Magnetic Pages Article | 1993-10-14 | 6KB | 23 lines
MPARTICLE
~fg>fg>
>fg>~g?
[6";32;41m PIRACY
[0m& This issue contains a review of 242&by Virtual Dreams of Fairlight and an&article by the "main organizer of the&UK division of Fairlight". Fairlight&are best known for their cracking of
software protection.& Firstly I thought long and hard&before I included their addresses in&the magazine. I finally decided to as&they're widely available anyway, with&one being in the Grapevine 15 issue&and the others in the demo itself. And&as the coder of 242 is trying to sell&his routines he deserves some help in
the right direction.& Some of you may be wondering why I&give equal prominence in the magazine&to demos and scene productions in&general, (whether by cracking groups&or not), as I do to PD and shareware&applications. The main reason is&because I consider them to be&artistically and culturally important.& The artistic side is reasonably&easy to understand. Demos, slideshows&and music disks are obviously art of&some type if you're not the prejudiced&kind. Most people though haven't got&used to the idea that a monitor screen&is a suitable place for art to be&viewed and consider the computer to be&something like the potter's kiln&rather than the artist's canvas. Scene&people though take it for granted that&the monitor is computer art's rightful
place of display.& The cultural significance of the&scene is a lot harder to define as I&can't think of anything similar that's&happened before in human history. It's&only possible due to the ability of&computer disks to be perfectly&duplicated. If film had been as cheap,&as easy to view and duplicate (and&erase) and as easy to transmit as a&floppy disk then something similar&might have happened at the beginning&of the century and our lives would be&utterly different now. Film wasn't&like that so the 20th century has run the course we all know and hate.& Culturally, the 20th century has&been dominated by film, TV, radio,&sound recordings and the mass&production of the written word in&newspapers, magazines and books. If&you want to know something then you&choose one of those media. Except for&the instant broadcasting of&information that TV and radio can&provide the scene has duplicated all&the above in one form or another. Only&the limits imposed by the amount of&information a floppy can hold has&imposed restrictions on what's been
done so far.& There's one important difference&though between the scene and those&20th century mediums and that's who&controls them. In the case of the old&mediums it's somebody else. In the&case of this new one it's those who
use it.& With self-production being the norm&and not the exception in this new&medium control (and therefore power)&has been lost by those who have had a&stranglehold on it up until now. A&writer no longer needs a publisher&before his work is read widely. An&artist no longer needs a gallery&before the public can see his&pictures. A musician no longer needs a&record deal before a recording can be&made and an audience hears it. If&cheap, writable CDs become available&with full-motion video capability then&film makers will have the same&freedoms. And all spread via modems or
through the post.& I'm sure there's already lots of&people in the scene who look forward&to the next issue of Grapevine with&lots more anticipation than they do&for any paper publication, or for the&next demo from their favourite group&than any record from a music group. As&those involved in the scene mature we&can assume their productions will
mature along with them.& This is why scene productions get&the full treatment in this mag. I know&the scene was born out of piracy but&it was also what created the thousandsBof disks of demos, music, magazines and slideshows that are legalBto swap and for some now the only stuff worth swapping and the!major reason for owning an Amiga.B By not ignoring a demo made by a cracking group it willBhopefully get it into their thick skulls that there's somethingBmore worthwhile they can do with their coding talents other thanBripping off somebody elses work. Who after all would want to beBremembered for cracking some long forgotten game when they couldBinstead have some chart topping productions to their credit? Only
(.txt)