RGCD In The Press
10th May 2009 by James Monkman
This week RGCD was featured in Micro Mart's Amiga section, with a two page write-up about my unofficial CD32 conversions. This may initially seem to be good news, but unfortunately the article contained some glaring errors that I'm seriously concerned will get me into legal trouble with IP holders.
First off, this little ongoing project of mine really did not deserve the coverage it received - as stated previously, I initially created these discs for my own use and it was only as a gesture of goodwill that I made them available via this site to the Amiga community. The article in Micro Mart has bigged me up as some sort of Amiga guru, when actually all I've done is compile discs using readily available filed cracks, patches, hard disk installs and (of course) WHDLoadCD32, test them thoroughly, list any requirements and create unofficial covers.
The article in question has declared that I have cleared these releases with the copyright holders, which is a complete fabrication. It is (AFAIK) legal to download the commercial games hosted if you already own a physical disk copy (this seems to be the general rule on other emulation sites) and of course the PD and shareware releases are freely distributable. Please be honest with your downloads; I'm currently considering removing all the previously commercial titles from the site, which would be a shame as the feedback from CD32 gamers has been unexpectedly positive.
If you are a copyright holder and you wish to have a game removed from this site, please let me know and I'll do it immediately. In my defence, as none of the games listed are still available to purchase for the Amiga (or have been for at least 10 years) I was under the impression that this sort of project was generally considered to be acceptable as long as no money was made from the venture. I can only apologise for the false information printed in Micro Mart - if the writer had actually bothered to contact me beforehand I would have been transparent and honest about my work, and I have to stress that at no stage have I even suggested that these games have been cleared with the IP holders.
Since my last post I've added a few more games to the page, but that's likely to be all you see for a while - or at least until all this nonsense blows over. Depending on what happens, I may have to remove all the commercial game ISO's from the site and resort to the request-system I previously had in place for the more-recent releases, so in the meantime I'm planning to concentrate on improving the startup-sequences and intro screens of the games already listed using the new methods I've learnt since starting the project. Oh, and of course there's the new issue of RGCD to complete by the end of the summer too!
I'll post with further news soon.
