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from the you-pays-your-money--you-takes-your-chances dept.
Ars Technica has an interesting tidbit today about one of our more hotly discussed topics here... whether or not "abandonware" should continue to receive copyright protection — Entertainment Publishers fight to block third-party revival of “abandoned” game servers
This article concerns the trade industry response to a brief filed by the EFF last November.
A major game industry trade group is fighting back against a proposed DMCA exemption that seeks to give gamers the right to modify games with abandoned online servers in order to restore online gameplay and functionality. The Entertainment Software Association (ESA), with support (.pdf) from the Motion Picture Association of America and Recording Industry Association of America, argues that the proposed exemption would amount to "enabling—and indeed encouraging—the play of pirated games and the unlawful reproduction and distribution of infringing content."
[...] The US Copyright Office will be holding public hearings [PDF] on the proposed DMCA exemptions May 19 through 21 in Washington DC and Los Angeles. The final round of written comments on the rule will be closed on May 1.
My own thoughts on this is likely our payment systems are just as unworkable as copyright law. Mechanisms are now in place to take our money, give us something, then abandon it, yet prohibit us from using it. Maybe its high time we consider a "Millennium Digital Currency Act" for payments so when the vendors want to abandon the service, the money transfers back to to the buyer, and the copyrights transfer back to the seller.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2015, @01:11AM
And why are the servers shut down if the publisher still exists? Have you tried paying for service, instead of whining? Where's the crowdfunding to get shutdown servers put up again?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2015, @01:16AM
Have these copyright thugs tried competing in a real free market rather than relying on government thugs to enforce their unjust monopolies for them and bribing governments to create increasingly draconian copyright laws?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday April 12 2015, @01:28AM
The word "Abandonware" first needs to have a legal definition. If it doesn't already, the hope is that it will be codified through stare decisis.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2015, @12:52PM
Copyright only exists as an artificial institution propped up by goverment with the supposed intention being to foster innovation for eventual addition of the material to the public domain (though the amount of time it takes to get there keeps getting longer and longer the more lawyers are stacked up on the matter). Talking about it in the absence of government is, well, somewhat like talking about whether or not someone has tried swimming in a desert.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by takyon on Sunday April 12 2015, @01:27AM
If you have software on your machine, you shouldn't be prohibited from modifying it, as long as you don't distribute the whole thing. If the exemption passes, you should be allowed to distribute a patch to a multiplayer game, as well as legally operate the game over the Internet using your own or third-party servers, if it meets the criteria of the exemption. If that means a new player still has to buy a copy of the game, so be it.
The DMCA was made to be circumvented.
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(Score: 2, Interesting) by wisnoskij on Sunday April 12 2015, @03:34AM
And for all practical purposes you are. But if you are not allowed to distribute it then practically no one is going to do it and no one is going to be able to play an abandoned game, even among those who own it. But the issue is even bigger than this, and two fold. The problem with abandoned games is that we lose our collective history. What if Myst went stopped selling copies over 15 years ago and no one who did not buy it could play it after that. The problem is not just shutting out the owner, but providing no option to play or buy for the non-owners.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by wantkitteh on Sunday April 12 2015, @02:05AM
NBA2K14 had it's servers reinstated [arstechnica.com] after public outcry. 2K state that they only run the servers for 18 months after the initial release of the game. Given that purchasing this game means you've got a perpetual license to own it, the fact your offline-stored single player save stops working simply because the game can't authenticate with a server online for no reason is pretty much a violation of the social contract implied in that license - that you've bought the game, it's yours and you can play it forever. Of course, the publisher would rather that wasn't the case - they make a new version of their sports game every year and they'd prefer that you buy it rather than play the old ones. In this case, does that make it abandonware or disableware?
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Sunday April 12 2015, @06:18AM
2K state that they only run the servers for 18 months after the initial release of the game
There's only one person to blame, and that's the person agreeing to such a ridiculous license in the first place.
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Sunday April 12 2015, @09:29AM
Only if 2K were upfront about the game's lifespan, which is doesn't seem they were.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2015, @03:14PM
Really? Well, why should the government enforce their ridiculous monopoly for them? If people could modify the data on their own equipment and distribute patches to fix broken software without government interference, that would alleviate this problem.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by sjames on Sunday April 12 2015, @03:20AM
Because even though the gamers already handed their money over according to the terms set by the publisher, the publisher is a greedy bastard and decided it just wasn't enough (even though they set the price).
Crowdfunding won't get the original servers back up, the publisher isn't interested. Yes, they are actually refusing to "shut up and take my money".