World of Spectrum

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World of Spectrum
URL	http://www.worldofspectrum.org/
Commercial?	No
Type of site	Retrocomputing
Registration	Forum posting only
Owner	Martijn van der Heide
Created by	Martijn van der Heide
Launched	1995
Current status	Active

World of Spectrum is a website devoted to cataloging and archiving material for the ZX Spectrum home computer popular in the 1980s, and has been officially endorsed by Amstrad which holds the copyright to the ZX Spectrum brand.^{[citation needed]} It was started by Martijn van der Heide in 1995 as a website dedicated to hosting Spectrum games, but it soon grew into hosting anything and everything that was remotely connected to the ZX Spectrum.

The site contains an extensive database of information about games, utilities, books, hardware, etc.^[1]^[2] In December 2005 Retro Gamer wrote "World of Spectrum is not just the best Speccy site on the Web, but arguably the best retro resource full stop." ^[3] From the FAQ: "The WoS is the world's biggest and most popular archive of Spectrum related material."^[4] As of May 2008, that catalog includes over 17,000 unique entries.

One of the websites goals is to obtain distribution permission from copyright holders of the software kept in its archives, and has received hundreds of permissions to date. ^[5] In 2003 the Interactive Digital Software Association filed a complaint against the site for copyright infringement, but this was later retracted.^[6]