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canopic jug writes:

David Rosenthal writes in his blog about his brief talk recently given at a video game preservation workshop.

I was asked to give a brief talk to the Video Game Preservation Workshop: Setting the Stage for Multi-Partner Projects at the Stanford Library, discussing the technical and legal aspects of cooperation on preserving software via emulation. Below the fold is an edited text of the talk with links to the sources.

On the basis of the report I wrote on Emulation and Virtualization as Preservation Strategies two years ago, I was asked to give a brief talk today. That may have been a mistake; I retired almost a year ago and I haven't been following developments in the field closely. But I'll do my best and I'm sure you will let me know where I'm out-of-date. As usual, you don't need to take notes, the text of what follows with links to the sources will go up on my blog at the end of this session.

With a lot of digital resources, games especially, there is a conundrum caused by abandonware, or orphaned works, where the owner neglects it due to lack of income but due to increased interest will not change the licensing or availability. With games and other things depending on their original, physical storage media, time runs out quickly before entropy takes it away forever. However, finding a way to preserve games takes money and the actual preservation takes more money...

Source : Brief Talk at Video Game Preservation Workshop

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