[HN Gopher] Copyright and the Demo Scene
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Copyright and the Demo Scene
Author : zdw
Score : 66 points
Date : 2025-03-14 06:38 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.datagubbe.se)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.datagubbe.se)
| alnwlsn wrote:
| Related, and a personal favorite of mine: DEF CON 18 - Jason
| Scott - You're Stealing It Wrong! 30 Years of Inter-Pirate
| Battles
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCAL_YgYiP0
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| Fascinating read and I've no sympathy for a scene that eats
| itself based on its own "copyright does not exist" mantra. No
| wonder Timbaland ripped them off. Good to get a lesson in the
| community.
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| Strange to see this comment from days ago get listed as 2 hours
| ago.
|
| What gives?
| ziddoap wrote:
| It's called the second-chance pool.
|
| Interesting posts that don't get a lot of attention go into
| the pool, and are re-injected to the (lower part of the)
| front page. Timestamps (of the post & the comments) get
| updated when this happens.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/pool
| msephton wrote:
| A great read. Even today in the indie game developer scene
| there's a huge range of opinion about what constitutes borrowing,
| copying, stealing, ripping, and grifting.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Taking a guess based on the text in the cited intro, I wonder if
| the problem wasn't one of _copyright_ , but one of _credit_.
|
| Even in a group that doesn't care about _copyright_ at all, it 'd
| be tacky to copy someone else's code _and not credit them_ , or
| to pretend it's all your own work.
| warpspin wrote:
| > Taking a guess based on the text in the cited intro, I wonder
| if the problem wasn't one of copyright, but one of credit.
|
| Might be true. Not familiar with Amiga scene but the following
| actions were always mostly ok in the European C64 scene,
| provided credit was given to original author:
|
| * Re-using music in whole
|
| * Re-using fonts
|
| * SOMETIMES re-using small parts of graphics
|
| It always was not ok and considered "stealing" to re-use
| complete demo routines though for example.
|
| People did get away (reputation wise) with re-using code
| routines for tools, though, provided credits where given and
| the re-released tool somehow improved on the original.
|
| Another thing which many people disliked for example was re-
| using "instruments" from music, even when melodies changed.
| While the players were mostly open tooling, specific
| instruments/sounds for those players still had to be crafted
| first and I witnessed a couple of conflicts when people reused
| the instruments.
|
| Nothing was written in stone, though. A concept such like
| licenses did not exist.
| chrismcb wrote:
| It was rare to reuse graphics, even fonts. But music was a
| bit more reusable with credit of course. It also depended on
| your group, but most groups had an artist, not every group
| had a musician.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| This sounds like an important aspect.
|
| Another one that in my opinion distinguishes the scene
| behaviour from the classical copyright system is that the
| latter allows the copyright holder to use the state violence to
| squeeze out damage payment from copyright infringers.
|
| Applying this kind of violence seems not to be accepted in the
| scene.
| Animats wrote:
| Not to be confused with the "demoscene".[1]
|
| [1] https://www.demoscene.info/
| crtasm wrote:
| That's the demoscene the article is referring to. What makes
| you think otherwise?
| zfxfr wrote:
| I have been into the demoscene for the last 25 years and never
| heard of this website demoscene.info. It looks like the kind of
| website a domainer will make to "increase" the price of a low
| value domain name.
| crtasm wrote:
| https://www.demoscene.info/miscellaneous/ the logo in the
| footer seems to show it's made by the same people who run
| Evoke
| darkmighty wrote:
| In my view cracking is great because it democratizes games for
| those who can't afford them. If you can afford it (and the
| game+company is good), then buy it. That's how you can kind of be
| for-cracking and for-commercial games at the same time.
|
| Personally, it would be great if everything was free and everyone
| used good judgement to pay creators. But I admit maybe a large
| chunk would just pay nothing, including some wealthy people who
| could well just chip in. While enlightenment doesn't come...
| sedatk wrote:
| I think the article dives at the shallow end of the pool, and
| only comes up with "demoscene's approach to copyright is self-
| contradictory". Yes, but does it matter? Is demoscene the only
| sub-culture with that kind of moral code overrides? Don't we see
| the same in religions, cartels, NFT grifters, and people who use
| AI generated images?
|
| Are these people who just create stuff for the sake of art,
| "credz" and self-entertainment really the only outstanding
| example? Are they the most important?
|
| This is not a demoscene topic, but a human topic. Narrowing it
| down to demoscene doesn't serve much purpose, IMHO.
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