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Culture

by Mike Masnick

Wed, Oct 20th 2010 5:17pm




Filed Under:
documentary, get lamp, jason scott, movies, ripping


Get Lamp Filmmaker Scolds DVD Rippers... For Doing A Bad Job With The Rip

from the get-it-right dept

I've been meaning to check out the movie Get Lamp (a documentary about text adventure games) for a while now, as I've heard good things about it (and, it should be confessed, I was an avid, potentially obsessive, consumer of text adventure computer games in the 80s). Also, I've always been a fan of the filmmaker, Jason Scott's other project Textfiles.com. While I hadn't had the chance yet, TorrentFreak has the nice story of how Scott reacted to the DVD of his film being ripped and put online. First off, it should be noted that those who ripped it posted a nice ode to Scott with the rip, and urged folks to buy the DVD, even noting that they purposely left off some of the extras to give people incentive.

Scott saw it, thanked them for the "heartwarming" NFO file, and then scolded them for screwing up the rip:
I've just downloaded the torrent, and while the image quality and sound quality is excellent, you've made a mistake.

The DVD, as I've mentioned before, is interactive with a non-interactive version as well. To accomplish this and save space on the DVD (since it's packed with stuff), I have a set of discrete tracks that are either summoned (via the interactive choice) or played as a playlist (via the non-interactive choice). Unintentionally (and I do really mean it, it was unintentional), this has made the movie a tad harder to rip, because the movie is in pieces scattered throughout the DVD, and not in any obvious sequential order.

Playing the AVI that FLAiR has released shows that you have ripped only some of the tracks, and ripped one extra one that shouldn't be in there.
In the end, he notes: "While, again, I am pleased you wrote such kind things about me, this mixed-up version makes it look like I made a flawed DVD with doubled scenes, and takes away the entire puzzle sequence, which I am rather proud of." The rippers quickly fixed it and posted a fixed version. Now, the movie is released under a Creative Commons Share-alike license, so Scott (not surprisingly) is perfectly willing to have the movie spread, but it's still a nice story of a filmmaker responding positively to people ripping his film and sharing it online.

23 Comments | Leave a Comment

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  1.  
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    Karl (profile), Oct 20th, 2010 @ 5:25pm

    Infocom

    INFOCOM FTW!

    I remember actually playing the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy game.

    There was also a "create your own text adventure" program that I owned. I can't remember the actual name of it, but it kind of sucked, in that it couldn't parse more than two words. I still half-finished my own game, loosely based on Heavy Metal comics.

    Ah, the C-64 memories, when "POKE" and "PEEK" were my only friends...

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  
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    :Lobo Santo (profile), Oct 20th, 2010 @ 5:30pm

    Re: Infocom

    Please stop, you're bringing back flashbacks of horrid experiences trying to debug BASIC code on a C-64 with nothing more than the word 'error' and hundreds of lines of code...

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  
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    Karl (profile), Oct 20th, 2010 @ 5:50pm

    Re: Re: Infocom

    I will never stop!

    Remember those magazines, that didn't come with disks or anything, but actually printed the machine code that you had to type in by hand? And the final number was a checksum of the entire line?

    Also, you remember sprites? The SID chip? Using GOTO loops to simulate pauses in the program?

    Ever get a copy of Ghostbusters on cartridge? So much faster than loading it in from the tape drive.

    10 PRINT "I am a dork from the 1980s"
    20 GOTO 10

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  
    identicon
    Paul Renault, Oct 20th, 2010 @ 5:58pm

    Shh!! Don't tell me how Get Lamp ends...

    ...I haven't seen it yet.
    / medallion #1379

    Karl: I had a 'boughten' copy of HHGTTG for my Apple //. A friend of mine, how had gotten a pirate version, was semi-sorry he hadn't purchased it, 'cuz he was missing out on all the cool stuff that came with the game: The Microscopic Space Fleet, the Belly Button Lint, the Don't Panic badge, the No Tea, and the Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses!

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  5.  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Oct 20th, 2010 @ 6:02pm

    buy this film

    Its guys like him that make me buy their films

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  6.  
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    ChurchHatesTucker (profile), Oct 20th, 2010 @ 6:19pm

    Hah!

    I'd expect nothing less from Jason Scott. I can only imagine the chagrin of the rippers who screwed it up and were called out on it.

    Cheers all around, guys.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  7.  
    identicon
    Pixelation, Oct 20th, 2010 @ 9:02pm

    Oooh c'mon...

    It's no fun when they go along. More whining and suing please.

    All of the nostalgic comments remind me of Castle Wolfenstein. Achtung, schweinhund!

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  8.  
    identicon
    Ryan Diederich, Oct 20th, 2010 @ 10:36pm

    Re: Oooh c'mon...

    I think Ill use the DISCOMBOBULATOR!!!

    I loved that game, so dark, so good....

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  9.  
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    econoline (profile), Oct 20th, 2010 @ 10:55pm

    I wish he would put it on netflix, so I could watch it and he could get some money from it. Maybe he is trying I don't know exactly how the netflix royalties work, and I can work a bittorrent as well as the next guy but don't mind tossing it in the netflix queue especially since I think that does help the makers get paid...

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  10.  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Oct 20th, 2010 @ 11:41pm

    Mike, on the off-chance you didn't know, interactive fiction is still alive and well these days. There's a yearly IF competition, as well as an archive of games old and new.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  11.  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Oct 21st, 2010 @ 5:21am

    C-64 ROFL

    now go play gorf on a vic 20

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  12.  
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    Marcel de Jong (profile), Oct 21st, 2010 @ 5:54am

    I have the dvd at home. I forget which medallion number I have (will post that here later). But I still need to watch the documentary. :)
    Looking forward to it.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  13.  
    identicon
    alex, Oct 21st, 2010 @ 6:35am

    This reminded me of an old post of Mike's about what may have been the first recorded copyright violation if they knew what it was back then. Apparently, people were copying Daniel Defoe's poem "The True-Born Englishman" and selling it themselves. Defoe wasn't so much bothered by people profiting from his work but rather pissed that they had mistakes in copying his poem and actually published a corrected version. Even back 300 years ago Defoe realized obscurity was a much bigger threat than piracy. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20071127/215734.shtml

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  14.  
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    Hephaestus (profile), Oct 21st, 2010 @ 6:47am

    Re: Re: Re: Infocom

    Karl ... Really bad flashbacks please stop ... :)

    Hitch hikers guide the text adventure ... So did you ever figure out that you had to collect all the lint and put it in the thing your aunt gave you and plant it? :)

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  15.  
    icon
    Hephaestus (profile), Oct 21st, 2010 @ 6:49am

    Re: C-64 ROFL

    Actually preferred gridrunner on the Vic ...

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  16.  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Oct 21st, 2010 @ 7:56am

    Mike, two things:

    "I've bee meaning to check out..."

    Typo? Or is my English getting worse?

    "and, it should be confessed, I was an avid, potentially obsessive, consumer of text adventure computer games in the 80s"

    You just gained a ton more respect from me ;)

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  17.  
    identicon
    Rich, Oct 21st, 2010 @ 8:35am

    Re:

    Netflix doesn't pay royalties. They buy X copies and rent them. The producers of the film don't get money every time someone rents it.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  18.  
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    Mike Masnick (profile), Oct 21st, 2010 @ 10:22am

    Re:

    "I've bee meaning to check out..."

    Typo? Or is my English getting worse?

    Typo. Fixed. Thanks.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  19.  
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    another mike (profile), Oct 21st, 2010 @ 10:25am

    zork forever!

    you are likely to be eaten by a grue

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  20.  
    icon
    ofb2632 (profile), Oct 21st, 2010 @ 4:50pm

    Re: Re:

    Do they buy a full copy for each and every download? i seriously doubt it.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  21.  
    identicon
    Rich, Oct 21st, 2010 @ 9:19pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    I don't know how their streaming service works. I was referring to the DVDs. They buy a set of DVDs once. They don't (nor should they have to) pay a royalty every time a DVD is rented.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  22.  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Oct 22nd, 2010 @ 5:40am

    And no lesson was learned

    Just a couple of hours from the Creative Commons' Branding Confusion article, we still haven't learned to distinguish between Creative Commons licenses.

    Get Lamp is licensed Creative Commons-Attribution-Sharealike-NonCommercial. Yes, CC-SA-NC, not CC-SA as stated in this Techdirt article.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  23.  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Oct 22nd, 2010 @ 6:04am

    Re: Re: C-64 ROFL

    Jumpman FTW....

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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