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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: 2) by takyon on Sunday April 12 2015, @01:46AM
We heard you the first time. It still doesn't apply.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2015, @05:59AM
You're close, and by close I mean "not even in the same ballpark".
They're not saying "gimme free shit for free", they're saying "give me what I fecking paid for".
If a company sells a piece of software that only works by communicating with a server online and the company proceeds to shut down that server, then by rights the publisher can go f-- itself and the customers should have full rights to restore the functionality they paid for by whatever means necessary.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by isostatic on Sunday April 12 2015, @06:20AM
customers should have full rights to restore the functionality they paid for by whatever means necessary.
Customers paid for the right to use the game until the server was shut down. They didn't buy the game, they licensed the game under specific (pathetic, hilarious) conditions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2015, @03:22PM
Ethically, no. The data is stored on their own equipment, and to say they can't restore the software's functionality is deeply unethical. Legally, maybe you are right, but that just means those laws need to be scrapped, yes?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2015, @07:04PM
That can only be true if the customer had the opportunity to both read and agree to the license before handing over money.
Trojan, hidden, shrinkwraped, or clickwrapped licenses are like buying a house, then later finding a note on the kitchen counter from the seller containing a laundry list of things you cannot do with your new house (or that your can't live in your new house after, say, 18 months).
If it contains all the elements of a sale, it's a sale, and the buyer can do whatever they want with it short of making additional copies and selling/giving out the copies. (Court decisions to the contrary smack of Wickard vs Filburn and Dred Scott vs Sandford insanity.)
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2015, @06:32AM
OK, go to the publisher's house and shoot the dog. Let me know how that works out for ya.
You over-entitled fucking moron.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2015, @07:25AM
Why don't you go ask your bosses more work to do for free, since you are such a bitch? You little under-entitled fucking idiot.