet medium. So i guess you should ask these non existing groups for permission for that as well then  :-x

The simple fact is that most demos are released in public domain for free, and can be distributed as much as you want as long as you do not make any PROFIT from it.

What about all the amiga magazines with demos cds back in the day? They also released a bunch of PD stuff without asking for permission and alot of people actually bought the demo magazines for the demo cd/floppy disk.

But as i said, i do not know about this particular case.. because $35 sounds a bit much to cover just the media costs, unless that also covers shipping to the whole world.