4 ms·

This is not a popular opinion: way too many games journalists have lost all notion of objectivity because they want to change copyright policy, and I am sick to

This is not a popular opinion: way too many games journalists have lost all notion of objectivity because they want to change copyright policy, and I am sick to death of intentionally misleading articles like this. Here is just one snippet: > In an odd footnote, the Register also notes that emulation of classic game consoles, while not infringing in its own right, has been "historically associated with piracy," thus "rais[ing] a potential concern" for any emulated remote access to library game catalogs. That footnote paradoxically cites Video Game History Foundation (VGHF) founder and director Frank Cifaldi's 2016 Game Developers Conference talk on the demonization of emulation and its importance to video game preservation. > "The moment I became the Joker is when someone in charge of copyright law watched my GDC talk about how it's wrong to associate emulation with piracy and their takeaway was 'emulation is associated with piracy,'" Cifaldi quipped in a social media post. The minor issue is that you shouldn’t focus on errors in footnotes for 300-page documents (Orland makes no attempt at an honest summary of the judges’ reasoning). But the critical flaw in this snippet that Cifaldi is himself acting in bad faith, because he mischaracterized his own talk: > Because [we demonized emulation] I think two things happened. One is that old games became the domain of the pirates, so people started thinking of games the same way we were thinking of MP3s in the Napster days, where it’s just like “music’s free now, who cares?” And we also I think by not getting ahead of it and getting games back in print through emulation, I think for a lot of games it’s too late now, and the legal rights are just never going to get cleared up for a lot of games. [errors are mine, this is from YouTube] Here Cifaldi clearly acknowledges that emulation is a powerful means of piracy that has done irreparable damage to the intellectual property rights of game developers. The reason the US Copyright office cited this talk was to point this out, that the publishers’ concerns were shared by a prominent games preservation activist. Faced with this information, the activist simply lied about his own words, and the journalist did zero investigative work on his own, shamelessly smearing an honest judge who wrote an honest footnote. Good arguments don’t need to be supported by easily falsifiable lies. Games journalists need to do their f*ckin’ jobs.

senko 2y ago
Tell me you're an IP lawyer without telling me you're an IP lawyer: > Here Cifaldi clearly acknowledges that emulation is a powerful means of piracy that has done irreparable damage to the intellectual property rights of game developers. That's some serious mental gymnastics, man.
- WillPostForFood 2y ago
  old games became the domain of the pirates, so people started thinking of games the same way we were thinking of MP3s in the Napster days, where it’s just like “music’s free now, who cares?” Does it really take mental gymnastics to read the above quotation that way?
  - senko 2y ago
    The part you cut from the quote actually gives it the opposite meaning: emulation was demonized so only the people who were okay with piracy considered it. Going from that to "emulation caused irreparable harm to developers" takes some chutzpah.
- add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
  It's not mental gymnastics to say that the people who use emulation can be divided into groups who would have and who would not have otherwise paid for a game. There is damage done, despite all the people who only use emulation ethically. Even the people who only pirate games that are no longer for sale could end up withholding money from the industry because their gaming needs are met by the quasi-piracy. You can disagree with him, but smugly pretending he doesn't have a point is disingenuous.
  - trinsic2 2y ago
    Nope sorry. There is no data that supports that. We are mostly talking about emulation to play games that are no longer playable that are considered abandonware. Copyright was meant to be a short limit so an organization or individual can profit and then the work gets put into the public domain. There is no god given right to maximize profits beyond 5 or 10 years a most. The whole 95 year thing is a sham meant to prevent creative works from entering into the public domain.
  - senko 2y ago
    By the same arguments: People who live can also be divided into groups who would have and who would not have paid for a game. There is damage done, despite all the people who only live ethically. Even the people who do something else (than buying a game that can't be bought) could end up withholding money from the industry because their gaming needs are met by something else. That's not an argument for why "something else" is bad. It's ridiculous.
ndriscoll 2y ago
That seems like an unfair way to characterize what he was saying. The point is that of course emulators will be associated with piracy if publishers won't sell ROMs, and use technological measures to try to prevent third-party implementations from being able to run legitimately purchased games (i.e. perform product tying, which is supposed to be illegal), and bankrupt commercial emulator companies through lawfare even when they know they have a losing case. Average people don't have the means or technical know-how to rip ROMs themselves, so piracy becomes the easier path. Like I don't own a Switch and I'm not going to buy a relatively expensive single-purpose piece of hardware like that to e.g. see what TotK is about. If I were going to buy a handheld, I'd probably buy something like an Asus or Valve device, which are higher performance and can run Linux. But in order to use an emulator, you necessarily have to pirate it because they won't sell it. For older games, the rights holders don't publish it at all, so again naturally over time as the old copies are discarded or damaged, only pirated copies will remain. That has nothing to do with emulation, and everything to do with the fact that the things being pirated aren't for sale. If the music industry still refused to sell anything other than vinyl, portable music players would've been associated with piracy too, but only because most people aren't going to bother to rip their own music off a record player when someone else already went through the trouble. DRM is just doubling down on this thinking. If they wouldn't sell anything older than 5 years out of their catalogue, rock music would also be associated with piracy.
croes 2y ago
> Here Cifaldi clearly acknowledges that emulation is a powerful means of piracy that has done irreparable damage to the intellectual property rights of game developers. Why didn’t you say profits? The game developers didn’t lose their right through emulation. And how much profit they lose is to debate because the film industry claimed the same with billions of damage as if every pirated copy would have been as sold copy without piracy. Too bad a study of the EU showed otherwise.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- autoexec 2y ago
  That bothered me about this statement too: > "Further, while the Register appreciates that proponents have suggested broad safeguards that could deter recreational uses of video games in some cases, she believes that such requirements are not specific enough to conclude that they would prevent market harms." They're clearly only worried about profits when the purpose of copyright is not to enforce profits but to promote the creation of new works.
pinkmuffinere 2y ago
I don’t see the “clear acknowledgement that emulation … has done irreparable damage to the intellectual property rights of game developers”. Cifaldi is arguing that _because_ emulation was not better supported, users had no choice but to pirate the games they wanted to play. He’s asking game developers to provide a convenient and legal way to play the games, and predicting that will reduce piracy. I tend to agree with the argument. Between buying copies for friends and getting new versions, I’ve orchard age of empires at least 10 different times on steam. But before it was available on steam, I absolutely was pirating it (please don’t hurt me FBI). Pirating is annoying, I don’t want to deal with sketchy websites, I just want the game. Of course that’s just one datapoint
- slowmovintarget 2y ago
  I've bought games Steam that are available for free (not pirating, literally no charge) for the convenience of Proton setup. In other cases, I've bought on Steam as a way to support the Dev (Krita comes to mind... not a game, though).
  - small_scombrus 2y ago
    I and many others paid for Dwarf Fortress, you can go to their website and download (admittedly a non-GUI version) for free right now. Make good things, and make them available and people will want to pay you.
    - slowmovintarget 2y ago
      Yes, that was one of the ones I purchased. The Dwarf Fortress team deserved it.
trinsic2 2y ago
You're forgetting that copyright is limited. The public grants companies a limited license to profit off the work and then it enters the public domain. At least, thats how it's suppose to be, but corporations lobbied to extend copyright for, how many years is it now? Your argument is the one that is disingenuous.

senko 2y ago

Tell me you're an IP lawyer without telling me you're an IP lawyer: > Here Cifaldi clearly acknowledges that emulation is a powerful means of piracy that has done irreparable damage to the intellectual property rights of game developers. That's some serious mental gymnastics, man.

WillPostForFood 2y ago
old games became the domain of the pirates, so people started thinking of games the same way we were thinking of MP3s in the Napster days, where it’s just like “music’s free now, who cares?” Does it really take mental gymnastics to read the above quotation that way?
- senko 2y ago
  The part you cut from the quote actually gives it the opposite meaning: emulation was demonized so only the people who were okay with piracy considered it. Going from that to "emulation caused irreparable harm to developers" takes some chutzpah.
add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
It's not mental gymnastics to say that the people who use emulation can be divided into groups who would have and who would not have otherwise paid for a game. There is damage done, despite all the people who only use emulation ethically. Even the people who only pirate games that are no longer for sale could end up withholding money from the industry because their gaming needs are met by the quasi-piracy. You can disagree with him, but smugly pretending he doesn't have a point is disingenuous.
- trinsic2 2y ago
  Nope sorry. There is no data that supports that. We are mostly talking about emulation to play games that are no longer playable that are considered abandonware. Copyright was meant to be a short limit so an organization or individual can profit and then the work gets put into the public domain. There is no god given right to maximize profits beyond 5 or 10 years a most. The whole 95 year thing is a sham meant to prevent creative works from entering into the public domain.
- senko 2y ago
  By the same arguments: People who live can also be divided into groups who would have and who would not have paid for a game. There is damage done, despite all the people who only live ethically. Even the people who do something else (than buying a game that can't be bought) could end up withholding money from the industry because their gaming needs are met by something else. That's not an argument for why "something else" is bad. It's ridiculous.

ndriscoll 2y ago

That seems like an unfair way to characterize what he was saying. The point is that of course emulators will be associated with piracy if publishers won't sell ROMs, and use technological measures to try to prevent third-party implementations from being able to run legitimately purchased games (i.e. perform product tying, which is supposed to be illegal), and bankrupt commercial emulator companies through lawfare even when they know they have a losing case. Average people don't have the means or technical know-how to rip ROMs themselves, so piracy becomes the easier path. Like I don't own a Switch and I'm not going to buy a relatively expensive single-purpose piece of hardware like that to e.g. see what TotK is about. If I were going to buy a handheld, I'd probably buy something like an Asus or Valve device, which are higher performance and can run Linux. But in order to use an emulator, you necessarily have to pirate it because they won't sell it. For older games, the rights holders don't publish it at all, so again naturally over time as the old copies are discarded or damaged, only pirated copies will remain. That has nothing to do with emulation, and everything to do with the fact that the things being pirated aren't for sale. If the music industry still refused to sell anything other than vinyl, portable music players would've been associated with piracy too, but only because most people aren't going to bother to rip their own music off a record player when someone else already went through the trouble. DRM is just doubling down on this thinking. If they wouldn't sell anything older than 5 years out of their catalogue, rock music would also be associated with piracy.

croes 2y ago

> Here Cifaldi clearly acknowledges that emulation is a powerful means of piracy that has done irreparable damage to the intellectual property rights of game developers. Why didn’t you say profits? The game developers didn’t lose their right through emulation. And how much profit they lose is to debate because the film industry claimed the same with billions of damage as if every pirated copy would have been as sold copy without piracy. Too bad a study of the EU showed otherwise.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
autoexec 2y ago
That bothered me about this statement too: > "Further, while the Register appreciates that proponents have suggested broad safeguards that could deter recreational uses of video games in some cases, she believes that such requirements are not specific enough to conclude that they would prevent market harms." They're clearly only worried about profits when the purpose of copyright is not to enforce profits but to promote the creation of new works.

pinkmuffinere 2y ago

I don’t see the “clear acknowledgement that emulation … has done irreparable damage to the intellectual property rights of game developers”. Cifaldi is arguing that _because_ emulation was not better supported, users had no choice but to pirate the games they wanted to play. He’s asking game developers to provide a convenient and legal way to play the games, and predicting that will reduce piracy. I tend to agree with the argument. Between buying copies for friends and getting new versions, I’ve orchard age of empires at least 10 different times on steam. But before it was available on steam, I absolutely was pirating it (please don’t hurt me FBI). Pirating is annoying, I don’t want to deal with sketchy websites, I just want the game. Of course that’s just one datapoint

slowmovintarget 2y ago
I've bought games Steam that are available for free (not pirating, literally no charge) for the convenience of Proton setup. In other cases, I've bought on Steam as a way to support the Dev (Krita comes to mind... not a game, though).
- small_scombrus 2y ago
  I and many others paid for Dwarf Fortress, you can go to their website and download (admittedly a non-GUI version) for free right now. Make good things, and make them available and people will want to pay you.
  - slowmovintarget 2y ago
    Yes, that was one of the ones I purchased. The Dwarf Fortress team deserved it.

trinsic2 2y ago

You're forgetting that copyright is limited. The public grants companies a limited license to profit off the work and then it enters the public domain. At least, thats how it's suppose to be, but corporations lobbied to extend copyright for, how many years is it now? Your argument is the one that is disingenuous.