The U.S. Copyright Office denied an exemption from the DMCA to allow gaming historians to access out-of-print games they can’t legally get.

The U.S. Copyright Office denied an exemption from the DMCA to allow gaming historians to access out-of-print games they can’t legally get anywhere else.

  • AnyOldName3@lemmy.worldEnglish
    62·
    27 days ago

    The arguments used to make the First Sale Doctrine apply to books a hundred years ago are equally applicable to games and other software, and consumers should demand they’re given the rights they deserve to use the copies of media they’ve paid for. You should be able to sell on a used video game once you’ve finished it, or lend it to a friend, just like you can with a book or a DVD.

    That said, the title’s a little misleading. Libraries only lend each copy of a book to one person at a time (if it’s a physical book, it’s pretty obvious that it can only be in one place at once), and the ruling the headline refers to says that a copy of a retro game can only be lent out to one person at once, which is understandable, even if it’s a massive pain when plenty of games don’t have many working copies left in circulation.

    • tacosanonymous@lemm.eeEnglish
      16·
      27 days ago

      This ruling seems insane since libraries can already lend new games. I think mine still has wiiu stuff.

      • kautau@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        27 days ago

        Yeah I mean if it was applied to books this is like saying that libraries shouldn’t be able to reprint out of print books and lend them out, which would be asinine. If a library has that capability they should be able to do so.

        • basmati@lemmus.orgEnglish
          2·
          27 days ago

          Nearly all public libraries already “lend out” ebooks and digital movies. There is no reason games should have an exemption.

      • DeathsEmbrace@lemm.eeEnglish
        10·
        27 days ago

        Honestly just use an emulator and download the roms. It’s the best way to play anything and if you are tech savvy enough you can actually get a custom handheld device that just runs emulators.

      • Godort@lemm.eeEnglish
        4·
        27 days ago

        There is something to be said for experiencing the game on its intended hardware. Compare seeing the Mona Lisa to seeing a photo of the Mona Lisa. The image is the same, and for most people, that’s enough. However, there are some minor details you can only get from the real deal.

        However, that doesn’t mean that piracy is off the table, just a bit more challenging. Most retro consoles have either an everdrive type cartridge available, or an optical disc emulator that will let you run ROMs on the original hardware with a minor modification to the console. Get one of those and a good quality CRT TV and you’re off to the races.

        If you want a solution thats a bit more multi-purpose, then I recommend looking into the MiSTer project, which uses an FPGA to emulate the system at a cycle-accurate chip level, rather than software to read ROMs natively on generic computer hardware.

        • addie@feddit.ukEnglish
          4·
          27 days ago

          Mona Lisa is, alas, a terrible example. It’s a (small) painting famous for its very finely blended brush strokes, and yet it’s behind two layers of protective glass, a barrier about five metres away, and there’s generally about ten thousand tourists queuing up to see it. It’s something you go to have seen, rather than to see.

          Unless you wanted an example of a retro game that you play to have said you’ve played it, not too actually play, in which case it’s a superb example. Plenty of games that were legendary at the time but who’s gameplay doesn’t hold up any more.

          The Louvre has some massive rooms full of Raphael masterpieces and Gericault’s “Raft of the Medusa” just down from the Lisa - those are well worth seeing in the flesh, big pictures that reproduction doesn’t do justice to.

          • Godort@lemm.eeEnglish
            3·
            26 days ago

            You’re not wrong, the goal was mostly to compare a painting to a photo of a painting as a metaphor for original hardware vs software emulation. The Mona Lisa was just the first famous painting that crossed my mind.