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Can an online library of classic video games ever be legal?
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2024
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Why do they worry when they a) no longer sell them b) don't support them?
Because if good games from a decade ago are freely available, they can't shove a new overexploiting live service game down our throats when it pales in comparison to the entertainment that's available for free.
They can only sell less for more, by taking the previous option off the table.
The same reason a movie theater owner can't show Pee Wee's Big Adventure every weekend. Value is derived from exclusivity. Exercising your "rights" to a work means preventing anyone from having access to the work unless you are paid when and how you want.
Capitalism manufactures scarcity. Even when we have plenty, capitalism must create limits on the sharing of free resources
This is what I keep telling people, we already live in a post-scarcity world... We just can't reap the benefits because Capitalism forces us to pretend we don't.
"Yes, we already have more empty houses than homeless people, but I'm sure building more houses is the solution to homelessness. We can't disrupt the economy, after all."
We need to instill voters with the courage to vote for actual left wing parties so we can get some politicians in Parliament who'll just do what needs to be done, and seize the empty houses from the investors and landlords.
Trying to never disrupt the Economy when the Economy is based on materially impossibly extracting ever growing profits out of a finite world is itself a futile self-destructive endeavor.
It all comes down to "well, sure we might have plenty, but if not for capitalism how could we decide how to divide it?"
But any solution has to promote self-interest as a virtue and can't take things away from people who currently own them, and also must conform to a bunch of myths we have about "how the world works"
I would be all in favor of "Use it or lose it" rights to Digital Distribution.... Don't offer a reasonable way to access a product? Can't bitch when Abandonware sites give it away for nothing.
There is an expiration date for IP. But I have little idea what type it goes under.
I just assume the reason old, barely functional games get the odd 1.3kb update every once in a blue moon is to "refresh" that expiration date.
Copyright is not "use it or lose it", but as it is, it is unworkable for digital media. Computer hardware doesn't last a century and with no other measures being taken to preserve that content, it's effectively doomed by the law. It also doesn't reflect a world where average people make edits of copyrighted content as a means of expression without seeing any problem with that.