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.

“Most of the world’s video games from close to 50 years of history are effectively, legally dead. A Video Games History Foundation study found you can’t buy nearly 90% of games from before 2010. Preservationists have been looking for ways to allow people to legally access gaming history, but the U.S. Copyright Office dealt them a heavy blow Friday. Feds declared that you or any researcher has no right to access old games under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA.”

  • Dark Arc@social.packetloss.ggEnglish
    42·
    3 hours ago

    There is a difference there in that these are digital copies (easy to make more copies) vs physical books (hard to make more copies).

    That said, the only reason this is an issue is copyright lasts too long on relatively short lived games. If copyright on games was a more reasonable “15 years since their last major revision”, this wouldn’t be a problem.

    • ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      7·
      2 hours ago

      There is a difference there in that these are digital copies (easy to make more copies) vs physical books (hard to make more copies).

      Libraries rent out ebooks too, also easily stripped of DRM and copied if someone wants to so that. But that is seemingly not an issue.