ESA: Preserving Old Games With Hacking Encourages Piracy

[Fanghawk]

ESA: Preserving Old Games With Hacking Encourages Piracy

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the ESA is blocking efforts to preserve classic games on the basis that hacking is a crime.

There's a growing concern right now that <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/columns/experienced-points/13646-Older-PC-Games-Are-Getting-Harder-and-Harder-to-Play-Today>most classic games we grew up on will be impossible to preserve for future players. DRM software, out-of-date hardware, and licensing issues will make it extremely difficult for historians to study these titles - especially once servers providing access shut down. That's why the Electronic Frontier Foundation proposed an exemption to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, allowing anyone to alter games to make them playable when publisher support ends.

Sound great? One problem: The Entertainment Software Association - alongside the MPAA and RIAA - are opposing the exemption on the basis that hacking game files encourages illegal piracy.

This issue revolves around Section 1201 of the DMCA. As the law stands, if you hack a game's files to circumvent DRM, you're breaching copyright and committing a crime no matter what your intent. The EFF's exemption would allow access controls to be circumvented for third-party historical preservation. But according to <a href=https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/videogame-publishers-no-preserving-abandoned-games-even-museums-and-archives>a blog post by the EFF, the ESA doesn't want to send a message that "hacking-an activity closely associated with piracy in the minds of the marketplace-is lawful".

The EFF continued by saying that hacking is well within the boundaries of the law, and that the ESA knows it. "Of course, 'hacking' is legal in most circumstances," its post reads. "ESA, the spokespeople for a group of software companies, knows this full well. Most of the programmers that create games for Sony, Microsoft, EA, Nintendo, and other ESA members undoubtedly learned their craft by tinkering with existing software.

"If 'hacking,' broadly defined, were actually illegal, there likely would have been no video game industry."

In response, the ESA sent The Escapist a copy of its Copyright Office filing, which states that Section 1201 is essential for the industry. "The proposed exemption would jeopardize the availability of these copyrighted works by enabling-and indeed encouraging-the play of pirated games and the unlawful reproduction and distribution of infringing content," it reads.

The filing goes on to state that the ESA isn't against the preservation of games - and in fact has taken action to preserve such titles itself. "The Entertainment Software Association worked with the Smithsonian Institute to offer The Art of Video Games, which was one of the first exhibitions exploring the evolution of video games as an artistic medium," it continues. "ESA also has partnered with GlassLab, an unprecedented research and development effort that is exploring the potential for existing digital games to serve as powerful learning environments and providing real-time assessments to improve student learning."

Source: <a href=https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/videogame-publishers-no-preserving-abandoned-games-even-museums-and-archives>EFF

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[syl3r]

fucking stupid......
i mean, of course cracking current games shouldnt be condoned, but old games? games you cant buy anywhere except used? why the hell not?
its not like anyone loses money if i crack a game that is 10+ years old that i cant buy ANYWHERE. but oh noooooo the poor publishers..... they didnt earn enough money with the game because im cracing it after they jumped the ship and abandoned their product! poor guys!

 

[Mister K]

Hey, remember this nifty little thing called "Fair use" doctrine? The one that allows me and any other guy or gal to do basically whatever the hell we wish to do with our own personal copy of the product except for directly messing with immaterial intellectual property rights and selling copies of the copy? Well, I do.

You are concerned with people downloading illegal copies? Deal with those people and "dealers". Leave people who are within their rights given by aformentioned doctrine alone.

P.S. Sorry if I've maid any legal mistakes in my post.

 

[K12]

This is like saying that athletics should be discouraged because it encourages people to run away from the police.

 

[FoolKiller]

This is like saying that athletics should be discouraged because it encourages people to run away from the police.

That's why we have bullets

But to be on topic...

How are you supposed to play some of these games? And the idea of having an art gallery for gaming isn't really an option. What nonsense is that? That's the equivalent of saying that you can only look at the advertising poster for The Wizard of Oz, but no one could watch the movie.

 

[FoolKiller]

This is like saying that athletics should be discouraged because it encourages people to run away from the police.

That's why we have bullets

But to be on topic...

How are you supposed to play some of these games? And the idea of having an art gallery for gaming isn't really an option. What nonsense is that? That's the equivalent of saying that you can only look at the advertising poster for The Wizard of Oz, but no one could watch the movie.

 

[Weresquirrel]

I shudder to think what would've happened if these chuckleheads had been around throughout human history. We wouldn't know about Shakespeare, or the Iliad, or Don Quixote, nothing. Nobody would know Beethoven's music, no one would see any paintings. Art NEEDS to be preserved, good or ill. "Oh no, what's important is making sure this stuff is profitable now. Who cares if future generations miss out? I'm not from the future generation."

 

[Major Kong]

I'm trying to figure out what possible harm this could be doing to publishers. If they're at the point where they're abandoning support for a title, they're obviously convinced that sucked that particular well dry. So what do they care if a few hardcore fans decide to continue supporting that game on their own time?

 

[snekadid]

This is like saying that athletics should be discouraged because it encourages people to run away from the police.

Ok, you got me, that was both perfectly accurate and hilarious.

My main problem with copyright law is right here. If the copyright holder now lacks all ability to profit from said copyright, then "violations" should not be prosecute-able. My current favorite example is the Deadpool game. In a world choked with mediocre to terribad licensed games, Deadpool stands as a pretty damn good and hilariously spot on interpretation of what a Deadpool game should be.

Unfortunately, the only way to buy it now is as a used copy for 360 or ps3 because disney removed it, and pretty much every marvel game that they had the right to removed from digital distribution when they acquired the rights, shortly after it was released. So now the only way to get the PC version of the game,if you didn't buy it before it was removed like me, is piracy.

It is flat out impossible for Disney to profit from the sale of the game since THEY removed it, but the law attacks people for wanting to play a game that no one wants to sell them.

Captcha: THAT'S ENOUGH
Either it's agreeing with me or telling me to shut up...

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Just because they think you're a criminal regardless of your intent, doesn't make it true. Intent is a very important part of every activity, and what differentiates innocent actions from crimes. These guys must be American, right? Only they could have such a perverted and primitive view of legal system. For fuck sake, even ancient Romans took intent into account. Modern legal systems were mostly based on Roman law. Only the most primitive legal systems throughout history didn't. And now America is one of them. Just the other day they convicted 11 teachers for RACKETEERING and now they're facing up to 20 years in prison for helping kids cheat on some tests. In any sane country they would simply be fired. In America, that can get you 20 years. Fuck that country. No justice whatsoever.

 

[Lightknight]

Who would successfully pursue this? Especially against a person who owns a license to the game and is just trying to get their copy to work?

 

[AT God]

Hacking old games to make them work after they have been abandoned does encourage people to pirate the games being hacked. That seems fairly obvious, I cannot play many old games I grew up with because I cannot go out and purchase Sega Genesis Cartridges from a store, and I have fondness of a few notably shitty games that have constantly been passed over for being re-released in "Classics" packages by Sega. With literally no way to acquire the games from the publisher, my choices are either to risk getting scammed buying second hand or find emulators that have preserved the old shitty games I grew up with. I generally just give up and move on but if I were ever at all motivated to play those old games, I would go the emulator route because it is by far the most convenient.

I find the implication that replaying an old game that has been modded to work on your system would encourage you go out and pirate the latest triple A titles interesting in that it doesn't really make any sense. There has been zero progress in stopping piracy, as games have become more popular, so has piracy of those games. Pirates already modify games to work, DRM is patched out by pirates, I sat next to a kid in a psychology course as he pirated the Devil May Cry reboot the week after it came out, he got it running by the end of class on his laptop. I don't know what sort of anti-piracy measures the game had but they were gone within a week.

If I were still a teenager and overly concerned with societal injustice, the ESA saying preserving old games encourages piracy would encourage me to pirate games far more than the EFF attempting to archive games for future generations. EFF seems to be doing something good, while the ESA is telling us we cannot do something, which is a more compelling idea to teenagers?

Fortunately, it seems like regardless of the ESA and DMCA, emulators exist and seem to be thriving, so at least games from the early 2000's and older are at least secure for future generations.

 

[danielcofour]

Seriously... f@$k the ESA. And while we're at it: f@$k the MPAA... and RIAA(whatever the f@$k that is).

This one goes out to the ESA as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHwBD6r9r5c

 

[teqrevisited]

Here's hoping that enterprising individuals do all they can to build up an archive of abandoned games and keep it safe from these outdated, out of touch businessmen.

It's odd how, when set against opinions like these, the internet can be seen as the entity that makes the most sense of the two. Especially when you consider that the internet is essentially made up of porn, games and videos of cats.

 

[loa]

We can talk about a blanket, zero tolerance ban of "hacking" (lol) if nobody has "piracy" left as the sole option to get their game to work due to DRM and if old games are compatible with every system and fully available for purchase to anyone at all times.
Until that day comes, kindly fuck off and good day to you.

 

[WindKnight]

I'm trying to figure out what possible harm this could be doing to publishers. If they're at the point where they're abandoning support for a title, they're obviously convinced that sucked that particular well dry. So what do they care if a few hardcore fans decide to continue supporting that game on their own time?

Keep in mind the No One Lives Forever re-release stalled because three separate companies went 'We wont let you buy the license because we don't know if we hold the rights, we don't care to find out if we do have the rights, but if you release this and we do have the rights we'll sue you.' That should really sum up the attitude we're dealing with.

 

[Lunar Templar]

well, I'm calling copious amounts of bullshit on that,

also

good luck stopping anyone archiving these games for the future, fuckers, you retards can't even stop pirates of modern games, let a lone some one downloading something 5+ years old.

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

Really? They're whining that an official foundation shouldn't be allowed to preserve games "because hacking paints piracy in a good light." Guess what? Data in any form is sensitive and doesn't last forever. Motion and still picture film degrades, magnetic media loses its charge, optical discs oxidize, and even flash memory has a storage life. They can also be accidents where someone deletes the wrong things, or the media is destroyed, and no proper archive exists. Sega lost the original code to Sonic CD! The HD remake was a complete recreation done by a fan (who likely would have been (or was) on the ESA's bad side until he was hired by Sega to fix their fucked up).

I think that as many groups as possible should be preserving as many different works as they can, because of how hard it is to preserve decades worth of material. Except for the original rights holders, they shouldn't be allowed to distribute anything or profit off of their records, but when a work's copyright holder refuses to make something available on the market for a few years, it should become public domain.

Reading the above comments about the Deadpool game and No One Lives Forever just proves copyright law in the US is one of the most broken things, in a massive pile of flawed, out of date laws. What was supposed to originally protect the artists has, in the last century, been manipulated to protect the interests of corporations who only funded those artists (or stole from them, in many cases), and it's getting so bad that even the customer who is willing to pay a reasonable price is getting screwed.