No Preserving Abandoned Games, Even for Museums and Archives

[adrdesign]

Moths ago we´ve read in EAB some interesting thoughts about copyrights and legal issues with fan made projects.

Videogame Publishers: No Preserving Abandoned Games, Even for Museums and Archives, Because All "Hacking" is Illegal


So that´s all. Note this WILL be applied to amiga community and -"seems like now It is not so much"- abandonware. I´ll stay here with lots of popcorn...

[saimon69]

I still wonder when they will sue all humanity because we have MEMORY of a movie we seen or a song we heard, and HUMAN MEMORY is considered an illegal recording - yup have THAT opinion of those people...

@adrdesign
anybody going to crowfund some legal assistance? I might give some cash for it!

[commodorejohn]

Dear ESA: please get bent. Sincerely, everyone.

[Vot]

This copyright nonsense is getting out of control.

Imagine if they enforce copyright. Whdload itself would be legal but all of the patches would be modifying software and illegal.

[blizz1220]

Well I don't think Amiga scene will be affected that much , I think
they will focus on more recent titles or titles that still have some
money making potential.Amiga titles are 68k and that is pretty old
while PS2 titles will always have Sony on their legal side (sometimes
just to make them disappear so someone would buy new version).

Demise of Commodore saw many amiga companies drop Amiga or just
go out of business and many authors released free versions.

For a copyright hunting company to have a prey it needs a client
that will pay it , most of them are not charities or sponsored by
the states.Apart from that there is not infinite number of Amiga
titles to preserve , compared to Mac side just try and find some
old 68k games and you'll see they are gone forever even though
they are not sold anymore anywhere but EBay.

Good test site is Macintosh Garden , they had to pull down most
newer stuff as they claimed "fair use" and "abandonware" but EA showed them no mercy.

[BarryB]

The EFF are currently petitioning the Patent Office and the Library of Congress over abandoned video games.

Source: http://copyright.gov/1201/2014/petit...ssion_2014.pdf

[Galahad/FLT]

This has zero traction and its an American only endeavour, and won't translate to the rest of the world.

Put simply, its a non-starter. Alienating games players like this is financial suicide, it only takes a concerted effort to punish one publisher over one game to show who actually has the financial power, and I can assure you, efforts like this will be thwarted easily.

[zerohour1974]

So we have to depend on crumbling media. We have several floppies in our physical archive at the Museum of Computing in Swindon but many of them just don't work due to read errors due to age. so digital archiving was a way of preserving data. Now this is seen as illegal. Ridiculous.

[BarryB]

Kryoflux/SCP can archive the data, it's not circumventing anything as it's making an identical copy of the original data, so shouldn't be breaking any law unless they view it as copying?

I also have no faith in 'concerted' efforts by people to force change, EA and Ubisoft still sell broken, half finished games and apply draconian DRM and people lap their crud up like little puppies waiting for a treat!

[Schoenfeld]

The nice thnig is that there's always one country where it's not "hacking", but "creating a private backup". German law grants the "Recht auf Privatkopie" (a right to create a copy for yourself), but also punishes "einen wirksamen Kopierschutz umgehen" (to bypass effective copy-protection).

Yes, the law wording is really that funny: it's illegal to bypass effective copy-protection. In my understanding (I'm not a lawyer!), that part of the law is totally void, because if I can bypass a copy-protection, it's not effective any more.

Trouble is, if you ask questions, you get lots of answers, and if you ask lawyers, they may always find something. However, we still use Wireshark and disassemblers, although German law has effectively made them illegal. In those terms, it may even be illegal to use a framebuffer to convert a video picture to a flatscreen-compatible signal, because I'm creating a digital copy of a picture that may be copyrighted. Heaven forbid it shows a smurf!

Jens

[BarryB]

UK is the same, it's legal to rip/burn your CD/DVD for personal use yet you can't circumvent the CSS copy protection or other forms of copy protection if the CD/DVD has it so it's like a Catch-22.

[Schoenfeld]

I didn't know CSS was also available on CDs. CDs do have the SCMS (serial copy management system) that flips a bit in the S/P-DIF protocol. The audio data itself isn't changed, but a bit tells the target machine "only playback, do not record!".

In 1998, I designed the "Gemini", a copy-bit killer that removes this bit, but leaves all track start/stop information in the data stream. The device has become illegal a few years later, but "professional recorders" still have a menu item called "ignore copy-bit" - these aren't illegal, but they are a lot more expensive. There must be a different law for those who can afford the "professional" recorders...

Jens

[BarryB]

Sorry, I was using CSS as an example of copy protection, which applies to DVD not CD

Pro-recorders are probably more expensive as they may have a levy/tax on them for that reason?

[zerohour1974]

A private backup but is fine for personal use but we are a commercial entity so we are restricted to what we can do. Although most companies politely dont hassle us for allowing the public to play their games (for now).

Should we just let the disks degrade.

Then decide whether we want to find/pay for replacements or licenses.

[modrobert]

Originally Posted by saimon69

I still wonder when they will sue all humanity because we have MEMORY of a movie we seen or a song we heard, and HUMAN MEMORY is considered an illegal recording

This is the reason alcoholic beverages are legal as opposed to other drugs, to make us forget (and remain stupid enough to buy their shit).

[Amiga1992]

What a load of shit. The MoMA in New York started displaying and collecting videogames and I thought that was brilliant.
People proposing this kinda ignorant bullshit ideas should disappear.

[Hodor]

The capacity of humans for being stupid amazes me. And how the copyright laws are twisted to extreme sides scares me.

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by BarryB

Kryoflux/SCP can archive the data, it's not circumventing anything as it's making an identical copy of the original data, so shouldn't be breaking any law unless they view it as copying?

It's not the copying that's the issue with Kryoflux - if the game's copy protection is built-in on disk (such as non-standard track lengths, weak sectors or what have you) then the Kryoflux is being used as a means to circumvent that, which is illegal in the USA and Europe.

The UK allows you to make a personal backup, but does not allow you to circumvent copy protection.

That's why Kryoflux is illegal for many.

D.

[modrobert]

Making a 1:1 backup is not circumventing, it's just great, since you can load the backup without circumventing anything (as if original).

The UK (and German) law assumes we are bound to use consumer devices to make the backups, thus failing at 1:1, and therefore forced to circumvent in order to use the backup.

Instead, in the spirit of KryoFlux, we should create affordable stampers for the masses who wants to backup their optical media as well, no matter if protected or not, since the 1:1 backup will run on the host/target system without modification.

[Predseda]

fck ESA