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US copyright law 'forces researchers to explore extra-legal methods' for game preservation, say historians who are 'disappointed' after being denied a DMCA exemption (www.pcgamer.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Copyright should only exist if the entire work, including the entire code base, is held in escrow by the copyright office.

If you don't do that, you don't get protection. This is literally the reason why patents exist, you tell us how you did it, and we prevent anyone else from copying that method for a period of time.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Mandatory deposit is already required for copyright registration, and this includes video games.

Deposit of copies or phonorecords for Library of Congress8 (a) Except as provided by subsection (c), and subject to the provisions of subsection (e), the owner of copyright or of the exclusive right of publication in a work published in the United States shall deposit, within three months after the date of such publication—

(1) two complete copies of the best edition; or

(2) if the work is a sound recording, two complete phonorecords of the best edition, together with any printed or other visually perceptible material published with such phonorecords.

Neither the deposit requirements of this subsection nor the acquisition provisions of subsection (e) are conditions of copyright protection.

(b) The required copies or phonorecords shall be deposited in the Copyright Office for the use or disposition of the Library of Congress.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Wtf??? Then they have nothing to fucking say about the copyright of games, if they don't have them preserved at the copyright office

Do we know if they send copies over there, or otherwise archive them there? If not, then fucking hell

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

for the most part the game companies now furnish us with a copy of the game, many times one copy for each platform for which the game is available. We now receive games for a variety of platforms including PlayStation 3, XBOX, Wii, DS, PSP and PC.

That interview was in 2012, in case you're curious.

The issue here isn't the absence of archived video games. Copies of those games exist at the Library of Congress. And just like a physical book at your local library, you have to go to the library if you want to borrow them.

The Video Game History Foundation wants to download those games, kind of like the e-books available at many libraries. By law, this requires a licensing agreement between the library and the copyright holder. That's why for many books, libraries only have physical copies. So the VGHF wants to change that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

🫢stealing this library and creating a torrent would be such a pirate move, like, I don’t know what could top that, global hero

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

They are in physical form, so they all still have the original DRM. And if the DRM has been cracked, then a torrent probably already exists.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago

If the game is popular enough, I guess

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago

Just having a copy of a Game doesn't help at all with preservation when the games have DRM. Preservation is more then just safe storage, preservation also means to ensure that the content can be used by future generations. This is in general not really an issue with physical media like sculptures, books or paintings. But with digital media this often means that the data has to be copied to other media, convert the data to other formats, or write/use emulators or even rebuild the engine of the game to ensure that a piece of software written now can still be used by whatever hardware/software architecture is in use 20, 50 or 100 years from now. And such preservation has to start when the data is fresh and new, not in 50 or 100 years.