HOL Hits 50,000 Screens

[BuZz]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Which is not allowed by legal holders ; Watermarking is even maybe protecting us from owners which could ask removal of box scans.

This is your opinion or a stated fact? I very much doubt that the likes of artists like Roger Dean would want anyone putting a watermark on his image. But that is my opinion. How about we ask rather than guessing?

[BuZz]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

Diskshots, Boxshots, Miscshots and so on. Everything that is not screens. But I also think it's mainly a informative site, not a preservation attempt.

from the site:

The Hall Of Light (HOL) is an attempt to catalogue all games that were released commercially for the Commodore Amiga.

This is preservation is it not? collection and preservation of information in regards to Amiga games. The fact that hol has all the originals without watermarks doesn't help the casual surfer and it doesn't give a good impression of the site in my opinion. This data should be open (and unmodified or as close to the original as possible in my opinion).

[TCD]

As bippym said that is not the main goal of HOL. It's about gathering all the information that are present about those games.
And for the watermarks : I think RCK and Cody are the only ones to decide if they are removed or not.

[BuZz]

Sorry a large number of replies here. I gotta fight my corner!

Originally Posted by bippym

SPS is preservation, Hol images (Box scans, disk scans etc) are too low quality to be considered preservation!

A bit off topic but until the format is opened, it isn't really preservation. I can see the day where we have a new project, which plans to reverse engineer the SPS image format. Don't get me wrong here, in that I think its a great idea in general and useful, but why not go the one step further? It even says on the site (or did at least), that at some point it would be gpl'd or similar, but when? in another 20 years ?

[TCD]

I see the point about SPS, but as long they're active it's not so important. But it would be a shame if the project is abandoned and the IPF format is still not open source. I also think EVERYTHING Amiga related need's to be saved in whatever form possible (but I think I'm not the only one here ).
So here's a big for you .

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by BuZz

This is your opinion or a stated fact? I very much doubt that the likes of artists like Roger Dean would want anyone putting a watermark on his image. But that is my opinion. How about we ask rather than guessing?

see my post up, the problem is not material, but service related.

[Predseda]

Extreme ammount of work has been invested to HOL data collecting and I am not sure if it would be good just to let it free. Few years ago a watermark was added to all the pictures to prevent file leeching. Maybe you could get access to the whole collection, but I think all the scans should be kept still watermarked.

[BuZz]

a) it's not your artwork, copyright is with the original artists, and so you shouldn't watermark them.
b) what's the point of preserving stuff if you are going to hold onto it tightly. Just do as exotica does and make the images easily available without watermarks.

I don't get the Amiga attitudes with this stuff.

[Korodny]

I'm with Buzz here. When HOL was started, even regular dumps to Aminet were suggested (by the HOL team, that is), but at some point the fear of being ripped of took over.

HOL is the source of information for Amiga gaming and it gets all the community support - there's nothing to be afraid of. And severely limiting your own users just because some dickhead might try to create a dump, aim for a high google ranking and grab some advertising money ist just too paranoid IMHO.

[DrBong]

Originally Posted by BuZz

a) it's not your artwork, copyright is with the original artists, and so you shouldn't watermark them.
b) what's the point of preserving stuff if you are going to hold onto it tightly. Just do as exotica does and make the images easily available without watermarks.

I don't get the Amiga attitudes with this stuff.

What's this I spy?! Could it be a box scan from Exotica with a watermark??!!

[BuZz]

on the old exotica site many years ago, we added a banner on the bottom of the images. nothing over the image itself. However, it was something I was never happy about, and was connected to making some contributors happy at the time. This was corrected long ago, and all images on the current site are free from such things.

nice try though!

(and yes, I am happy to admit mistakes were made in the past).

[BuZz]

http://www.exotica.org.uk/wiki/File:Alien3.jpg

We don't hide the history of the images, so you can see it was corrected in 2007 as the new wiki based site was being constructed.

[Predseda]

I give up.

[DH]

Many people have helped and contributed to what HOL has achieved, many years (10 actually) of work has gone into scanning, photographing, cropping, adjusting, manipulating, screengrabbing, Sprite ripping, game map ripping, manual pdfing etc etc. It's no wonder there's a watermark.

It's not to say it belongs to HOL, it just adds that reassurance that the hard work done by everyone for HOL isn't completely wasted because of other sites, that would take the scans etc, for their own gratification without mentioning where it came from.

I can't hear any contributor complaining about the watermarks.... I wonder why?

[BuZz]

Originally Posted by DemonHellraiser

It's not to say it belongs to HOL, it just adds that reassurance that the hard work done by everyone for HOL isn't completely wasted because of other sites, that would take the scans etc, for their own gratification without mentioning where it came from.

Maybe you should ask the original artists / copyright holder what they think about the watermark.

but anyway, just because you put work in scanning other peoples copyrighted works, gives you absolutely no rights over the images.

having run ExoticA for 15 years, I can tell you that sharing data and the benefits outweights any paranoia regarding sites using work without attribution.

Removing the watermarks would be the decent and respectful thing to do imho. I'm sure all this will fall on deaf ears though - as my previous post already seems to having read your reply. Still, It's good to bring it up for discussion every now and again, and eventually HOL might do the right thing.

[DrBong]

Originally Posted by Korodny

When HOL was started, even regular dumps to Aminet were suggested (by the HOL team, that is), but at some point the fear of being ripped of took over.

I love it how people make up stuff and pass it off as the "truth" on the net!

The truth of the matter is that an offline version of HOL being made publicly available is still on a very long TODO list of suggested enhancements for HOL. RCK had someone outside the team lined up to make an offline version, but it didn't work out for whatever reason. Unfortunately, RCK has been too busy for some years now with real life to make any great inroads on the TODO list. Many of the team members have been eagerly and patiently waiting for more important features than the offline version to be implemented, but RCK devotes most of the precious little coding time he has to EAB maintenance instead. Go figure!

Originally Posted by BuZz

on the old exotica site many years ago, we added a banner on the bottom of the images. nothing over the image itself. However, it was something I was never happy about, and was connected to making some contributors happy at the time. This was corrected long ago, and all images on the current site are free from such things.

Banners were added to box scans on the old Exotica site in 1998/99. At the time, only you and the guy running MobyGames were really adding banners/watermarks to Amiga content in all the game databases going around that included Amiga stuff. In fact, one could say that Exotica and MobyGames were pioneers in the use of banners/watermarks in online game databases!

As a side note, frankly, I find it hard to believe that you attached banners to game content on Exotica for 8-9 years simply to keep "some contributors happy". I guess HOL has been real lucky compared to Exotica then because we've had no problems with contributors trying to dictate terms. In fact, they've been quite the opposite!

EDIT: Actually you say in an old post in this very thread that you used banners on the old Exotica site to "not stop people from stealing, but perhaps just discourage or encourage them to give credit" - see HERE. Pot, kettle, black!!!

Originally Posted by BuZz

http://www.exotica.org.uk/wiki/File:Alien3.jpg

We don't hide the history of the images, so you can see it was corrected in 2007 as the new wiki based site was being constructed.

What it doesn't tell people is that the banners were added in 1998/99 - at a time on the net when there was no real need for such things!

Is it just me, or is it too early in the New Year for people to be posting like such drama queens??!!

[DH]

Posts moved from HOL Boxart to here

[Korodny]

Originally Posted by DrBong

I love it how people make up stuff and pass it off as the "truth" on the net!

I "make up stuff"? You confirm yourself that an offline version was planned initially (in addition to that, I can search for RCK's statement from a decade ago, if neccessary), while Cody in this very thread confirms that the watermarks are being used to prevent other sites from stealing content (see posting #24).

So which part of my statement did I make up and pass off as the truth?

The truth of the matter is that an offline version of HOL being made publicly available is still on a very long TODO list of suggested enhancements for HOL.

If that is still something the team wants to do, the watermarks don't make any sense at all. Unless you're using "it's on the todo list already" the same way I use it ("go away and leave me alone")

Banners were added to box scans on the old Exotica site in 1998/99.

I don't get your fixation on Exotica's past sins. The web and its users evolved a lot since 1998, and there are plenty of projects now that show that being open makes a lot of sense for both the maintainer and the users. I think it's a good thing Buzz learned from his errors, no? Your replies to him sound a bit like: "you used to be as dumb as us! so there!"

[BuZz]

[edit] I don't think I need to defend myself anymore. I already explained it + what Korodny said.

[s2325]

Could someone tell me if somebody resized all watermarks on HOL screenshots? They are huge now.