Wow, I registered just to say this: As a scanner of old videogame magazines, I sincerely hope that this website and all others will do me the favor of NEVER writing an article about anything I've scanned. This same thing happened a couple of years back. Issues of Nintendo Power which had been available at Internet Archive FOR YEARS got taken down within days of some site like this one posting an article about their availability, which was then picked up by dozens of other news sites. That kind of exposure forces Nintendo to play their hand, and the stuff gets taken down (from the Internet Archive, anyway. Those files are all still available at the place they originated from in the first place.)
Magazine (or strategy guide) preservation is a moral grey area, in that as many people have pointed out, the material is long out of print and will never be reprinted, so making it available isn't financially damaging anyone. But it's still technically violating copyright, so if someone decides to take issue with it, there's no defense. So PLEASE, if you find something online that someone has scanned for preservation, download it, enjoy it, but for god's sake DON'T WRITE A NEWS ARTICLE ABOUT IT. Thank you.
Comments 1
Re: Nintendo Issues Copyright Strike Against Scanned Super Mario 64 Guide From 1996
Wow, I registered just to say this: As a scanner of old videogame magazines, I sincerely hope that this website and all others will do me the favor of NEVER writing an article about anything I've scanned. This same thing happened a couple of years back. Issues of Nintendo Power which had been available at Internet Archive FOR YEARS got taken down within days of some site like this one posting an article about their availability, which was then picked up by dozens of other news sites. That kind of exposure forces Nintendo to play their hand, and the stuff gets taken down (from the Internet Archive, anyway. Those files are all still available at the place they originated from in the first place.)
Magazine (or strategy guide) preservation is a moral grey area, in that as many people have pointed out, the material is long out of print and will never be reprinted, so making it available isn't financially damaging anyone. But it's still technically violating copyright, so if someone decides to take issue with it, there's no defense. So PLEASE, if you find something online that someone has scanned for preservation, download it, enjoy it, but for god's sake DON'T WRITE A NEWS ARTICLE ABOUT IT. Thank you.