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Gamers Want DMCA Exemption for ‘Abandoned’ Online Games
- pmarreck 9y agoThis is sort of like the lover of an old book whose author has stopped reprinting it wanting to preserve the book for themselves.
- Vanit 9y agoYeah, it is. It's called public domain. Seems pretty reasonable to me.
- redbeard0x0a 9y agoExcept public domain only happens 70 years after the authors death (or 95 years after publication when talking about corporate authors). So I could write a good book now, publish it, let it go out of print as of this year, live another 40 years. You wouldn't be able to get a copy of my work from the public domain until the year 2127.
- Vanit 9y agoI know how public domain works. My comment was making light of the OP's ambiguous analogy.
- Terr_ 9y ago> Except public domain only happens Flip it: Public domain happens by default. The problem is that some very powerful lobbyists ensure that the government declares otherwise for ridiculously long (and constantly increasing) periods.
- stctgion 9y agoIn 2023 Mickey mouse is due to enter the public domain again so it'll probably increase before then
- katastic 9y agoProbably? More like "guaranteed."
- regulation_d 9y agoThe Constitution requires that copyright durations be of a "limited times". At some point, we're going to need to put our collective foot down on this or hope that SCOTUS does.
- BearGoesChirp 9y agoUnless something major changes, public domain will never happen again. Corporations such as Disney will continuously lobby to extend it to cover their older works.
- wvenable 9y agoI'm ok with Disney keeping copyright on their works; I just wish that wasn't tied together with so many other works that have been abandoned by their authors (like old games, books, media, etc).
- djsumdog 9y agoI'm really not. They lobby for special legislation around all their specific works. Mickey Mouse should really be in the public domain by now. They should respect those laws and move on to new trade-markable characters and learn to rebrand themselves. The fact that they are so big that they can be granted special exemption is pretty alarming.
- delinka 9y agoIt seems you’re conflating trademark and copyright. Personally, I’m fine with trademarks continuing in perpetuity as long as the owner maintains the registration. Disney gets to keep their brand name and trademarked characters. It’s copyright on Disney’s films and music that’s the problem. Maybe I can’t make my own Mickey film, but I could certainly remix Steamboat Willie cartoons if they entered the public domain. Or do similar with their music. But it’s really not even about that. If Disney gobbles up all the copyrightable content, maintains copyright forever, then creating something new (but too similar) can put an individual artist in trouble with copyright law. That’s unacceptable.
- katastic 9y agoExcept you should realize 99% of Disney's "works" were ripped off of public domain (and expired copyright) works, which they THEN (after making billions) lobbied to have copyright extended so nobody would ever be able to do what they did. It has to be one of the sickest corporate abuses ("anti-consumer, anti-society") in US history.
- int_19h 9y agoLong copyright terms wouldn't be a problem, if we started to treat copyright as property with respect to taxation. There should be some baseline tax, such that you have to invest money to keep it going. Probably after a couple of first years when the tax is zero, to allow authors to get the cash flow going. And then use the collected taxes to fund public non-copyrighted art.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y agoUnfortunately for you, the oligarchy disagrees.
- tracker1 9y agoSomeone suggested that copyright renewal happen closer to original, and that each renewal becomes a factor more expensive than the last time. Lets say you require renewal each decade (with a one year grace period)... The first registration costs $100, the next 1000, then 10000, etc. If a company is literally willing to pay tens of million+ to keep a work out of public domain for more than 60 years, let them. This allows you to get the first 30 years for $11,100 before it gets pricey. Frankly, I like this idea. Get rid of the pretense of public domain as long as a company is willing to pay that much a decade. Maybe just have it 2.5x each decade once you hit 100 million. Also, have a 3-5 year grace period for renewal before it becomes public domain.
- delecti 9y agoI think just the shortened renewal period alone would be worthwhile, even without the exponentially increasing fees. Any truly abandoned media isn't going to have anyone trying to renew it. If Disney wants to charge me $20 for a copy of the 75 year old Bambi, well... at least it's available. The insultingly long term their lobbyists have bought is a valid topic, but a topic for another thread.
- caf 9y agoThat's actually not a great example, because Bambi frequently isn't available due to Disney's practice of rotating their back catalogue through the "vault".
- danbolt 9y agoI've had similar thoughts before, and I think that's a really good idea.
- ChoGGi 9y agoThat's generous, I'd always thought 1% of revenue every year (and going up another percent year by year). That's with a maximum of thirty years before it goes into the public domain. Keeping something public yet out of the public domain should cost. Personally I just go with anything over seven years is public domain, unless I have a strong urge to support the artist(s).
- maxton 9y agoI think a better comparison would be the lover of an old e-book whose publisher has shut down their DRM validation servers wanting to be able to read the book again in the future.
- ghaff 9y agoThe thing with Abandonware/orphan works legislation is that a lot of the people most opposed to it aren't those you would think. Disney doesn't care that much. Their lawyers aren't going to forget to renew a copyright. Rather, it's various professional societies representing photographer, authors, etc. who figure that the individual creator or their estate will let copyright lapse through inaction and big media will come in and snatch up their work at no cost. I'm definitely on board with copyright terms being too long and, in most cases, "abandonware" doesn't have a lot of value for the original creator anyway, but abandonware isn't primarily a big corp issue.
- taneq 9y agoInteresting take on it, I hadn't thought of that angle. Maybe they could add some kind of non-commercial use clause (if they haven't already) to cover this case? ie. you can't swoop in and commercialize some indie preservation effort but you can host it and supply to others free of charge (or for the 'cost of distribution')?
- pmarreck 9y agoThis I agree with!
- djsumdog 9y agoThe really weird thing about eBooks is that you're not really buying the book. It's more like giving you a license to view the book. You can't really resell an eBook, or a Steam game.
- jmiserez 9y agoJust because it is currently like that doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. You can still read physical books even after hundreds of years.
- joliv 9y agoA loosely related provision of US copyright law, section 108h, does allow books from 1923-1941 to be scanned and made available by libraries if not being actively sold! http://blog.archive.org/2017/10/10/books-from-1923-to-1941-now-liberated/ http://blog.archive.org/2017/10/10/books-from-1923-to-1941-n...
- adrianm 9y agoWasn't this addressed a couple of years ago? [1] [1] http://www.wired.co.uk/article/dmca-game-preservation-exemptions-abandoned-games http://www.wired.co.uk/article/dmca-game-preservation-exempt...
- vitovito 9y agoExemptions are temporary and must be reasserted every three years.
- jasonlotito 9y ago> This is simply a ruling that allows an exemption to copyright law for the specific use of preservation by libraries and museums And > The DMCA does not allow people to copy games. It does not allow gamers to play shut down MMOs. In short: no.
- exabrial 9y agoOr let's just get rid of the DMCA altogether...
- beedogs 9y agoThis is a much more elegant solution. We should also get rid of the CCFA.
- mattashii 9y agoI think you meant CFAA (Computer Fraud and Abusement Act) instead of CCFA (Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCFA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCFA) Non-profit foundations for research on rare diseases are not something I would compare to copyright legislation.
- jameskegel 9y agoYou know that isn't what he meant.
- Sniffnoy 9y agoSpecifically, the anti-circumvention parts.
- Chardok 9y agoWith data rot beginning to creep up on old media this will certainly become an increasingly larger problem. https://kotaku.com/why-some-video-games-are-in-danger-of-disappearing-fore-1789609791 https://kotaku.com/why-some-video-games-are-in-danger-of-dis...
- chrisdbaldwin 9y agoI think including abandoned server code is odd, and I'm for it. I think we should start curating more public libraries with games in general, but that's going to be very difficult to do publicly (i.e. in a government library) in today's current online landscape. Between walled garden platforms and API integrations to centralized corporate servers, it seems unlikely that many of today's games will survive in their current state for long. More than ever, games frequently update becoming a different game or die to competition. It'd be rewarding to be able to spin up or join a local [Flavor] World of Warcraft server without getting shut down or told to wait for Blizzard to do it because that specific version of software was abandoned at some point. If it became public domain then, it would be available to the public to operate as we please. I really just look at situations like Halo 2 and think that there's got to be a way to put server code into the public domain so that if someone wants to "rent" Halo 2 server code from the Library so that they can play online on the original hardware and everything, that'd be really cool, and experiences would be able to be shared across generations like books, films, and other forms of art. In the wild, it seems permanent shut down of an online service is equivalent to forfeiting server code for the dead game over to whomever can acquire it, either for sale, or often times theft in form of sharing among the most hardcore followers. This up-for-grabs situation is a symptom of the problem, and shouldn't be the main focus, but it is worth noting because it can affect Copyright/IP protection. If the company behind the game doesn't want to continue supporting a version of their online game, there needs to be a way to gracefully donate said deprecated version without losing underlying IP rights. It's donated and falls into public domain for operation under some relatively clear license a la books in a library. That'd be cool.
- Shivetya 9y agoWell one issue is that an online game may be subject to multiple licenses. One example I do know of is Asheron's Call. There were some attempts to get it and its sequel. However there were licenses to Microsoft to consider and other third parties. Hence the "owner" of the game could not simply turn it over to the public. I know, just rip out what is otherwise covered by another license or copyright. Well not only would that take time but it may leave the code in a state beyond repair.
- Feniks 9y agoYeah this would be nice. Its easy enough to pirate a 20 year old single player game. Nobody cares really. But online projects DO attract attention of lawyers. But this is never going to happen.
- cabaalis 9y agoIf the older game did not employ any kind of encryption of the data stream, isn't it open season to reverse engineer? So many of these are shut down by trademark licensing and artwork copyrights?
- JonnyNova 9y agoThis happened with Star Wars Galaxies. Two projects: https://www.swgemu.com/ https://www.swgemu.com/ https://www.projectswg.com/ https://www.projectswg.com/
- nitwit005 9y agoThe networking side is doable, but there is usually no way to reverse engineer things like monster AIs that ran server side.
- imtringued 9y agoSome games have thousands of items/buffs/abilities. If the data for these is not included in the client (it sometimes is, usually for item descriptions) then it's basically impossible. The same applies to the damage algorithm. You cannot replicate the original game without the server code. You're basically building your own custom game that merely happens to share the same UI if you proceed to reverse engineer the server.
- ybrah 9y agoIt would increase competition for current games; therefore publishers will not allow it.
- justinhj 9y agoExactly. Allowing people to play older games for free has a positive effect of keeping interest in your brand alive but at the same time you’re losing potentially paying customers that are just as happy playing the free 10 year old game
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- bunkydoo 9y agoIf such a rule were to pass, it would be cool to see something done for older ROMs. So many games have the potential to go unplayed and become forgotten relics
- solresol 9y agoThis exception to the DMCA for all software where the copyright owner can't be contacted was negotiated for Australia as part of the Australia-USA free trade agreement. It allows for breaking encryption and anything that is required to get it to run.