Online IF collection - new site

As I was running out of GoogleDrive space, on a suggestion from Matt_W I switched to MEGA. The download link is below.

mega.co.nz/#F!LkkmWZQS!5v2eiVbVtcwwii6IVj7rwQ

Before I delete everything from my GoogleDrive I’d just like to know whether this new MEGA site is easily accessible by everyone, and whether download speed is acceptable. Please let me know.

To recap, this is an online repository of my IF collection. It’s pretty extensive, and as complete as I could make it. Inform and web-based games are already sorted, the unsorted ones - and there’s a lot - I sort as I play, and are currently lumped in a “Pending” folder.

It’s also available for everyone to use, and MEGA makes it a bit easier than GoogleDrive. You can download folders as ZIP. Navigation also seems better.

It takes a while to load at first for me (several minutes), but then it seems to work okay.

I had that happen to me too, and it worried me. I think it’s because it’s loading a lot of stuff at once, but once it’s loaded, unlike GoogleDrive, it’s smooth sailing.

If you’re able to navigate it properly after that load, I think that’s ok. What browser are you using? I’m on Firefox.

As you probably remember, Mega sometimes sails a bit close to the wind legally and their last site disappeared abruptly, so I’d recommend having a contingency plan–but in your case that just means finding a new host, since I remember you have some very solid offline backups.

Oh, it kind of looks like this doesn’t have URLs that I can grab and feed into Parchment for online play. The Google Drive archive is much more suitable to my interests in that way. For that reason if it’s not too hard not to delete everything from the Google Drive it’d be nice (for me) if that stayed up.

I’m using Safari, which the site complains about at first. But I was able to navigate, so I think it works.

EDIT: It works great on Firefox. Really impressive collection!

Exactly. Changing from GD to Mega was super-easy.

I do remember the megaupload fiasco. I think that a guy would learn from his mistakes, and MEGA looks as reputable as any other cloud service. As you say, I have reliable backups (have to back them up to a DVD or four pretty soon, too), so if the guy screws up I’ll be covered.

It’s because MEGA encrypts everything, and I rather wish it didn’t. I didn’t find a way to change that, either.

I’ll leave the GD backup on for a while longer (though it’s no longer updated), but I’ll need the space shortly for more personal things. If you happen to know of a similar service that does allow you to grab urls, let me know!

caleb - Right-o, many thanks. And thanks for the kind words. :slight_smile: Enjoy as needed.

God, 14.88 GB of files?? That’s really enormous for IF games, although there are thousands of them!!

It includes feelies and multimedia-based browser games and .exe files and dos games, and some of them - like 1893 - really are quite big…

…but yeah, it’s frickin’ huge. :slight_smile:

IT STILL CAN’T MATCH THE SIZE OF GTA 5!!! XD XD

Ok, it’s done. I’ve updated the link on my sig, the GoogleDrive collection (already out of date) is gone.

Say, I’d like for this link to be a bit more visible. I mean, let’s say that you’re looking for a specific game… I’d like that the first places you’d look for that game would be IFDB, the archive, and my collection (in that order, I guess). Does anyone have any suggestion of anywhere I could post the link?

I think everyone who’s seen it agrees that this is not a flaky, incomplete thing. :slight_smile: I’m hoping it could be useful. And for that it needs to be visible.

Bumpitty bumpitty bump.

The reason for this bump is to let anyone who might be interested…

…and quite a few people who definitely aren’t…

…know that I’ve sorted all the TADS games in my collection. There are reasons for this, and in due time I’ll be very happy to spread the news, but in the meantime just know that, along with Inform and Web-Based, the TADS folder should be complete for perusal. If you’re looking for a TADS game, you can look there.

If you’re looking for it and can’t find it, let me know and we’ll both look together in the big wide web, and if I find it I put it in my collection, and there’ll be much rejoicing. Yay.

By the way, DAMN there were a lot of AIF games written for TADS. I thought ADRIFT was the winner on that regard, due to how easy the language is to use - and maybe it still is, but TADS sure has a lot more AIF than I’d expect.

Is this legal? Are there copyrighted materials within that repository?

If so; tsk tsk.

We’ve many times said it’s inappropriate to post illegal download links here.

David C.

Erm…

…I’ve been talking about my collection for months, and said many times that if I let anything commercial in there to please tell me so I can remove it, and in fact I have removed some games quite awhile ago, and all of this is in the “readme” of my collection, and I even said publicly I’d be including the Textfyre games since they were now free…

…so where the heck did that come from now?

TL;DR: It should be legal. There should be no copyrighted materials within that repository. But hey, thanks for assuming the worst and running with that assumption to chide me.

You’re welcome! (hey, I’m a cynical old man…take it or leave it)

I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve done a good bit of reading about copyrights. Pretty much every work of IF is copyrighted. The only real exceptions are works that have a statement from the author rejecting copyright claims. (No, Creative Commons doesn’t count. Yes, all of my work is anti-copyright.) Basically, if someone publishes something, it’s copyrighted. There’s no copyright notice needed for a work to be copyrighted.

But that’s a little pedantic, since this is a question legality of distribution, which is much different from asking whether something has a copyright or not. And the former is a question I won’t touch.

DavidC - Oh, is THAT what it is. That’s fine, then, I’m pretty cynical myself.

On a more serious note, everything that is in my collection has, at some point, been available for free distribution. Even if it started off commercial. This applies to, for instance, the ADVENTIONS games, and the Textfyre games.

I also included Infocom games, as well as Magnetic Scrolls. I was quickly advised that that wasn’t a very smart move, so I promptly took them down. I shall do the same for any game whose legality of distribution is questioned.

Theoretically, everything you can find in my collection you can also find for free elsewhere (in legal sites). With some very old DOS-only games, and Spectrum and Commodore games, the term ABANDONWARE starts being relevant, and things get trickier. But overall, it should all be clean, as it were.

And if you find something that’s questionable (in legality; not in taste) do please let me know. Please. I’ll remove it at once.


BTW, this is always worth repeating…

Because I’m sharing a huge folder, loading the collection TAKES AGES. I’m really sorry about that. But once it’s loaded, it’s fully loaded. You can browse pretty quickly. At least I can, and I hope everyone else can, I haven’t had anyone say differently anyway.

EDIT - I think it’s faster on Chrome. I opened it in a Chrome-using computer today and it was MUCH faster than it’s being now in Firefox in my home computer.

IANAL. However: Resharing any content - free, commercial, doesn’t matter - is a violating the rights holder’s copyright unless:

  • The content is in the public domain due to age (Works before 1928 for the most part)
  • The rights holder has explicitly waived copyright (This doesn’t mean they didn’t register it or didn’t put a copyright notice on it; it means they explicitly said they were waiving their copyright and putting the work in the public domain)
  • You have a license to redistribute the content (For example, the work was released under an open-source or copyleft license that explicitly allowed general redistribution). You still have to comply with the terms of the license (For example, you’re not allowed to modify works unless the license also explicitly allows for that).

However, whether any of this is a crime depends on the jurisdictions involved; copyright is a civil matter, however, and you’re liable to civil litigation. Some works exist in a murky area where nobody can sensibly claim to be the rights holder (abandonware) and thus redistributing them, while still potentially criminal in some jurisdictions, is mostly okay because there isn’t anyone who could potentially sue.

Also important to note is that if your host is US-based they have to comply with DMCA notices and other requirements (and other jurisdictions have similar things), which means that content can be taken down without litigation. So redistribution of noncommercial works is not totally in the clear; it’s something you can do by the grace of the rights holders and the fact that litigating over it wouldn’t have much of a point.

That is very interesting theoretically. Given the practical existence of this particular collection, however, plus the fact that we’re gamers and creators and players rather than legal people and as such most people around here are GRATEFUL for their games reaching as wide an audience as possible…

…and taking into consideration the fact that, if asked, I will remove a game from my public collection (keeping it in my hard drive, though)…

…the likelihood is very high that the collection will exists for years, possibly decades, and no one will be much bothered, indeed no one will much care. And that in the future some people might be thankful for this preservation. Case in point: “A Colder Light” is not playable in the original website. If I hadn’t downloaded it and put it in my collection, you wouldn’t be able to play it.

Also, in practical terms, while all that information is surely useful and good to know, it only succeeded in making me wonder what the point was in me going to the trouble of keeping the collection up. No one asked me to do it, no one is asking me to continue doing it, and suddenly we’re talking about the legalities of this collection/IFArchive (yes, I meant to use that word) because, it seems, one person assumed I was illegally sharing content I wasn’t supposed to. Which I’m not, to the best of my knowledge.

Sheesh. Thankfully I’ve had enough positive feedback (mostly from other communities, but also a few people from this one) to keep it going. Thanks for the boost, much appreciated.

All your four games are in my collection. Would you rather I removed them? I’m not threatening (that’d be silly), I’m just saying, in light of what you’ve posted, do you feel it’s not right for me to distribute them and wish me to take them down?

“By the way, DAMN there were a lot of AIF games written for TADS. I thought ADRIFT was the winner on that regard, due to how easy the language is to use - and maybe it still is, but TADS sure has a lot more AIF than I’d expect.”

Would this be because of a handful of prolific AIF writers who use TADS?

Neil