“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.”
It sounds like the problem is not with the feds but with the DMCA. It needs to be overturned.
They’re right. I have been using old videos games for recreation. Too bad that they’ve decided to prevent me from paying for the privilege or at least being tracked through library usage and have instead decided it’d be better if I was just an untrackable “criminal”
Either way, I’m enjoying these old games and living my life guilt free.
stop giving money to lobbyists
🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
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FTA
Industry groups argued that those museums didn’t have “appropriate safeguards” to prevent users from distributing the games once they had them in hand. They also argued that there’s a “substantial market” for older or classic games, and a new, free library to access games would “jeopardize” this market. Perlmutter agreed with the industry groups.
So as long as someone, somewhere, might make a penny off of them, they can’t be free. Insert your own metaphor here.
It’s been demonstrated multiple times that when you make access easy and affordable people will pay for it over pirating it.
This argument is even more ridiculous than it seems. During the copyright office hearing for this exemption request (back in April), the people arguing in favor of libraries talked about the measures they have in place. They don’t just let people download a ROM to use in any emulator they please. It’s not even one of those browser-based emulators where you can pull the ROM data out of your browser cache if you know how. It’s a video stream of an emulator running on a server managed by the library, with plenty enough latency to make it very clearly a worse gaming experience.
It’s far easier to find ROMs of these games elsewhere than it is to contact a librarian and ask for access to a protected collection, so there’d be no reason to redistribute the files even if they were offered, which they aren’t.
On top of that, this exemption request was explicitly limited to old games that have been long unavailable on the market in any form, which seems like an insane limitation to put on libraries, places that have always held collections of books both new and old.
All of that is still not enough to sate the US Copyright Office, the ESA, AACS, or DVD CSS. Those three were the organizations that fought against this.
The same logic would apply to books. ::gestures at library::
There is a difference there in that these are digital copies (easy to make more copies) vs physical books (hard to make more copies).
That said, the only reason this is an issue is copyright lasts too long on relatively short lived games. If copyright on games was a more reasonable “15 years since their last major revision”, this wouldn’t be a problem.
There is a difference there in that these are digital copies (easy to make more copies) vs physical books (hard to make more copies).
Libraries rent out ebooks too, also easily stripped of DRM and copied if someone wants to so that. But that is seemingly not an issue.
Stop it man you’re just going to give them ideas
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.
insane takeover of the public square here.
The irony!
Hey now…we all of course only have copies of our own blurays and DVDs on our home media servers.
basically “dont wanna pay us? fuck off”
Not even, like the article says, they’re not even selling 90% of them, just “fuck you, you can’t play this.”
That’s cool. Won’t really stop any of the shit that’s been happening though.
Good luck corpos, for every pirate you take away ten more will take their place.
They’re trashing our rights!
Hack the planet!
Trashing!
Cereal towering over everyone trying to stay inconspicuous during that scene always cracks me up.
Guess I don’t understand, are they saying places Like Vintage Stock that sells old games illegal? Or are they talking about digital backups of these games. Regardless fuck them and the copyright office. This makes me want to pirate more not less.
luckily there’s more details to read when you click the link.
What???
Federal law does not apply to me as a Swede in Sweden.
Nor I, as a sovereign citizen in the United States.
I’m not downloading it, the bits are travelling to my hard drive.
I do not wish to enjoinder with your Game Launcher and anonymous telephony
I think Sweden has federal laws too.
No, just laws.
Sweden is not a federation, why would we have federal laws?
I meant as in country laws instead of local laws from municipalities and regions.
We have federal laws and local laws where I live, but I don’t live in a federation either.
There are no “local laws” in Sweden that differ between parts of the country, only laws that apply to the entire country.
The DMCA is a curse.
And not a fun place to stay at at all
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.
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.
Physical books have no safeguards from photocopying.
I have more terrifying news about museums. We are talking pictures worth MILLIONS just waiting to be photographed.
Wait till they hear of scanners and copy machines. The books aren’t safe either!
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.
Isnt that what the InternetArchive did, disabled controlled lending during covid and got sued?
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.
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
Libraries are clearly communist… or anarchist… either way, I hate it!
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
People will just continue pirating those games then.
Yo ho ho and fuck the police
In this case it’s the corporate lawyers and lawmakers setting these precedents, not the police.
To be honest, as bad as police can be wherever you live, I’m sure if you called them and said your neighbour pirated The Simpsons Movie and some SNES games last night, they’d sooner laugh in your face and tell you to stop wasting their time than doing anything about it.
I too travel the seven seas for hidden loot ⛵
