Exclusives on CDs and your rights: Many people have asked about the idea behind exclusive rights to certain demos and productions. The Exclusive CDROM rights are to protect Assembly 95 cdrom from those companies that clearly protect copyright violations. It is thus also to protect your interests as the person who has copyrights to the product. These violating companies publish your works on a cd without any permissions and make a lot of money without giving you nothing. Now, you might think it is ok, and as long as you think it is ok, then you should put text "This is freeware" into your production. What does the exclusive then mean? It means that we only get the right to publish your product on a CDrom, then we pay you royalties from the net income. This is a good way to support the scene and give the people little more than just plain prizes. We don't mean to restict the spreadability of your products in any ways. Keep in mind that the exclusive is only for CDROM distribution, and if you feel that you want to make a cd with your own production in it, no problem. We only want to protect the products from abuse that has been going on for a long time. We suggest that you add the following text to your product information if you want your product to be legally protected: This material is not freeware. You are allowed to copy it without restrictions for non-commercial use. No payment of any kind may be charged for this product or any combination of products or services including this product without our authorization and official written license. Commercial use, especially the industrial manufacturing on any data storage media and their distribution without the expressed permission of the producer, is strictly prohibited. This program or the data files contained herein may not be altered or modified without the permission of the author. You take full responsibility for the operation of this software and any conssequences thereof. We the creators cannot accept liability for damages or failures arising from the use of this software. (note: this is the text YOU add, and the word "our" means you, the author of this product. You might want to modify this file, it is ok, but keep the idea alive thou... for example, you have to change some stuff if you put this to musics for example). In Assembly '95, you don't have to give any exclusives if you feel you don't want to do it. We urge you to consider that thou. By granting us the exclusives, you get the royalties from the possibly income we get from the exclusive. Some discussion about the rumors Discussion? There has been a lot of discussion on the internet about the CDroms and about companies that violate your rights as an author. We have our goals in protecting the scene from this abuse, as it has been pretty obvious and in large quantity also. Then there has been a question of monetary gain of Assembly Organizing. Assembly '95 is at the moment a +-0 party: ie, all the money has been budgeted to organizing the party. For some people, it is hard to understand that a fair center costs A LOT (Helsinki Fair Center is not located in some distant city that is in middle of nowhere :), but it is easy to yell out that we make big profits. For those people I would like to give few phone numbers to call around and ask for the price of such an event as Assembly '95.. you would be quite surprised. Our objective is to organize best parties ever, and the CDrom income makes it possible... Without that, Assembly ticket would cost around 300 FIM if you calculate all the expenses per party visitor. We even hope to lower the price of the ticket next year. And to those people who say "if party is this expensive to organize, it is badly organized"... well, on the contrary, that shows it has been organized with care and heart. We offer a lot for Assembly '95 visitor. Assembly '95 relies heavily on the sponsors. That makes the event commercial in a sense that we ofcourse need to give something back to a company that wants to sponsor the scene in this way. For some people, some of the rules seem to some people with narrow vision that they are only for commercial purposes. I would like to say that is not the case. Ofcourse, as a byproduct these rules have also commercial factors (but keep in mind that these factors work FOR the scene, not against it). We intend to go public with demos, the culture behind them and the people who make them. We have organized interviews to magazines where young computer wizzes can present the idea of "scene" and demos to all people. If you look at the rules with this idea in mind, we hope you to see the ideas that we have. The more compatible the products are, the more people they reach, the easier it is to bring the new culture to the public knowledge. And who knows if at some state, demomakers are recognized artists who make their living by coding demos... interesting option? :)