Well I've bid my time on here long enough playing by the polite 'rules' of not publishing other people's files. But I think that after all this time, it's getting a bit stupid.
I haven't got Days Of Sorcery, but if I had it, I would share it. Technically it's software piracy, but in reality it is only things like this that will keep our little machine alive. Most of the author's of the original software probably never give the SAM a second thought and I certainly think that a system whereby they are published on a site somewhere and the authors are allowed to ask them to be withdrawn if they wish is preferable to the current system where people who want to find out what the sam is all about cannot. That recent message from the Young McKenzie was the most incredible thing I've read on here - does he really believe that holding the secondary rights to software for a machine which even ten years ago was only a 'cult' thing is the route to a quick fortune?! It's a joke that we are still protecting the commercial rights of some of these authors - there is NO money to be made from the scene with regard to OLD software. If people wanted to buy it, they would have bought it ten years ago when it was published! So I say - Publish and be damned! Let's get a website up and running and dump EVERYTHING we've got on there that is SAM related and then maintain it as a homage to what was, once, a great machine. Nobody else is going to do this. We are almost the last bastions of the SAM World, even the original manufacturers of the machine show no particular interest in it anymore. Or of course, we could wait until the natural copyright expires in around 65 years and do it then. Most of us will be dead, and those who aren't will not care any more. But sitting around and talking about doing something, although almost a great tradition of the Sam scene, will only end up with us losing the last remainging interest that reamins in the machine. -----Original Message----- It would always be best but it's not practical and as time goes by the harder it will be. My own opinion is that we (this group in general) know roughly what shouldn't be distributed and anything else is okay to go on NVG with a disclaimer that it will be removed immediately if the author does complain. I think that's about as fair as we're going to get really - otherwise we start to be pointlessly anal. Gavin
