Denial

Hi all
I am sorry to say that i am going to delete my site. It has become apparent that persons have been taking the .tap files that i spent many many hundreds of hours archiving, and removing the small text files inside each zip file and archiving them elsewhere.
I think they must have done it in one go as my web pages were suspended for a few days as it exceeded the download limits ijmposed by my ISP.
I have a few other tapes which have been in my possesion for a few months now, i would have hosted them for all to have and use but now i just do not see the point in carrying on just for these to be plundered and hosted elsewhere.
Its nothing to do with big headedness or wanting the credit for doing it, its just the principal of the whole thing. If these guys want it so badly as to spend the time removing the small text files i had inside each .zip file, sure carry on, obtain the tapes yourselves, convert them yourselves, host them yourselves.
I have had a wonderfull time in the vic community and will still pop in occasionly to see how things are developing best wishes to all and i do hope one day ALL these old gems are saved, im going to save as many as i can

Arma.

Arma wrote:It has become apparent that persons have been taking the .tap files that i spent many many hundreds of hours archiving, and removing the small text files inside each zip file and archiving them elsewhere.
I think they must have done it in one go as my web pages were suspended for a few days as it exceeded the download limits ijmposed by my ISP.

That sucks!

Do you know who might be doing it? Have you found the files hosted elsewhere? Point us at 'em. I think we should find a solution to this before pulling a favorite site!

Arma wrote:I am sorry to say that i am going to delete my site.

Not as sorry as I am to hear you say that.

Its nothing to do with big headedness or wanting the credit for doing it, its just the principal of the whole thing.

Please forgive what might sound like an inflammatory question but I must ask, what is the principle of the whole thing? It's laudable that your motivation was neither fame nor adulation and I respect and appreciate the efforts you've made to prevent the software from falling into obscurity. The thing is, taking down your archive empowers those who have been removing the credits because they will now control the only publicly available source for the archives. As despicable as their actions may be, I would hope that you wouldn't let it it discourage you from achieving your goal. In fact, if your goal is preservation then having multiple repositories could be looked upon as a silver lining because you won't have to pay for as much bandwidth and your archives will be available to a wider audience.

Food for thought. I hope you'll reconsider your decision.

Anyone who cares about the VIC and would want those files already knows or would soon know who preserved them. That is, if they become part of any VIC community by talking to another vic owner.

I'm really sorry to here of Arma's site removal.

It is a great resource, even just to have listing of all the tape based games out there.

Most of the games I had never heard of before my first visit (several years ago).

How about keeping type in section online? This may add a bit of motivation for us to do some typing once again.

That's really sad..

I only discovered your site a few days ago and was really looking forward to trying some of the programs, many of which I had never heard of before.

I think it's too important a resource to lose, to be honest.. who would do such a thing? Doesn't make any sense..

Maybe if you had a site where people had to log on first, in order to verify who was accessing the files?

-G

I know a while back on Denial there was a guy trying to form a new site (think he was from Germany or something) and I caught him stealing from Arma's site and I put him in his place for doing that here on Denial...is the f-head back again?

Like to find the thread here and track him down to police his site again

Brian

Here's an idea: How about burning all those files to some CD's that we could all buy, helping you offset whatever expenses you might have incurred exceeding your limit, and getting the files into the hands of people who care.

DigitalQuirk's idea is excellent! I hope it is given some consideration.

Arma,

There are a few bright lights out there in the world which are holding the flame of the Vic20 high and proud. Denial is one such place, as was your excellent site.

It is such a true pleasure to be able to revisit software that a person literally hasn't played in over 20 years. Or better yet, to finally experience something that you had only dreamed about playing when you were 12 or 13. Everyone in the Vic community knows you and your site and we know how much work it was to put together your great library of TAPs.

There will always be people who will try and mess things up. The important thing is to not let them get the best of you. Look at Wikipedia.

Don't give in. You are letting the terrorists win.

Mac

I cannot believe that was a sabotage, who may do this ? I think there isn't money interest in these files so why just a demonstration ? i wish to believe that was some sort of a big mistake or Hardware/Software problem, which kind of server use your provider ? Windows/Linux/Other otherwise someone knows your password, i think that you may put online your tap files again in another server (Linux preferably) using new password with a secure log (HTTPS, FTPS) and obviously change password frequently.
I was planning to convert other TAPs for the community Arghhh.....

Arma: If someone else of us would offer to host the archive - complete with your credits of course - would you consider that? I can't imagine the bandwidth use is incredibly big, and I'm sure there are ISPs that are more relaxed to this kind of hosting than others. As other people said, make it a site with logins so you can track who downloaded what and how many times. Not that one needs a download quota to begin with, but just to keep it at a fair level.

Or perhaps you are of the opinion that since you did all the work, either you should host the archive or noone should? That is a bit regretful opinion in that case. Many of us archived cartridges, tapes etc and put on Zimmers and other sites just to share and have everything in one place. I suppose an announcement like you just did may lead to more people rushing to your place and capture it all before you close it, leading to even more bandwith usage on your part.

I don't see what the problem is. It's not your games (basically, it's piracy), and mirroring makes sure that they do what they were intended to do; get played by people. I'm sure everyone's downloaded games without paying attention to who dumped them.

For what it's worth, they already appear to be gone. It's a shame because whoever ripped them off is now the only person who can make them available again. Talk about empowering the wrong person.

You know, long before I joined Denial I discovered that I had a rather sizable (56MB zipped) archive of VIC-20 software. I knew that Schema was a VIC-20 enthusiast and was a member here so I shared my collection with him safe in the knowledge that it would get into the hands of the community at large. You can find his post about it here. I just searched back through my email to find our exchange about the collection and found that Schema felt the best way to get the collection into distribution was to share the it with Arma. I assume my collection was merged into his and is now, regrettably, unavailable. Perhaps it is best for these things to be available from multiple sources.

The cynic in me can't help but wonder if Schema or I was credited for those taps...

I'm really going to miss Arma's site. I often used to go there just to browse through the screen shots, even if I didn't indend to play the game.

It's a complicated issue. Logically, you'd say that lots of people donated programs and TAPs to the archive, knowing that a central repository is the best thing for the VIC-20 community. But emotions get involved, and I can understand how Arma must feel having someone leech it all from behind his back. It would probably have been different if the person approached Arma with his ideas, and asked for permission.

Ultimately, idrougge is correct, most of us don't own the original software, and are certainly not the copyright holder, so what we're really talking about is the effort that has gone into archiving all the files, not the contents of them per-say.

It's got me worrying about what other sites may disappear. It'd be good to be able to buy a CD/DVD image of the site and get updates sent reguarly.

Just my 2c worth (less tax)

--hawk