Why Piracy Fears are Keeping Some Researchers from Accessing the Games They Need
Why Piracy Fears are Keeping Some Researchers from Accessing the Games They Need
Last month, the Software Preservation Network (SPN) made arguments in support of a Digital Millennium Copyright Act amendment that would allow libraries to bypass digital locks on video games so that academics and credentialed researchers could study them. But the games industry is fighting back.
Games they "need"?
They are doing a very important study.
It's for science you see.
Yeah, I feel like the article would be more persuasive if they gave any examples of what research they are doing which requires these specific old games.
It is the gaming industry itself that plagiarizes and pirates others continuously since Pacman. But of course, they don't want others to do it.
I really struggle with the justification present in the article. “I need to emulate to do my job as an academic” is pretty hollow. “I want to emulate because I want to learn” is the real reason and, as an academic myself, I don’t feel like there’s a higher ground that gives me access to literally anything I want just because I want to learn.
If the argument was “the copyright system is fucked and knowledge needs to be more open” I would be 100% behind that. I feel that way. I just don’t think someone should get to say “show me your secrets because I’ve arbitrarily decided to make my next publication about your secrets.”
The argument is that "we would like to study these works of art in a purely academic setting, and are willing to limit access to academics only, we just need to make sure it's going to work even if you guys stop supporting it"
The corporations involved seem to read this argument as "we are looking to start a game streaming service, please give us free access to all your games to distribute at our whim"
The ridiculousness of this is that out-of-print game libraries are already freely available online for no effort. Pirating games of the late 90s and early 2000s is trivial. This is yet another case where a legitimate use of software (academic research, preservation) is made more difficult than just simple emulation by broken DRM and copyright rules.
Call me crazy, but if libraries and academics are legally prevented from preserving art while alleged "illegal piracy" is forced to do the bulk of game categorization, research and preservation I'd say your copyright system has thoroughly failed at its intended purpose.
Especially because people who want to pirate games for playing have no qualms. Right now the restriction is specificall on people who want to research legally
That doesn't seem to be the argument being made, though. It's not "I need to emulate to do my job as an academic", it's "academic institutions can't bypass DRM or make games remotely accessible for academic purposes", emulation or no emulation.
Which in turn is a big part of your second statement.
The headline mentions emulation, and it certainly is the most effortless way to stream access to a different location, which is what the proposal is about, but that's not the focus of the argument. The argument is about remote access for academic purposes.
But if it was illegal to research 99% of your current field even if the information existed you may feel differently
Copyright protection for an individual for 20 years. And For individual with corporation or corporation only then for 10 years max. More than that is just stupid. With these humanity overall knowledge and technology improve and decreases copyright infringement (not piracy) overall.
Just wanted to say I share your complicated thoughts on this. It’s not as simple as “Rah! Rah! Piracy!” No one is entitled to another person’s work. But things get nuanced and messy fast once you move beyond that narrow contextualization.
People are absolutely entitled to other people's work, it's called "public services".
I get what you mean, but the absolute way that trope is stated always rubs me the wrong way.