“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.”
Good thing the “Feds” have zero jurisdiction in my country then. Feck em.
And thus. Again, piracy seems to be the moral choice
Pirates now the only ones preserving this culture, yeah
Feds are wrong, or would be if copyright continued to serve its original purpose (according to the Constitution of the United States) to create a robust public domain.
All media should be accessible through public libraries, and arguments by federal courts presumes that the public does not have vested interest in content. It presumes the government isn’t there to serve the public, which raises questions as to why we have government in the first place.
So weird because as a kid, I would rent these video games day 1 from the local library… free of charge.
What is the issue now that they are retro. Shame.
Thankful to have all mine… back… up… and running.
Correctamundo! Intellectual property law is yet another thing that needs reform. I don’t even like the term “intellectual property”. It’s a modern invention. For thousands of years everybody just repeated what they saw other people do, in a process called “the spread of civilization.” It worked great until inventions like the printing press created opportunities for business people who didn’t create anything to get rich by getting exclusive rights to other people’s ideas. But even then, copyright was always something you held not something you “owned”. The modern IP industry has done a very effective job at converting everybody to think of rights as property and infringement as theft. We need to return to the original concept that creators, who used to be freely imitated, can temporarily have exclusive rights to what they create because the public lets them. There’s nothing evil about this, it’s just a return to sanity.
This is the kind of fucking bullshit that creates assholes like trump and rfk jr.
IMHO, RFK jr is pro environment and anti big phama. He changes his policies based on fashion more than money. He is populist, not corporatist.
Both the Republican and Democrat parties are corporatist because of lobbying. Nothing to do with Trump. If we voted Hillary and Kamala then the same court outcome would occur.
Fine. I’ll start my own library. With external storage, and ROMS.
Wait I’m already doing that.
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.
There’s often no in any way complete source code after 25 years.
Media degrade, get forgotten hell knows where, get occasionally destroyed.
All things that can be prevented in the future if you start today.
Yeah, I know it’s a pipe dream, but really, there should be something that opens source code up. Too much company history gets lost or forgotten because people forget. Plus think about how much value you can gain as a student seeing how people accomplished things with minimal resources.
archive.org is the modern proposal of a library, and yeah, look what’s happened to them
It sounds like the problem is not with the feds but with the DMCA. It needs to be overturned.
“Sounds like the problem is federal law pushed by Congressmen paid for by corporate lobbyists, not the federal government.”
Aka. regulatory capture
Judging by the responses in here, it sounds like gamers need to quit and find something else to do
The dmca is a federal law, it is the feds.
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.
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?
Physical rentals are still legal. This is only about the legality of online rom downloads.
I’m speaking mainly of the distrust against the public having access for fear that we’d abuse it and not give them a cut. We can’t have access to these things now, but we used to. Regardless of form, regardless of piracy.
It’s more of a move to restrict ownership when you make a purchase, that has a farther reach than just games. I could see this being applied to cars, houses, etc. In that you only rent a license, and don’t actually own anything. I see this as just a first step, and the logic they use to justify it doesn’t make sense.
We can’t have access to these things now, but we used to.
??? There was no change. It was always illegal. This was a petition to change it to be legal and the petition was denied.
Despite it being illegal, Internet Archive has hosted and I hope will continue to host rom collections like tiny best set go.
Lobbying. The greedy fucks will lobby until they get their way
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.
Isnt that what the InternetArchive did, disabled controlled lending during covid and got sued?
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!
Even worse. I’ve checked out digital eBooks and digital audiobooks from my local library. And I listened to those audiobooks for FUN. The AUDACITY!
Audacity is what I used to record those audiobooks so I could listen at my own pace, btw.
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.
And the fashion, oh wow, such an aesthetic.
This isn’t even targeting pirates it’s targeting legitimate users. If anything, this will create more pirates.
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???
I answered your question on another thread of the same topic, but I’ll answer it here too for anyone else who has the same question: The law is just about digital backups. Vintage stores are still legal, and if anything this would boost sales at a vintage stores. If the game you’d like to play is unavailable at a vintage store or on eBay (or wherever else) then it will be entirely inaccessible for you to play legally.
So if I’m understanding what you are saying correctly this is pro “book” burning. Only in this case it is games. If a group or entity wants to make a piece of history more scarce or wipe it from the planet because they disagree with it, buying up or destroying as many physical copies that exist would work because people legally can’t back them up or print more copies essentially?
The IP owner can print more, but if the owner is gone or legally unclear, then yes. Although I don’t think this was the real intention, because greed looks like a simpler reason and fits
OK, I’ll download them then.
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.
You’d better not also be reading books for fun. By their logic, any recreational use of books from a library should also be considered illegal.
Only legal for educationale, reproductioning, or ownin dem libs. (sic.)
The purpose of the US government is to create as many criminals as possible to put in gulags and sell into slavery. That has ALWAYS been the history of the US. There has NEVER been any “freedom” involved. Oh, Bill of Rights, you say?..NONE of them stop what I just laid out, and those rights were reserved for a very limited group of people and you are not one of them
There’s no such thing as untrackable.
The feeling of being a completely honest and lawful citizen was really nice at some point, buying games in Steam, GOG or just bookstores, too bad it was mostly gaslighting and they were not going to be honest with us.
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.
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.
It’s been demonstrated multiple times that when you make access easy and affordable people will pay for it over pirating it.
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.
As someone who may or may not have stripped DRM from library books, they certainly never seemed to care about that. And it was never even to share, but rather to store for myself so I could read it at my own pace. And the worst part… I read it for RECREATIONAL USE
You wouldn’t download a book?
I hate when they say, “You wouldn’t download a car”.
Yes, I fucking would!
it was never even to share, but rather to store for myself so I could read it at my own pace. And the worst part… I read it for RECREATIONAL USE
You disgust me…what a sick and exploitive attitude.
What he’s saying is not beyond what Congress has previously laid down though. First sale doctrine should let you do whatever you want, but they actually banned renting phonographs because they thought people were recording them on tape. We’re lucky they didn’t outlaw movie rentals too back in the day. Whole copyright regime needs to die in a fire.
Libraries rent out ebooks too
Libraries loan out ebooks and other media.
/pet peeve.
Stop it man you’re just going to give them ideas
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
And if that market demand isn’t being catered to, or is being actively refused to be served, is there any wonder people are finding other ways to get that stuff?
All they’re doing is hoarding this old software and preventing its use based on the speculation that they might eventually figure out a way to profit from long gone developers work.
It’s such bullshit it makes me want to start selling those knockoff consoles just purely out of spite.
Bought judges belong against a wall, so that we can pick them last in dodgeball.
I think they might need to be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.
I’m glad I keep backup copies of anything that might be important later on, like the 40 gig MAME Rom library.
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 🎵
The problem with these fundamental rulings is that they’re largely trying to fit square objects through round holes. When a simple ruling is made to essentially say “to current law, no”, the law itself ultimately becomes meaningless, because older games couldn’t be easier to pirate. Most of them are smaller than a TikTok video, and are so cheap/easy to host that you’ll never stop them from being shared. Hell, emulation has come so far that you can effectively emulate these games on a browser, on multiple devices, even devices that don’t natively support gaming.
The smart thing to do would be to say that maybe the legal framework that embodies retro gaming needs to be researched and heavily considered. It’s a hard task that’ll require many lawyers, many fights, and lots of lobbying to ensure the word of law is worth something. Sadly, it’s easier to say “lol no” and to essentially just promote piracy.
