Video Game History Foundation: Nintendo Actions 'Actively Destructive To Video Game History'

from the ding-ding-ding! dept

I've been banging on a bit lately about the importance of video game preservation as a matter of art preservation. It's not entirely clear to me how much buy in there is out there in general on this concept, but it's a challenge in this specific industry because much of the control over what can be preserved or not sits in the hands of game publishers and platforms compared with other forms of art. Books have libraries, films have the academies and museums, and music is decently preserved all over the place. But for gaming, even organizations like the Video Game History Foundation have to rely on publishers and platforms to let them do their work, or risk art being lost entirely to the digital ether or lawsuits over copyright. We've talked in the past about how copyright law is far too often used in a way that results in a loss of our own cultural history, and digital-only video games are particularly vulnerable to that.

We just discussed Nintendo's forthcoming shutdown of the 3DS and Wii U stores, and what that meant for digital games that Nintendo indicates it is not planning on selling anywhere else. Well, the Video Game History Foundation released a statement on that action and, well, hoo-boy...

While it is unfortunate that people won’t be able to purchase digital 3DS or Wii U games anymore, we understand the business reality that went into this decision. What we don’t understand is what path Nintendo expects its fans to take, should they wish to play these games in the future. As a paying member of the Entertainment Software Association, Nintendo actively funds lobbying that prevents even libraries from being able to provide legal access to these games. Not providing commercial access is understandable, but preventing institutional work to preserve these titles on top of that is actively destructive to video game history. We encourage ESA members like Nintendo to rethink their position on this issue and work with existing institutions to find a solution.

Accusing Nintendo of being "actively destructive to video game history" is a hell of a charge, but point out where it's wrong. I'll wait.

The problem here is that video games are still seen, both by the public and producers, as something less than the kind of artistic output of literature, paintings, sculptures, or movies. Imagine a world where someone took the collective works of Monet or Bach, shutdown the venue in which you could pay to see them, and then also indicated that nobody else was allowed to display them for commercial benefit or not. Nobody would accept such a situation. That is culture and it belongs, in at least some small ways, to all of us.

Either because the history of video games is much more recent, or due to stodgy hand-waiving about how these games are not "real art", far less fur is raised over Nintendo taking these actions without any guarantee, or in some cases hostility, to preservation efforts. Yes, Nintendo has directly produced many of these games and it has rights for them due to that. But those games are also part of our shared cultural history, and no individual or company is, or should be, afforded the right to determine how we document that cultural history.

If nothing else, that certainly isn't the purpose of copyright law.

Filed Under: culture, history, video games
Companies: nintendo, video game history foundation

This Week In Techdirt History: February 13th - 19th

from the back-then dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2017, Oracle filed its opening brief in its renewed attempt to overturn Google's fair use win on Java APIs. The UK rolled out a "piracy alert system" that was mostly but not entirely benign, while politicians there were looking to follow up on the Snooper's Charter with an even worse anti-whistleblowing law. In the US, things weren't looking good for net neutrality between the opinions of FCC commissioners and the shifty activities of telco. Meanwhile, prosecutors and anti-sex-trafficking advocates were speaking out about the government's treatment of Backpage, while a new report on encryption showed that its proliferation was not much of a problem for law enforcement.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2012, there were mass protests against ACTA all across Europe. The European Parliament President criticized the agreement, and the EU official who resigned over it was detailing its many problems — but the EU Commission was trying to claim the widespread concerns were all based on 'myths', and lobby groups like the IFPI were claiming that the protests were anti-democratic. Meanwhile, US Senators were ramping up the fearmongering to push for a cybersecurity bill that they insisted was nothing like SOPA — but which also didn't seem necessary.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2007, we examined Universal Music's ridiculous 'settlement' with small video sharing site Bolt, while Hollywood was expressing its ongoing displeasure with Google (as were some very confused Belgian newspapers). Broadcasters were making yet another attempt at anti-satellite radio legislation, sample troll Bridgeport Music won an unfortunate victory, and the RIAA was trying to get ISPs to help it hound customers into settling its lawsuits.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: February 6th - 12th

from the what-went-down dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2017, in the wake of Trump's racist executive order banning people from seven countries from entering the US, pretty much the entire tech industry stood up in opposition. Meanwhile, Ajit Pai was getting quickly to work saying one thing and doing another (not unlike the broadband providers themselves. The FBI was revealed to have even more surveillance powers than we thought, and was also changing its FOIA policies to be even more hostile.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2012, more dominoes were falling on ACTA: the Romanian Prime Minister admitted he had no idea why Romania signed it, the Czech government suspended ratification, then Latvia did the same, and even Germany got cold feet — and soon the mainstream financial press was writing off ACTA as dead. Meanwhile, we took a look at who was still supporting SOPA and why, while Lamar Smith was defending another terrible internet bill, and the RIAA was just lashing out at everyone.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2007, we looked at the collateral damage from Viacom's wave of YouTube takedowns and a top NBC executive's hatred of the site, while one guy was claiming to own the Electric Slide and issuing DMCA notices on wedding videos. We also got a closer look at how little it takes for the RIAA to fire off a flimsy DMCA notice, while the RIAA was spending its time trying to tell people they should be paying more for CDs. Meanwhile, we took a look at just how completely bogus the MPAA's claims of a Canadian camcording epidemic were.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: January 30th - February 5th

from the that-was-that dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2017, the six-strike copyright "voluntary agreement" officially died. Another prominent death was Denuvo DRM for Reisdent Evil 7, which was cracked in five days, which the company hoped was better than nothing. In a more worrying DRM development, the eventually-successful push to codify EME DRM in the HTML5 standard lurched forward. Meanwhile, Congress appeared to be preparing to gut net neutrality and AT&T was downright giddy about Ajit Pai, while we took a moment for a deeper look at the horrors of a Trump presidency.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2012, in the aftermath of the SOPA protests, it was time for reflection on what happened and attempts to channel the energy into other issues — unless of course you were a SOPA supporter, in which case it was time for misleading op-eds and general whining. Protests against ACTA were spreading and starting to get big results, while Hollywood was partying with TPP negotiators. Megaupload users were planning to sue over the shutdown of the site, while ICE seized 300 more sites, mostly to protect the Super Bowl.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2007, Sony BMG admitted that its rootkit violated federal law and agreed to pay to fix damaged computers, Google issued a non-apology over its decision to censor results in China, and YouTube started talking about revenue sharing plans (while Viacom was pulling over 100,000 clips from the site). We looked at the deeper implications of Google's book scanning fight, and the emerging norm of judges citing Wikipedia. Also, this was the week of the (in)famous Adult Swim marketing stunt that shut down the city of Boston due to massive paranoid overreaction.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: January 23rd - 29th

from the those-were-the-days dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2017, outgoing FCC boss Tom Wheeler had a message for Trump supporters about the benefits of net neutrality, while cable's congressional allies were lining up to urge Ajit Pai to kill the cable box competition plan. Trump was muzzling federal employees and seeking to trademark "Make America Great Again". Virginia was pushing a protectionist law preventing better broadband, garnering opposition from internet companies. Meanwhile, a judge allowed the lawsuit over PACER fees to continue as a class action, Perfect 10 suffered another loss in court that set more good copyright precedent, and in unfortunate news, a state appeals court said unlocking a phone with a fingerprint doesn't violate the Fifth Amendment.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2012, many on the internet were celebrating the victory over SOPA, getting bolder in calling out the MPAA for lying and opposing Chris Dodd — while SOPA supporters were busy whining, offering fake olive branches, and making up threats. But much attention was also already turning to new issues: the Megaupload shutdown which was causing other companies to turn off useful services (and leading one astroturf group to embarrass itself with a late press release claiming SOPA was necessary to shut Megaupload down), and the ACTA agreement, which was getting the SOPA treatment in Poland with huge crowds on the street and politicians donning Guy Fawkes masks.

Fifteen Years Ago

In 2007, the most controversial thing about the MPAA in the eyes of the average person was their movie rating system — and this week they finally agreed to make some small changes to it. The RIAA was telling the CEA to do the impossible and stop making them look evil, while record labels were talking up the idea of getting paid for giving consumers rights they already have. Blu-ray's DRM was cracked (even the creators admitted it) while Apple's DRM was facing legal issues in Norway. And Fox's "piracy czar" was subpoenaing YouTube to find out who was uploading episodes of 24 and The Simpsons.

Also, we got an extremely important Section 230 ruling in a case against Yahoo.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: January 16th - 22nd

from the it-went-down dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2017, outgoing FCC boss Tom Wheeler warned about the perils of killing net neutrality, while leaked details of Trump's FCC transition plan revealed his plans to gut all the agency's consumer protection powers — then, on Friday, it was confirmed that Ajit Pai would become the new FCC boss. Meanwhile, we marked the five year anniversary of the SOPA protests (and be sure to check out our much bigger celebration for the ten year anniversary) by reminding lawmakers of what happened and discussing what it could teach them about tech.

Also, in surprising but welcome news, this was the week that President Obama commuted Chelsea Manning's sentence.

Ten Years Ago

This is it: the week of the 2012 SOPA/PIPA blackout protest. First, it was announced that Wikipedia was officially on board. Then Google promised to do something big, and the Internet Archive announced plans, as did Rock, Paper, Shotgun. The day before the protest, Lamar Smith and the MPAA brushed it all off as a publicity stunt and Smith announced that markup on SOPA would resume in February.

Then, on Wednesday, it began. Many sites went dark, Google blacked out their logo, and here at Techdirt we focused on covering the events as they unfolded. Although the MPAA was in denial, and being condescending (and one-upped by the RIAA the next day), the effects were clear: Rep. Lee Terry was the first co-sponsor to remove his name from SOPA, then Senator Marco Rubio ditched PIPA followed by several other senators — and when the dust settled, we couldn't help but notice that most of them were Republicans, since Democrats seemed to be dropping the ball. Ultimately, the internet won, and the bills were officially, indefinitely delayed.

But, of course, the week couldn't be all good news. At the very same time as this was all going down, the DOJ unilaterally shut down Megaupload and arrested many of the principles with the help of New Zealand law enforcement. The details of the case raised massive concerns, and the internet was quick to strike back: Anonymous managed to take down the DOJ, RIAA and MPAA websites. The war for internet freedom was far from over...

Fifteen Years Ago

That was a lot of detail on 2012, and this week in 2007 was nowhere near as exciting — but there were two developments that were small and interesting at the time, but in hindsight were pretty big deals. First, DVD rental company Netflix started rolling out a new feature allowing some users to stream a limited selection of movies. Second, we covered the announcement of a curious experiment that aimed to support dissident government employees in oppressive regimes: "a new site called Wikileaks".

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: January 9th - 15th

from the what-was dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2017, ISPs were getting straight to work pushing for elimination of new FCC broadband privacy rules, an FCC report clearly said that AT&T and Verizon were violating net neutrality. At the same time, AT&T was planning to dodge a review of the Time Warner merger, and Verizon was claiming nobody wants unlimited data. We took a look at the effects of Oracle v. Google on copyright litigation, and Backpage officially killed its adult ads section under widespread pressure.

Also, and most notably, this was the week we announced that we had been sued for $15 million by Shiva Ayyadurai.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2012, the SOPA fight continued. There was some Reddit drama that led to Paul Ryan coming out strongly against the bill, concerned tech experts finally got a chance to talk to congress (but not the Judiciary Committee), the co-chair of the Congressional Cybersecurity Caucus said SOPA would interfere with online security, and a study showed that news networks owned by SOPA supporters were largely ignoring the subject. Wordpress became the latest big tech company to oppose the bill, then Reddit announced its plan to black out the site for a day — an idea that gained steam with the Cheezburger Network announcing its sites would do the same, and Jimmy Wales saying he favored Wikipedia joining too but wanted the community to decide. As the bill became toxic, Congress started talking about dropping the DNS blocking provisions, which led to some uninspiring promises to "delay" them, and then it started to look like the entire bill would be delayed.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2007, cable companies were twisting themselves in knots trying to explain how price increases were actually price decreases, the fight over the broadcast flag continued, and the PERFORM Act was back from the dead. A judge in Brazil freaked out about YouTube and ordered ISPs to block it until Google followed a previous order to shut it down, but that judge apparently learned a few things about the internet and rescinded that previous order the next day.

Also, this was the week that the rumor mill was replaced by reality and Steve Jobs officially announced the iPhone in his Macworld keynote address.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: January 2nd - 8th

from the a-new-year dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2017, we were still two years away from any new works actually entering the public domain in the US (be sure to check out our public domain game jam now that this situation has changed!) so we took our usual look at the works that should have. Meanwhile, the Trump presidency was looming and we discussed how he demonstrated that much of the political system is based on traditions and custom, not rules. Malcolm Gladwell published a ridiculous attack on Edward Snowden for not being a "real" whistleblower, even as oversight of the Defense Department found more evidence of retaliation against those who use the "proper channels". And while we looked at the worrying comments from a potential incoming FCC boss, we also watched as AT&T was quick to start backing off of the promises it made to get its merger with Time Warner approved.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2012, some bad reporting led many to falsely believe that EA, Sony, and Nintendo had withdrawn support for SOPA (they had not, and EA was quick to insist it had no position either way). And indeed this was a big week for SOPA in the video game industry: some companies were speaking out against the ESA's presumed support, which soon became official, explicit support, which in turn led Capcom to get on board then quickly try to tapdance out of its position following the backlash. At the same time, the PC Gaming Alliance insisted it was "cautiously optimistic" about the bill. Meanwhile, we took a look at how SOPA would be a disaster for scientific publishing (and for everyone) while MPAA boss Chris Dodd was insisting that copyright has never created any free speech issues and Rep. Lamar Smith was sticking to a strategy of lying about the bill and dismissing opposition.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2007, ten years before AT&T's failure to live up to its Time Warner merger promises, it was making an earlier set of promises about its merger with BellSouth — bbut the FCC was effectively admitting that they were meaningless and non-binding, and the company was touting its bundle-heavy plans for post-merger "innovation". Many companies were still trying to hop on the social media bandwagon and emulate MySpace, with Disney's attempt looking far too limited and, uh, Toyota's attempt looking just plain silly. We looked at an example of copyright being used to stifle free speech (that thing that, five years later during the SOPA fight, Chris Dodd would insist had never happened). And we watched the first day of Congress for the year, which turned out to be a mixed bag when it came to internet issues.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: December 12th - 18th

from the so-it-was dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2016, calls were continuing for the outgoing Obama administration to save the CIA torture report from being buried, while the White House agreed to preserve but not declassify it and at least one copy was preserved in Obama's archives. Facebook was announcing new measures to deal with disinformation while Iran was using the "fake news" scare to justify widespread censorship. Ajit Pai made it clear that net neutrality was on the way out while Tom Wheeler resigned rather than stay on as a commissioner. Meanwhile, after so many years of the Prenda saga, John Steele and Paul Hansmeier were indicted and arrested.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2011, Rupert Murdoch was personally lobbying for SOPA (as were sixteen former Judiciary Committee staff thanks to the revolving door) while RIAA boss Cary Sherman was defending it in the New York Times and MPAA boss Chris Dodd was getting desperate. Lamar Smith released an updated version of the bill that was still a disaster for cybersecurity (among other things) and even snuck in a new private right of action for shutting down sites. A nearly-twelve-hour markup session was a fiasco, and we also heard the first murmurs about a Wikipedia blackout in protest. Also, this was the week that Mike published his 40,000th Techdirt post.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2006, we saw an overbearing proposal to protect kids online while Germany was considering an insanely draconian law to punish creators and players of violent video games and a Japanese court issued a worrying ruling about liability for software makers. It was becoming increasingly clear that the Zune would not be a hit, and people were starting to realize that Second Life might not be as big a hit as the hype implied. The rumors about Apple's mysterious "iPhone" were joined by more dubious rumors of an Apple MVNO to sell mobile service directly. And major labels were ignoring the demand for DRM-free music while Bill Gates was admitting DRM was broken, though not doing anything about it.

Filed Under: history, look back