As far as I know, no decent quality scans of these two posters have surfaced anywhere. Personally, I’ll never be able to afford to get originals of these posters. Reproductions are fine with me, however, I just really enjoy the artwork. I recently got hold of high quality scans of both of these posters - on the order of 10000x13000 pixels. I’d be glad to share them with the community via the ifarchive or some other mechanism.
But before I post my scans, I want to get a feel for how the community sees this kind of thing. Am I going to be stepping on copyright sensibilities? There is of course the option that someone might print these scans and try to resell them on ebay as the originals. These two posters (the originals, of course) recently sold on ebay for $800 and $1200.
So what do you all think? What kind of precautions (if any) are warranted here?
This kind of preservation seems to meet no real resistance from Activision. It’s either beneath their radar, beneath their concern, or they honestly understand that it doesn’t harm their claim of rights.
Others will chime in with more expert opinion, I’m sure, but the impression that this kind of thing is A-OK is a pretty consistent vibe, I think (and if you browse through the archive, you’ll find some excellent examples of similar preservations).
I don’t think the IF Archive is the right place. Although I’m willing to be argued around. The Archive has some old Infocom documents (mostly advertisements and the NZT/Status Line newsletter run), but we have never tried to be completist about it and I am hesistant about getting into that as a site goal.
I think infodoc.plover.net would be a good place for the posters, but that’s just an observer’s opinion – I don’t run that site.
I’d be glad to work with the infodoc folks. I’ve sent Gunther an email (the email listed for Roger bounced back to me). If the infodoc site turns out to be a dead end (it doesn’t look like it has been updated in a long time) then I’ll revisit the ifarchive option and/or maybe the infocom gallery site.
As for getting Activision’s permissions, I don’t know how I would go about that. If anyone wants to give me contact info for someone in Activision that is friendly to the IF community and can actually give permission for this sort of thing, I’m certainly fine with that approach as well.
And I’m not keen on the torrent idea. These files aren’t THAT big (the total is around 130MB). I’d rather these scans end up someplace where the IF community can easily find them.
Thanks for the input!
EDIT: I should add that I’m happy to post these on my personal website as well, but again I’d rather they be somewhere more known by the IF community. I.e. finding webspace for the scans isn’t the real problem.
Actually, that’s not necessary. Activision abandoned Infocom leaving the trademark up for grabs. It’s now owned by a guy called Pete Hottelet of Omni Consumer Products LLC. You can read about it here. So, if anything you’d need to ask him.