The Museum Of Art And Digital Entertainment Calls For Anti-Circumvention Exemptions To Be Extended To Online Game Archives
from the preserve-and-protect dept
Now that we've covered a couple of stories about game companies, notably Blizzard, bullying the fans that run antiquated versions of MMO games on their own servers to shut down, it's as good a time as any to discuss a recent call for the DMCA anti-circumvention exemptions to include the curation of abandoned MMO games. A few weeks back, during the triennial public consultation period in which the U.S. Copyright Office gathers public commentary on potential exemptions to the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions, a bunch of public comments came in on the topic of abandoned video games. Importantly, the Librarian of Congress already has granted exemptions for the purpose of preserving the art of video games so that libraries and museums can use emulators to revive classic games for the public.
But what do you do if you're looking to preserve a massive multiplayer online game, or even single-player games, that rely on server connections with the company that made those games in order to operate? Those servers don't last forever, obviously. Hundreds of such games have been shut down in recent years, lost forever as the companies behind them no longer support the games or those that play them.
Well, one non-profit in California, The Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment, wants anti-circumvention exemptions for running servers for these games to keep them alive as well.
“Although the Current Exemption does not cover it, preservation of online video games is now critical,” MADE writes in its comment to the Copyright Office. “Online games have become ubiquitous and are only growing in popularity. For example, an estimated fifty-three percent of gamers play multiplayer games at least once a week, and spend, on average, six hours a week playing with others online.”
“Today, however, local multiplayer options are increasingly rare, and many games no longer support LAN connected multiplayer capability,” MADE counters, adding that nowadays even some single-player games require an online connection. “More troubling still to archivists, many video games rely on server connectivity to function in single-player mode and become unplayable when servers shut down.”
Due to that, MADE is asking the Copyright Office (and the Librarian of Congress) to allow libraries and museums exemptions to run their own servers to display these games as well. Frankly, it's difficult to conjure an argument against the request. If games are art, and they are, then they ought to be preserved. The Copyright Office has already agreed with this line of thinking for the category of games that don't require an online connection, so it's difficult to see how it could punt on the issue of online games.
And, yet, we have examples of fan-run servers of abandoned games, or versions of games, getting bullied by companies like Blizzard. These fan-servers are essentially filling the same role that groups like MADE would like to do: preserving old gaming content that has been made otherwise unavailable by companies that have turned down online game servers.
It's enough to make one wonder why a group of fans of a game shouldn't get the same protections afforded to a library or museum, if the end result is nearly identical.
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Filed Under: anti-circumvention, archiving, copyright office, dmca, dmca 1201, drm, librarian of congress, museums, triennial review, video games
Companies: made, museum of art and digital entertainment
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and, unfortunately, we need a doctrine of copyright abandonment.
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Since this suits the gatekeepers they resist any effort to change the status quo.
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Re:Orphan Works/Copyright Abandonment
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Re: Re:Orphan Works/Copyright Abandonment
Post-1976 US copyright law does not recognize a concept of copyright abandonment.
"Abandonment" is not an entirely accurate thing to call it, either. Abandonment implies intent. Typically, when a work's owner is unknown, it's because the author died with no heirs, or with heirs who were unaware of their inheritance.
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Re: Re: Re:Orphan Works/Copyright Abandonment
At least for a patent, a showing of "due diligence" is required...you know, you have to apply for one, pay some fees, etc. Meanwhile, this post, or the silly naruto photograph, has a copyright applied to it and I have the right to sue even if it's just a throwaway, and I do nothing except wake up years later and decide I don't like you quoting me. I didn't even have to stick on a (C)!
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The Author is often only relevant because their death starts the clock for release to the public domain ticking, or rarely somebody wants film or similar rights that were not transferred on publication.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:Orphan Works/Copyright Abandonment
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:Orphan Works/Copyright Abandonment
It *does* matter that copyright is applied and maintained casually and without effort and in secret....because there's then no good way to certainly determine that a work is out of copyright.
There's a reason you have to put your patent number on products, and there's a reason the patent lasts for only a few years beyond the last time someone contacts the patent office and, in addition to paying fees, provides contact information. Is that too much to ask when a (C) holder can haul someone into court for what is now pushing a button?
Same needs to apply to (C), assuming (C) is to and should remain meaningful.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:Orphan Works/Copyright Abandonment
But, that is not what's happening. The copyright terms and rules are well known. They're changed constantly and retroactively applied at the expense of the public, but they are relatively clear. However, because of this, things like orphaned works are inevitable because when you have things like life +70 years and corporations buying out the copyright then failing, you can't do anything legally with many works until they enter the public domain (which, if the corporations get their way, will be never).
I agree that automatic copyright is a problem and that the public would be much richer for having it reverted back to a sensible, deliberate system, but don't pretend for a moment that the rules and their problems are secret.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:Orphan Works/Copyright Abandonment
Uh, no it doesn't.
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Re: Re: Re:Orphan Works/Copyright Abandonment
It's also increasingly because the copyright rules were retroactively changed after the original creator died, thus violating the agreement in place when the work was created.
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Asking the wrong question
Right. Because the game makers don't want to give ANYONE ANY RIGHTS and they reluctantly do so for the libraries.
You ask "You'd do it for Randolph Scott, why not Lauri Love?"
They say: "Yes, you dimwit, we BARELY do it... because... it's Randolph Scott!!!"
Sorry you don't get it.
Watch Blazing Saddles.
Read Arstechnica.
E
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Re: Asking the wrong question
Yes, watch the WHOLE MOVIE. It's a cultural icon that helped make Mel Brooks.
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On the other hand, why mention Blizzard here? All their games that I know of still have their servers online. Can't really think of other video game companies that release regular free updates to their almost-twenty-year-old games, either (StarCraft was released in March 1998, latest patch is dated 2018-02-08).
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They've been in the news recently for trying to shut down fan-operated servers that offer the original "vanilla" experience for WoW, without all the stuff they've changed over the years.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180206/10250339165/blizzard-still-trying-to-take-down-wow- vanilla-fan-servers-while-refusing-to-offer-competing-product.shtml
Although it's obviously a different situation, it can be argued that the original experience for WoW is something that should be preserved by a museum, as the current version bears little relation to how it looked when people started playing. Blizzard have announced they are working on a "classic" version, but we won't know how close it is to the actual original experience until it's released.
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That's easy. Any single player game that relies on a connection will have been hacked within hours/days so that paying customers can use the product they damn well bought when they have no internet connection.
Preserving games that actually have real multiplayer and network components is a bigger task, but since the majority of single player games only have network components to implement half-assed DRM, there's usually a workaround out there already.
"For example, an estimated fifty-three percent of gamers play multiplayer games at least once a week"
Now, this I find interesting. By that measure, 47% of gamers aren't really bothered about multiplayer, or even just don't play it at all. I find that fascinating in terms of how the industry has been trying to shoehorn multiplayer components into so many games that really don't warrant them, as well as in terms of how they've gone with lootboxes and the like in recent years. Since half the potential audience aren't even going for online play once a week, I wonder what actual percentage of the overall gaming audience are actually paying for the things the industry is trying to make the norm.
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Jason Scott has made a similar point: the early PC games (e.g. for the Apple II) that have survived to this day are the cracked ones. Sometimes the developers don't have the source code, assets, or even a released copy. So when you look at the historical artifacts of gaming, you're also getting a history of cracking groups and the messages they added.
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But, of course, all the hacked versions were freely available online and working perfectly. They had already put the official releases to shame for many reasons (for example, some crews managed to get games that had been released on 3 floppies down to one disc, and still had room for a couple more games and the animated menu screens). But now, they beat them by simply being usable a couple of decades later.
The losers in all this? Games which had not been freely pirated back in the day, that were now even more likely to get lost to history.
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There's plenty of room for both experiences, but it is telling that the industry seems to be gearing itself to extract money out of one side of that equation recently.
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This is easily fixable
If every gamer patronizing Blizzard stopped immediately and refused to do so again until this bullying stopped, it would be solved in a day or two. Cutting off Blizzard's oxygen supply would bring them to their knees immediately.
But gamers are too stupid, too weak, too selfish to make that happen. And Blizzard knows it. So you know what? I'm rooting for Blizzard to crush them, because they DESERVE to be crushed.
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Re: This is easily fixable
Anyway, to answer your stupid question - most people paying Blizzard don't know about or care about the fan run servers being attacked, so they don't take any action since it doesn't affect them. It's a niche issue that is important, but the mainstream don't know or care (just as most music fans don't know or care about how the industry treats musicians, comic readers don't know how comics are published, etc.)
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Re: Re: This is easily fixable
There are things we consume because we have to - like food - and things we consume because we want to - like games or movies. Unfortunately there are people who've reclassified items in the second group into the first and behave accordingly.
Nobody NEEDS to game. It's one of the easiest things in the world to give up. But gamers won't do it and CAN'T do it because they're stupid and weak. As a result, game operators and game vendors know that they can do ANYTHING they want to gamers and they'll keep right on throwing money at them. Gamers could put a stop to this. Gamers could boycott an operation until it goes bankrupt and then use that as a pointed example to others. But they won't. Like i said, they're stupid and weak. And so, in my view, they deserve to be shit on. And you know what? They are.
This wasn't how I always felt about it: I was initially sympathetic. I was sympathetic for a few years. But after watching this idiocy nonstop for still more years, I finally decided that if I have to choose between the competent evil of the gaming companies and the abject stupidity and cowardice of gamers, I'm siding with the former. At least they have spines and a clue.
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Re: Re: Re: This is easily fixable
If you wish people to track your comment history, posting as an AC really is counter to that aim.
"Nobody NEEDS to game"
Nobody NEEDS to listen to music, watch films, watch TV, read books or comic books, drink beer, play or watch sports, etc., etc., etc. ALL of those industries are screwing with their consumers in one way or another, sometimes far worse than gamers are screwed with.
So, I ask again - why are you so single-mindedly against one group of people, and not against the others? Why is there a litany of personal attacks on gamers who don't give a shit about your personal crusade, and no comment about the many, many other people who do the same thing with other pastimes. (and that's even without mentioning the idiocy of assuming that gamers only game and do nothing else, but that's a different conversation).
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Re: Re: Re: Re: This is easily fixable
Are there humans that can live without music?
I'm thinking that reading books (or some equivalent) should be something we pressure each other to do.
At the very least playing sports is useful for providing exercise without resorting to otherwise pointless physical activity.
.
Anyway, entities should not be allowed to say, "Do it my way or not at all".
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: This is easily fixable
Yes. It's not a full existence, but it's not something that's required to exist. Especially in terms of the music industry, which is the analog here to what he was referring to.
"I'm thinking that reading books (or some equivalent) should be something we pressure each other to do"
Agreed, but it's not something that's required to live.
"At the very least playing sports is useful for providing exercise without resorting to otherwise pointless physical activity."
Agreed, but people can live without playing such games.
My response was merely in response to the guy who thinks that only things that are required to live are important. I was pointing out that this exempts most human activity outside of those things required to survive.
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Re: Re: Re: This is easily fixable
People don't even need to give it up, they just need to stop supporting certain companies. There are open-source games, and there are old games from companies that no longer exist (and old games are really easy to get...).
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Re: Re: Re: Re: This is easily fixable
For every person who buys only AAA games, there's people who only buy indie games. For every one who buys new games at all, there's a bunch of people going through their backlogs and not spending a penny. For every person who obsessively plays CoD or Overwatch, there's a bunch of "casual" gamers who have never picked up a FPS in their lives. For every one who plays multiplayer, there's people who *only* play single player. For every one who buys loot boxes, there's people who avoid certain games because of them. For every one who buys EA games because they care more about the licensed property than DRM or lootbox issues, there's a bunch who will never buy one of their games again.
As stupid as it is to single out gamers for personal attacks because they don't support a specific cause in a certain way, it is utterly moronic to pretend they are a single group with the same tastes and goals.
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Yeah, "fans will form museums" as a dodge around copyright. -- Better stated as "alleged adults still playing their childhood games will lie in order to evade clear law".
Sheesh. What are you, 13?
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Re: Yeah, "fans will form museums" as a dodge around copyright. -- Better stated as "alleged adults still playing their childhood games will lie in order to evade clear law".
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Re: Re: Yeah, "fans will form museums" as a dodge around copyright. -- Better stated as "alleged adults still playing their childhood games will lie in order to evade clear law".
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Re: Re: Yeah, "fans will form museums" as a dodge around copyright. -- Better stated as "alleged adults still playing their childhood games will lie in order to evade clear law".
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Re: Yeah, "fans will form museums" as a dodge around copyright. -- Better stated as "alleged adults still playing their childhood games will lie in order to evade clear law".
Damn, that must strike a nerve, eh blue boy?
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Re: Re: Yeah, "fans will form museums" as a dodge around copyright. -- Better stated as "alleged adults still playing their childhood games will lie in order to evade clear law".
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