No Preserving Abandoned Games Because All Hacking is Illegal

[*BlackFox]

No Preserving Abandoned Games, Even for Museums and Archives

The Entertainment Software Association doesn’t want anyone to restore the functionality of older videogames that are no longer supported by their publisher, because, says ESA, this is “hacking,” and all hacking is “associated with piracy.”

Section 1201 is often used by the entertainment industries not to prevent copyright infringement but to control markets and lock out competition. So it’s not surprising that ESA (the trade association for the largest game producers), along with MPAA and RIAA, have written to the Copyright Office to oppose this exemption. They say that modifying games to connect to a new server (or to avoid contacting a server at all) after publisher support ends—letting people continue to play the games they paid for—will destroy the video game industry. They say it would “undermine the fundamental copyright principles on which our copyright laws are based.”

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[BuDo]

Sounds like a waste of time....

[poehalcho]

Sounds like a waste of time....

What does? Preserving old games?

[omier]

Sounds like a stupid statement to me. All hacking is apparently piracy?

[ltsune]

That's just plain stupid. Games are big now. It has become part of history. Of course there are museums and archives who would like to preserve that.

[BuDo]

Sounds like a waste of time....

What does? Preserving old games?

Trying to prevent enthusiasts from doing whatever they want with these old titles...It's like trying to stop the sharing of copyright content...It's a joke...