“Most of the world’s video games from close to 50 years of history are effectively, legally dead. A Video Games History Foundation study found you can’t buy nearly 90% of games from before 2010. Preservationists have been looking for ways to allow people to legally access gaming history, but the U.S. Copyright Office dealt them a heavy blow Friday. Feds declared that you or any researcher has no right to access old games under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA.”
“Fair Use” is a thing. Someone needs to go back to law school.
Read a comment a while ago that if libraries weren’t a thing today and someone would propose them, the FBI would be on their ass and stalk after them for even suggesting such radical views. Copyright law is utterly broken and a disservice to society in it’s current form and execution. Politicians need to get their fat fingers out of the stock market by law.
I really feel like the source code needs to be released after 25 years. We need to be able to protect older games.
I’ve been saying that we need to have a law on the books to require any online components of a game be required to have the source to those features be released upon closure of the online service. I would be fine with them then being except from any security liability for anyone who gets hacked by use of that software and even retaining ownership of the IP, so no one could sell access to the service, but being able to stand up fan-run servers for old Xbox-live games or dead MMOs more easily would be really great. I’m locked out of so many PlayStation trophies simply because online servers have been down for ages now.
The DMCA is a curse.
I’d say it’s more intolerably long copyright terms than the DMCA specifically.
The DMCA is just the icing on top of the 95-120y “work for hire” copyright duration shit cake.
And not a fun place to stay at at all
It’s fun to violate the D-M-C-A 🎵
People will just continue pirating those games then.
Industry groups argued that those museums didn’t have “appropriate safeguards” to prevent users from distributing the games once they had them in hand.
Good grief. Some of these games have been on the Internet longer than I have been alive. They are 100-fucking-percent already available on ROM sites. You’re just shitting on people’s enjoyment for the sake of shitting.
“The game industry’s absolutist position… forces researchers to explore extra-legal methods to access the vast majority of out-of-print video games that are otherwise unavailable,” the VGHF wrote.
The spice must flow, and I can assure you that it already does.
Good grief. Some of these games have been on the Internet longer than I have been alive.
blink blink
God damn, I’m old…
An intern at work once asked me what a CD was and I had to explain that it was a vinyl for computers.
Industry groups argued that those museums didn’t have “appropriate safeguards” to prevent users from distributing the games once they had them in hand.
And what exactly is stopping me from scanning library books and uploading them online? Are you going to ban libraries too?
Actually, let’s not give them ideas.
They would love to ban libraries.
If they didn’t already exist, it’s doubtful they would have been legal to make.
Industry groups argued that those museums didn’t have “appropriate safeguards” to prevent users from distributing the games once they had them in hand.
So libraries are also illegal? Books, DVDs, VHS, CDS, etc. You can replace games with any of those.
We used to rent these games from Blockbuster Video! On DVD when we had DVD burners and little to no drm! How did it suddenly not become acceptable?
Lobbying. The greedy fucks will lobby until they get their way
They’ve been actively fighting libraries over the years, with renewed fervor in the last decade. As numerous others have pointed out before–including the article I linked–if libraries hadn’t already been such a long-standing concept for centuries, they would 100% not be allowed to come into existence nowadays. Hyper greed has poisoned every facet of modern society.
hyper greed
You misspelled neoliberal capitalism
BS. Greed is a motive that has been here always. The difference is in ability. That ability lies in preventing public from organizing, crowd control. It’s been given by the Internet and computers. Because where before public would organize in their own spaces, now it’s someone else’s ground where all kinds of meddling and weird rules can exist.
What must be obscure has become apparent for those who want it.
Because of ability to process information and fulfill manipulations of worldwide scale.
That aside, the ethos of breaking rules doesn’t exist.
Some people think they can do any evil to a person who disrespects them, and surely don’t owe them what they paid for, or payment for their work, or something else. Some other people think that any obligation is lit in titanium, and whatever were the circumstances of taking it, you owe it in full, and if there’s contradiction, then the less certain obligation loses. Some people think this depends on one’s weight in society.
All these are defeated by power. The first kind - they are just miserable slaves, no honor at all, and they’ll always be manipulated to others’ goals, and will never know when to make a dignified sacrifice, but they will be sacrificed. The second kind - they think they are honorable, but of the internally contradictory net of obligations they choose those imposed by power, and ignore those countering it, and pretend to be oblivious of there being a system in their choices, they are hypocrites and the least reliable kind. The third kind - these are obedient jackals, you might get betrayed by them, but generally can safely treat them as furniture.
In some sense following rules is surrendering your own dignity and responsibility. A person responsible for themselves decides whether to follow every rule existing.
OK. Shorter - when you have a city, eventually you’ll have to demolish something old to build something new. When you have a house\apartment, eventually you’ll have to throw out some old furniture, break some walls, dispose of the garbage.
It’s similar with legal systems. Between nice good IP laws supposedly protecting creators and ability to freely communicate and exchange information, the latter is more precious. It’s our common interest to resolve the contradiction without conflict, but those people seem to think they don’t have to compromise. It doesn’t matter what they think.
So who asked those fags? (No bigotry, just social evaluation of their status.)
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