The U.S. Copyright Office denied an exemption from the DMCA to allow gaming historians to access out-of-print games they can’t legally get.

“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.”

  • mPony@lemmy.worldEnglish
    74·
    9 days ago

    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.

      • Dark Arc@social.packetloss.ggEnglish
        8·
        9 days ago

        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.

        • ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          14·
          9 days ago

          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.

          • Bazoogle@lemmy.worldEnglish
            10·
            9 days ago

            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

          • ✺roguetrick✺@lemmy.worldEnglish
            4·
            9 days ago

            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.

          • kent_eh@lemmy.caEnglish
            4·
            9 days ago

            Libraries rent out ebooks too

            Libraries loan out ebooks and other media.

             

            /pet peeve.

    • kent_eh@lemmy.caEnglish
      8·
      9 days ago

      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.