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posted by martyb on Sunday April 12 2015, @12:21AM   Printer-friendly
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.

 
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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by takyon on Sunday April 12 2015, @01:27AM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday April 12 2015, @01:27AM (#169179) Journal

    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

    by wisnoskij (5149) <{jonathonwisnoski} {at} {gmail.com}> on Sunday April 12 2015, @03:34AM (#169225)

    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.