@ Future Publishing

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Toneman
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@ Future Publishing

Post by Toneman »

I have no idea whether this particular post will do anything or be read by someone to whom its relevant but here's the story anway.........

I was browsing the store ealrier (and did buy a couple of items to get me going) and I saw a note at the top to the effect 'The Commodore Format, Your Sinclair, Superplay, ACE and C&VG DVDs have been withdrawn from sale due to a request from Future Publishing.' which got me thinking a bit.

Now quite understand that Future want to protect their intellectual properties and if these mags were available to download or buy on DVD from them there's one or two I'd probably get - I was interested in Commodore Format or example. I do remember picking up odd issues largely because the writers were people who's reviews I liked from ZZAP.

So on a whim I headed over to Ebay - seeing if I could pick up a couple of issues. What I found to my surprise and dismay was this :-

http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/retrogeek85/m ... 4340.l2562

Which included most of those magazines and a bunch of others on dvd which are likely to be ripped off of the original scans.

I imagine its an endemic problem in that its relatively easy to produce a Pdf from a bunch of scanned images so I'm sure this is nothing new.

What bugs me Mr Future Publishing is that not only have you stopped me from supporting a site I'd like to support which is trying to archive these mags so people can continue to enjoy the (and incidentally chronicle the history of computer gaming) but also that you've also clearly not gone to the trouble of protecting your own properties on a major auction site when a simple search turns it up straight away!

So please - either stop this guy and no doubt the others who are doing the same - or let ZZAP sell the original work and help keep this site going!

Rant Over

Tony

P.S. I know it won't do anything but it did make me feel better ;)
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Iain
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Post by Iain »

Weird, didn't notice this post originally. Alas there are eBay scammers all over the place and other websites selling Mort's DVDs and even some selling the Future ones.

The eBay ones have been reported over and over again but nothing has been done, see other threads around here to do with it.
Toneman
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Post by Toneman »

Yes I'm aware it must be an endemic problem as I think I said. It's not that which is of the greatest concern. Let me be clear; I hate it, but its one of those things which pagues everything that's digital. What bugs me it that Future have stopped you selling scans of their old and now defunct magazines, and appear to be doing nothing about others selling them. I think its long past time for them to say 'feel free to put them back on your site' if they aren't going to stop the rest. Again Rant over!

Now someone has mentioned on this site a magazine called 'Retro Gamer' which they write for (I hope they pay!). On doing some checking, I saw they do produce DVD's of their magazines (which is great even if the first one is gone dammit! ;) ) If Future were to do that with some of these older titles I wouldn't have much to say really. Clearly they don't consider it commercially viable.

Tony
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Iain
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Post by Iain »

I got one of the Retro Gamer DVDs, very nice to have and good searching. The only down side is the quality of the images in the magazine pages. They can be quite blocky / highly compressed! I assume it was done to fit everything on a single DVD.
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Professor Brian Strain
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Post by Professor Brian Strain »

Toneman wrote:Yes I'm aware it must be an endemic problem as I think I said. It's not that which is of the greatest concern. Let me be clear; I hate it, but its one of those things which pagues everything that's digital. What bugs me it that Future have stopped you selling scans of their old and now defunct magazines, and appear to be doing nothing about others selling them. I think its long past time for them to say 'feel free to put them back on your site' if they aren't going to stop the rest. Again Rant over!

Now someone has mentioned on this site a magazine called 'Retro Gamer' which they write for (I hope they pay!). On doing some checking, I saw they do produce DVD's of their magazines (which is great even if the first one is gone dammit! ;) ) If Future were to do that with some of these older titles I wouldn't have much to say really. Clearly they don't consider it commercially viable.

Tony
Future recently did reprints of an early Edge issue - the quality was very poor, because they had to scan a physical magazine as they no longer had the master prints! The Retro Gamer DVDs have some nice extras on there, although there are some articles missing (particularly on the first DVD).
Toneman
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Post by Toneman »

Well i guess I am trawling ebay then...... it'll be interesting if nothing else!
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