<story><title>Videogame Publishers: No Preserving Abandoned Games Because “Hacking” Is Illegal</title><url>https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/videogame-publishers-no-preserving-abandoned-games-even-museums-and-archives</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>anigbrowl</author><text>And there&amp;#x27;s no chance you will from reading this article, since there&amp;#x27;s no link to the ESA&amp;#x27;s statement, so the whole article is based on &lt;i&gt;4 excerpted words&lt;/i&gt;. I would find this article much more persuasive if there were a better attempt to establish the content.&lt;p&gt;This is the ESA&amp;#x27;s position: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;copyright.gov&amp;#x2F;1201&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;comments-032715&amp;#x2F;class%2023&amp;#x2F;Entertainment_Software_Association_Class23_1201_2014.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;copyright.gov&amp;#x2F;1201&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;comments-032715&amp;#x2F;class%2023&amp;#x2F;En...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am broadly sympathetic to the EFF&amp;#x27;s position, but the ESA&amp;#x27;s argument is a &lt;i&gt;lot&lt;/i&gt; more thoughtful and nuanced than the way the EFF is portraying it. I see this happening more and more with the EFF, and I trust their advocacy less and less because of it. It&amp;#x27;s one thing to be for a particular position, it&amp;#x27;s another to misrepresent that of your opponent in order to garner support. If you&amp;#x27;re confident of your position, you shouldn&amp;#x27;t feel the need to obscure access to primary sources so people can make up their own minds.&lt;p&gt;Oddly, while the EFF has multiple submissions to the copyright office as part of the open rulemaking process, and they&amp;#x27;re available on the EFF website, I&amp;#x27;ve seen little acknowledgement of the fact the the Copyright Office &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; conducting a 3 year open rulemaking exercise on this topic, or about the Congressional committee that&amp;#x27;s re-examining copyright issues. I strongly urge interested parties to draft and submit their own arguments directly to the copyright office, where they will carry much greater weight.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;copyright.gov&amp;#x2F;rulemaking&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;copyright.gov&amp;#x2F;rulemaking&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;PS if you&amp;#x27;re only interested in proposals to add exceptions to the DMCA, they&amp;#x27;re here: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;copyright.gov&amp;#x2F;1201&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;comments-032715&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;copyright.gov&amp;#x2F;1201&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;comments-032715&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;
and here: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;copyright.gov&amp;#x2F;1201&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;comments-020615&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;copyright.gov&amp;#x2F;1201&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;comments-020615&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>fragsworth</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t understand why the ESA cares at all about this. None of the games in question are making any money, and the publishers don&amp;#x27;t expect to make any money in the future on them.&lt;p&gt;What is their incentive? Maybe they want to preserve the opportunity of reviving an old IP? If that&amp;#x27;s the case, then doesn&amp;#x27;t allowing players to keep playing the abandoned games improve the visibility of those IPs, improving the value of a future revival?&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s really dumbfounding. I&amp;#x27;d like to understand the motivation here, so that it at least makes sense to me.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>thisisparker</author><text>Disclosure up top: I work for the EFF on copyright activism, and submitted this article here, but didn&amp;#x27;t write it.&lt;p&gt;Just wanted to say that, as others have noted, the excerpted words come from a 71 page reply, but I wouldn&amp;#x27;t say it was anything like picking four unrepresentative words. Take, for example, this longer paragraph from the filing:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Hacking video game access controls facilitates piracy and therefore undermines the core anti-piracy purposes of Section 1201. As explained above, hacking the video game access controls requires, by definition, hacking of the video game console or similar device in order to play the hacked video game.  Once the access controls for the video game console are hacked, regardless of the purported purpose or intent of the hacker, any content, including pirated games, can be played on a video game console.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; What&amp;#x27;s more, console hackers may distribute their console-hacking solution to gamers that have no intention of using it for the purposes stated in the proposed exemption. The risk of piracy is even greater on personal computers and similar devices that do not utilize device-based access controls to prevent the installation of unauthorized software. The individual can use consoles to make and store infringing copies of copyrighted games and other content and to distribute these unlawful copies online to a large audience.&lt;p&gt;You can&amp;#x27;t really go line-by-line through a 71-page comment, but it&amp;#x27;s fair to say that that sort of rhetoric—conflating &amp;quot;hacking&amp;quot; with piracy with illegality, regardless of context—runs throughout, and is what my colleague highlighted here.</text></comment>
<story><title>Videogame Publishers: No Preserving Abandoned Games Because “Hacking” Is Illegal</title><url>https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/videogame-publishers-no-preserving-abandoned-games-even-museums-and-archives</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>anigbrowl</author><text>And there&amp;#x27;s no chance you will from reading this article, since there&amp;#x27;s no link to the ESA&amp;#x27;s statement, so the whole article is based on &lt;i&gt;4 excerpted words&lt;/i&gt;. I would find this article much more persuasive if there were a better attempt to establish the content.&lt;p&gt;This is the ESA&amp;#x27;s position: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;copyright.gov&amp;#x2F;1201&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;comments-032715&amp;#x2F;class%2023&amp;#x2F;Entertainment_Software_Association_Class23_1201_2014.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;copyright.gov&amp;#x2F;1201&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;comments-032715&amp;#x2F;class%2023&amp;#x2F;En...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am broadly sympathetic to the EFF&amp;#x27;s position, but the ESA&amp;#x27;s argument is a &lt;i&gt;lot&lt;/i&gt; more thoughtful and nuanced than the way the EFF is portraying it. I see this happening more and more with the EFF, and I trust their advocacy less and less because of it. It&amp;#x27;s one thing to be for a particular position, it&amp;#x27;s another to misrepresent that of your opponent in order to garner support. If you&amp;#x27;re confident of your position, you shouldn&amp;#x27;t feel the need to obscure access to primary sources so people can make up their own minds.&lt;p&gt;Oddly, while the EFF has multiple submissions to the copyright office as part of the open rulemaking process, and they&amp;#x27;re available on the EFF website, I&amp;#x27;ve seen little acknowledgement of the fact the the Copyright Office &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; conducting a 3 year open rulemaking exercise on this topic, or about the Congressional committee that&amp;#x27;s re-examining copyright issues. I strongly urge interested parties to draft and submit their own arguments directly to the copyright office, where they will carry much greater weight.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;copyright.gov&amp;#x2F;rulemaking&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;copyright.gov&amp;#x2F;rulemaking&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;PS if you&amp;#x27;re only interested in proposals to add exceptions to the DMCA, they&amp;#x27;re here: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;copyright.gov&amp;#x2F;1201&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;comments-032715&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;copyright.gov&amp;#x2F;1201&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;comments-032715&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;
and here: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;copyright.gov&amp;#x2F;1201&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;comments-020615&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;copyright.gov&amp;#x2F;1201&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;comments-020615&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>fragsworth</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t understand why the ESA cares at all about this. None of the games in question are making any money, and the publishers don&amp;#x27;t expect to make any money in the future on them.&lt;p&gt;What is their incentive? Maybe they want to preserve the opportunity of reviving an old IP? If that&amp;#x27;s the case, then doesn&amp;#x27;t allowing players to keep playing the abandoned games improve the visibility of those IPs, improving the value of a future revival?&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s really dumbfounding. I&amp;#x27;d like to understand the motivation here, so that it at least makes sense to me.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>SomeCallMeTim</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m reading between the lines here, but I think the ESA&amp;#x27;s motivation is roughly (if privately):&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;If people can play hundreds of old games for free, it will be harder to force them to pay for newer games! They&amp;#x27;ll get used to &amp;#x27;free&amp;#x27; as a price point, and they&amp;#x27;ll have lots of free games to keep them amused!&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;No, I didn&amp;#x27;t read the 30 page document the ESA wrote. I just know how people in power think: They want to keep as much &lt;i&gt;control&lt;/i&gt; as possible, to buttress their position, even to the point of doing seemingly insane and harmful things that &lt;i&gt;might, conceivably&lt;/i&gt; harm their position.&lt;p&gt;The hacker argument is particularly pathetic, but you&amp;#x27;re right: The 30+ pages wasn&amp;#x27;t motivated by that tiny excerpt. The 30+ pages was motivated out of desperation, since they&amp;#x27;re looking at declining sales numbers in the traditional gaming space. [1]&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;gamerant.com&amp;#x2F;npd-gaming-decline&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;gamerant.com&amp;#x2F;npd-gaming-decline&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.npr.org&amp;#x2F;blogs&amp;#x2F;alltechconsidered&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;22&amp;#x2F;174940443&amp;#x2F;after-conquering-consoles-hard-core-gaming-shifts-to-mobile&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.npr.org&amp;#x2F;blogs&amp;#x2F;alltechconsidered&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;22&amp;#x2F;174940...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>