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Although most here probably know this already, I'll take this opportunity to point out that the Internet Archive has a great collection of games playable in you

Although most here probably know this already, I'll take this opportunity to point out that the Internet Archive has a great collection of games playable in your browser. https://archive.org/details/consolelivingroom https://archive.org/details/consolelivingroom

distantsounds 9y ago
bless the internet archive for having an exception to the DMCA clause!
- comex 9y ago
  The DMCA isn’t the main issue here. Its anticircumvention clause, which is what the exemptions are for, is specifically about breaking DRM, which isn’t even present in most of the stuff they’re offering for emulation. Rather, the issue would be straight-up copyright infringement: they’re hosting copyrighted ROMs and sending copies to any browser that visits the page. There are various little-known exemptions for copyright infringement, too, written in the statute, but I don’t think any of them are applicable. The Internet Archive would have to claim either copyright abandonment or fair use. Fair use would be a stretch, since they’re sending the entire ROMs, not just parts of them, and they’re offering a replica of the original, intended user experience rather than creating something “transformative”. As for copyright abandonment… I don’t know much about the case law for that, but at least according to Wikipedia[1], it wouldn’t hold much water either, any more than it would for out-of-print (but non-public-domain) books. Heck, they’re even hosting games that are still being sold, such as Sonic the Hedgehog and Pac-Man. They’re marked “Stream Only”, but that just means they’re not putting a “save a copy” button in the UI; the game is still being downloaded in full into your browser, in order to run the JavaScript-based emulator. (Though even if they were running the emulator on a server and streaming a video feed, that would still typically be infringing.) My guess is, they know they’re violating copyright, but they expect that the vast majority of copyright owners won’t care (and/or won’t notice), and anyone who does will send a DMCA notice rather than going for a full-blown lawsuit. Alternately, they might have negotiated a license for at least some of the games in the collection, but in that case I’d expect they’d say so. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware#Law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware#Law

distantsounds 9y ago

bless the internet archive for having an exception to the DMCA clause!

comex 9y ago
The DMCA isn’t the main issue here. Its anticircumvention clause, which is what the exemptions are for, is specifically about breaking DRM, which isn’t even present in most of the stuff they’re offering for emulation. Rather, the issue would be straight-up copyright infringement: they’re hosting copyrighted ROMs and sending copies to any browser that visits the page. There are various little-known exemptions for copyright infringement, too, written in the statute, but I don’t think any of them are applicable. The Internet Archive would have to claim either copyright abandonment or fair use. Fair use would be a stretch, since they’re sending the entire ROMs, not just parts of them, and they’re offering a replica of the original, intended user experience rather than creating something “transformative”. As for copyright abandonment… I don’t know much about the case law for that, but at least according to Wikipedia[1], it wouldn’t hold much water either, any more than it would for out-of-print (but non-public-domain) books. Heck, they’re even hosting games that are still being sold, such as Sonic the Hedgehog and Pac-Man. They’re marked “Stream Only”, but that just means they’re not putting a “save a copy” button in the UI; the game is still being downloaded in full into your browser, in order to run the JavaScript-based emulator. (Though even if they were running the emulator on a server and streaming a video feed, that would still typically be infringing.) My guess is, they know they’re violating copyright, but they expect that the vast majority of copyright owners won’t care (and/or won’t notice), and anyone who does will send a DMCA notice rather than going for a full-blown lawsuit. Alternately, they might have negotiated a license for at least some of the games in the collection, but in that case I’d expect they’d say so. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware#Law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware#Law