If we want hard technical rules, I think problems might only arise with mp3 and other "streaming music" types. All SID and tracker songs could be allowed without thinking too much, without getting problems in practice. Or what do you others think?

tomaes: added. also, the other thread is for requesting changes such as this

yzi: Those are very reasonable ideas, but I don't see any real need to make the rules more formal than they are now, and I'd prefer not to make things overly bureaucratic.

Naturally, if we start finding people adding inappropriate things - or if there are strong opinions that we should start covering, say, album releases - then this is something we can come back to later on.

Well, I wanted to make it clear that it isn't forbidden to add general standalone scene tunes. I guess you at least don't think that there's anything wrong with the guidelines I wrote? The most "technical" rule of thumb I could think of was: labeled with scene handle as author, available/downloadable for free and non profit. A scener knows when a song is by a demoscener for the demoscene, not for getting rich or famous outside the scene. It's really not difficult to make the distinction, as far as I can see.

I'd also like to know where exactly the songs are that are made by scene musicians and labelled with their handle as author, but aren't demoscene music and would attract unwanted publicity-seekers here. I think this kind of fear has been presented multiple times. Surely there must be such music somewhere? Is it for example some folks over at the Mod Archive, who are in it just for tracker music and aren't interested in demos? And it would be bad to let such bastards pollute our scene? ;) Sorry to lengthen this but I don't believe in setting up to do a big project without writing down what you're really trying to do, and expecting that everyone just gets everything without saying it straight out and writing specs. I know not everyone agrees. :)

And EVEN if the whole fscking tracker/mod scene suddenly wanted to register their whole catalog on Demozoo as well, then why would that be bad? For who would it be bad and in what way? I don't get this either. Then they might be exposed to demos, which would be a Bad Thing? They would eat up all the rows from the database and bombard the servers with an everlasting flood of catalog searches?

Sorry, just saw your other topic <http://demozoo.org/forums/22/> - will take the discussion there!