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"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."

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[-] Blackmist@feddit.uk 22 points 2 hours ago

OK, I'll download them then.

[-] dubyakay@lemmy.ca 39 points 4 hours ago

It sounds like the problem is not with the feds but with the DMCA. It needs to be overturned.

[-] mm_maybe@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 hours ago

Well, maybe we need a movement to make physical copies of these games and the consoles needed to play them available in actual public libraries, then? That doesn't seem to be affected by this ruling and there's lots of precedent for it in current practice, which includes lending of things like musical instruments and DVD players. There's a business near me that does something similar, but they restrict access by age to high schoolers and older, and you have to play the games there; you can't rent them out.

[-] wavebeam@lemmy.world 40 points 5 hours ago

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.

[-] Bazoogle@lemmy.world 12 points 3 hours ago

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.

[-] postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Only legal for educationale, reproductioning, or ownin dem libs. (sic.)

[-] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 4 points 3 hours ago

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.

[-] umbrella@lemmy.ml 10 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

stop giving money to lobbyists

🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️

[-] linearchaos@lemmy.world 4 points 2 hours ago

That's not enough, let's outlaw lobbying.

[-] JoeKrogan@lemmy.world 36 points 7 hours ago

Sharing is caring

[-] mPony@lemmy.world 65 points 9 hours 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.

[-] kent_eh@lemmy.ca 7 points 3 hours 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.

[-] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 hour ago

It's such bullshit it makes me want to start selling those knockoff consoles just purely out of spite.

[-] BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 16 points 5 hours ago

It's been demonstrated multiple times that when you make access easy and affordable people will pay for it over pirating it.

[-] zarenki@lemmy.ml 19 points 6 hours ago

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.

[-] Pulptastic@midwest.social 13 points 7 hours ago

The same logic would apply to books. ::gestures at library::

[-] Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 5 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours 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.com 13 points 5 hours 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.world 6 points 3 hours 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

[-] ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 hours ago

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.

[-] kent_eh@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 hours ago

Libraries rent out ebooks too

Libraries loan out ebooks and other media.

 

/pet peeve.

[-] roguetrick@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours 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.

[-] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 3 points 5 hours ago

Stop it man you’re just going to give them ideas

[-] CosmoNova@lemmy.world 107 points 10 hours ago

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.

[-] tehn00bi@lemmy.world 29 points 8 hours ago

I really feel like the source code needs to be released after 25 years. We need to be able to protect older games.

[-] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 points 3 hours ago

There's often no in any way complete source code after 25 years.

Media degrade, get forgotten hell knows where, get occasionally destroyed.

[-] wavebeam@lemmy.world 7 points 5 hours ago

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.

[-] Fedizen@lemmy.world 27 points 10 hours ago

insane takeover of the public square here.

[-] MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 38 points 11 hours ago
[-] ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 5 hours ago

Hey now...we all of course only have copies of our own blurays and DVDs on our home media servers.

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this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2024
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