Re: IF archive on CD-ROM


26 Oct 1995 09:05:09 GMT

In article <46mgak$ju@flood.xnet.com>,
Jason Compton <jcompton@flood.xnet.com> wrote:
>Jun Akiyama (akiy@mother.cdrom.com) wrote:
>
>: As for contacting the authors and divvying up the "profits" and such,
>: it's a pretty big project to undertake.

Indeed. The problem with authors getting a share of the profit is that
there are so many authors. I'd guess at at least a hundred different
people.

>: As for me and for our
>: company, with this big public outrising that I'm encountering on this
>: proposed project, I've pretty much decided to drop the project. (It
>: was going to be a "side" project in which I had some interest (I love
>: IF games), but there seems to be too much negative response for such a
>: project by a "big" company rather than by an individual. Oh well.)

Excuse me, but *what* "public outrising" are you talking about? What
negative response?

>I didn't notice any negative response at all.

...except for your own, of course.

The problem as I see it is *not* that people are opposed to the
CD-ROM. In fact, I think most, if not all, of the if-archive authors
would be for it.

The problem is copyright. Most of the material on the if-archive is
copyrighted. Many of the games have copyright notices that explicitly
forbid commercial redistributuion without the author's consent.

This is not an opinion, this is not whining. This is *fact*. If you
don't contact the authors and obtain their permissions, you will be
infringing their copyrights. Period.

Now, I'm for the idea of a CD-ROM. If you contact me, I'll very
probably give you the permission to include my games, even if you
don't pay me a nickel. If you don't ask, howver, I'll be considerably
less than amused.

Magnus