[rescue] Amiga videos online for your enjoyment

[Bill Bradford]

On Wed, May 23, 2007 at 08:10:14PM +0100, Mark wrote:
> The community, and those that use it, maintain it, love it, and want  
> to keep it's memories alive is far from dead. AmigaForever was, and  
> remains, a community effort for the community. They charge for it to  
> cover liscencing costs, production costs, and the cost of  
> distribution and to my mind the price is wholly reasonable, given the  
> levels of effort that went into it's production.

Really?  It looks to me like its "Repackaging WinUAE and some ROM files and
some games and a limited Workbench setup".  

As for production costs, DVDs cost less than a dollar each to manufacture
(with nice plastic hardshell cases in full color).  AF "Premier" edition is
one CD and two DVDs.  Figure at *most*, production costs for the three-disc
set is $3.  They sell it for $60.

I bought the "Video Edition" of AF because I already *have* everything else
they distribute; it has a very basic set of software on one of the DVDs,
but I've not touched it because I've already got EUAE/WinUAE and kickstart/
ROM files.

Sure, ideals and community spirit may tie in somewhat, but at its core, 
AF is a product (mostly slapped together from other people's efforts) sold
by Cloanto to make a profit.  I don't see anything wrong with that, but 
I also don't think they have exclusive copyrights on videos that have been
floating around the community for (in some cases) more than twenty years.

If the videos were the "superresolution-enhanced" versions they refer to
on http://www.amigaforever.com/videos/, I would feel differently about 
putting them online - however, as they exist right now I don't see that
Cloanto has done anything but put existing videos on DVD and add menus
and in some cases subtitles.

Bill

-- 
Bill Bradford 
Houston, Texas