New pirate eBay goods: demo DVD

[j_tramiel]

Hallelujah!
Someone with some sense.

Most of the members here will probably be pleased to know that ebay removed my listing because someone reported it as piracy.

(and I never even sold any, so haha, have a good laugh at that)

Absolutely pathetic!

[Hattig]

I don't know why anybody bothers to create anything these days - too many people who are ready to jump on it and make the effort not worthwhile. It's all too common these days, sadly.

I don't have an Amiga any more, but I'd like to watch the demos again (although it wouldn't be quite the same watching them on a DVD than the real thing). Heh, maybe the Oddysey megademo, my third disk was corrupt so I never saw it all.

I think you should contact eBay and explain that the DVD was merely containing videos of the output of Public Domain material, it would be like banning someone selling eBooks of Shakespeare. Maybe courtesy would have dictated that you contact the groups, if they were contactable, but no-one at school ever did that when we copied the demos for each other.

[amigadave]

 :horse:  :horse:  :horse:

Hattig wrote:
It doesn't look illegal to me.

The demos were public domain.

It seems a couple of people can't realise this fact.

When I bought PD disks back in the 90s the fees were higher than disk+postage - they covered the time and effort in running the PD library. In this case £4 seems to be a reasonable price for the effort involved, seeing as around 20 people will probably buy it in the end.

It isn't piracy - this type of behaviour is exactly what the scene encouraged back in the day.

I doubt we'll ever see an apology though. I left AW.net to get away from this type of crass "i'm right, despite the facts" behaviour.

I am not convinced this is piracy or not.  As one poster stated (one that actually has the talent to make demo's) "Demo's are NOT PUBLIC DOMAIN" unless the author has released it into the PD.  Free to copy is not the same as PD.

So, if the demos were not released as PD and they were used without permission, as far as I am concerned (and it appears that many here agree with this opinion) the DVD's are pirated material.  Nobody is getting an apology if its pirated.

My 2 cents, so you can flame on me now.

 :horse:  :horse:  :horse:

[j_tramiel]

Jesus, why can't anybody understand that the WHOLE POINT of demos was to SPREAD them!

Piracy my arse.

90% of the coders for these demos were involved in the piracy scene (cracktro's etc,) anyway.

Unbe-flipping-lieveable!

I wasn't spreading the demos, I was spreading Video of the demos.

You don't see the whole gorilla population queueing up to sue David Attenborough for making videos of them without getting their permission do you?

[Piru]

90% of the coders for these demos were involved in the piracy scene (cracktro's etc,) anyway.

Uhm, I have to disagree here. During the early days it was true mostly, but later on the scenes separated. Demoscene has been considered legal for aeons. Demoscene also has pretty low tolerance on loaning someone elses work (ripping, again much more common the early days).

Anyway: Two bads don't make one good.

I wasn't spreading the demos, I was spreading Video of the demos.

Makes no difference IMO.

You don't see the whole gorilla population queueing up to sue David Attenborough for making videos of them without getting their permission do you?

The problem here must be that the gorillas and humans can't communicate well enough. This should be no problem between demo compilation builder and demo authors (both are probably human).

Another problem might be that copyright law doesn't consider animals as individuals having rights. Dunno really, maybe it's possible in some countries. Go gorillas, sue the {bleep}!

[j_tramiel]

Well that settles it then...

IF YOU DISTRIBUTE DEMOS YOU ARE A PIRATE!

I'm so glad that is clear now, I hope you are all taking notice.

Can I just end this silly thread by bringing your attention to this:

[CdreCommodore]

If you had even bothered looking at the ebay listing before spouting off you would have seen that my ad contained 3 supresize pics, and a thumbnail gallery listing, this cost about £2 to list. Get your facts straight!

Your images of the DVD menus are hosted on a Geocities site.  That's free.

The one image that was hosted on eBay's image hosting service is 400x400.  That's the "standard picture" size, and is also free.

The gallery image costs 0.13 GBP/$0.35 USD, or one-tenth of the 2 GBP/$3.50 USD you claimed.

At this point you are, inexplicably, telling bald-faced lies.  It's no wonder you don't want your mates coming over here to see this.  Even the people on *this* site who were on your side are going to have start reconsidering.

I never went anywhere near WinUAE, all the demos were captured using an external MPEG encoder hooked up to a real Amiga.

The method you used to move the content to a different medium does not defeat my argument:  You did not make any of the content.  You used a hardware device to capture the demos, and you used some ready-made software to create menus and burn it all to DVD.  That does not entitle you to sell it, and you very well know that you wouldn't be able to sell your work if you didn't have any content to add value to it.

You are forgetting that not everyone has the ability or knowledge to download and burn DVD's.

The fact that some people know how to burn DVDs and some don't has no relevance to the argument.

DEMAND?

Yes, demand.  "Well if you don't want to pay for it, you aint getting it."

You didn't do this because you are a fan.  You could simply torrent it or post it to Usenet or seek hosting at files.amiganostalgia.com or the Scene FTP server, but you don't want to.  

You did not want to share it with fans.  You wanted to make money.  You said so yourself.  "Well I was hoping to make a bit of cash from it, so its on ebay now.  Doing a torrent would be a bit like shooting meself in the foot."

[Piru]

@j_tramiel

You mean this perhaps?

[j_tramiel]

Hehe, I'm not wasting my time with you losers any more.

Sitting there all high and mighty, even though your hard drives are full of ripped .adf's and stuff.

like I said, its pathetic.

You can be safe in the knowledge that this DVD will never see the light of day thanks to this forum.  So, why carry on arguing.

you won, feels good?

goodbye

[McVenco]

omgwtfbqqLOLOL funniest thread evar!




But seriously: can't we just copy this whole thread to AW.net and get on with our lives in an adult way over here?
True: I'm sure there are some of the original authors who aren't pleased that their stuff is sold this way, but be realistic: we're talking about a guy who made a compilation just for fun and good memories for some people. I would give you every right to rant if Cloanto decided to put some demo's on Amiga Forever, but come on now... 3 pages threadmolesting over some old software and demos EVERYONE can get for free?

Damn... now I got myself into it as well!!
(curses and vows never to post in this thread again :lol: )

[AntonioX]

I do feel sorry for the guy he was not even selling games,
I just come form ebay as I want to get some new CD32
games and I have just seen alot of pirated games there. Could you nice guys report the real pirates.
Here are some links:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/megadrive-150-games-snes-amiga-mega-cd-NES_W0QQitemZ8274399357QQcategoryZ3653QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/TEAM-17-ANTHOLOGY-CD32-AMIGA-CD_W0QQitemZ8273022779QQcategoryZ98929QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/POWERFUL-AMIGA-EMULATOR-GAMES-PC-CD-ROM-Sealed_W0QQitemZ8274326237QQcategoryZ98928QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

[Lando]

AntonioX wrote:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/megadrive-150-games-snes-amiga-mega-cd-NES_W0QQitemZ8274399357QQcategoryZ3653QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

That one is a big collection of used carts and consoles.  I can't see anything pirated there?

[AntonioX]

ooops my mistake and how about the others like that team 17 one?

I cannot believe that this s##t is still going on. How on earth can people still be complaining about this.

1: The guy is selling them for some profit, but it represents a lot of work and at the price he is hardly going to become a millionare.

2: Copyright/Piracy - Get a life peeps. If it is illegal I am sure that he will get sued (if anyone could be bothered)which I very much doubt.

3: Great compilation, I have been recommending it to my friends. Lots of copies are going to Southern England soon.

Keep up the good work dude, and dont't be "put off" by a small number of pedantic small minded ass###es!

[gizmomelb]

I believe that by the sheer act of these demos being available through public domain collections, the authors have released (whether intentionally or not) their rights to ownership and thus stop anyone making copies of their works.

They may still hold copyright of the work - depending on the country the creaters were from, the year that the program was created and whether or not they have the copyright symbol somewhere in their production.

I agree that j_tramiel cannot sell the DVD as his own work, but he seems well within the law to charge a modest extra for his time, materials and effort for creating a compilation of public domain works.

[EvilGuy]

gizmomelb wrote:
I agree that j_tramiel cannot sell the DVD as his own work, but he seems well within the law to charge a modest extra for his time, materials and effort for creating a compilation of public domain works.

By the looks of things its a DVD of video recordings of the demos. Big deal.

Then he has sat down and made a nice fancy front end for the DVD.

Video of the demos, the copyright there is questionable. It'd cost so much $$$ just to work it out in the courts that you'd be a nitwit to even try and sue.

.. and he'd own the copyright to the DVD front end, so if you did get his DVD and you did put it online, then "you" would be the pirate.

Either way, the DVD looked cool from the screen shots. Shame he won't produce it.