Kinda related, but I hate how the big studios go after old videogames and try to take them down. It looks like, in the future, this era will be called the "digital dark ages", not because all the stuff got lost to bitrot, but because all the stuff became illegal to own so that the studios could sell the new stuff again and again.
Isn't that one of the whole points of copyright? So the authors can print new copies and not have to compete with other people releasing copies they made?
Nothing is stopping people from keeping an archived copy until copyright expires.
I think the real tragedy of abandonware is that copyright holders aggressively pursued abandonware sites "just in case", while not actually having any plans to redistribute the games legally. The abandonware sites were cracking (or making cracks available, whatever) and making these games playable in modern devices, thus ensuring these games were preserved, but copyright holders (through ESA [1] legal action or similar) simply wanted to stop this, with not plans otherwise. These games often weren't available otherwise. We're talking games of the DOS or C64 era, with no real commercial viability (unless bundled with thousand other games, which they eventually sometimes did, often using the cracks developed by the abandonware scene!).
It is often very difficult or even impossible to locate who currently owns the rights to some intellectual property in order to re-release it legally.[0]
Yeah, that's part of the copyright mess. It's partly described by Lawrence Lessig in his book "Free Culture" [1].
It seems petty to me that copyright holders (or their legal proxies) aggressively sought to shut down abandonware sites without any plan to make the software available in any shape. I mean, these were marginal pieces of software, no longer money earners, and the abandonware sites served as digital museums.
I refuse to believe this train of logic. By the time copyright expires AI will be able to handle removing copyright protection and making it able to run on modern hardware. The only point of doing it now instead of later is so that people commit copyright infringement.
> I refuse to believe this train of logic. By the time copyright expires AI will be able to handle removing copyright protection and making it able to run on modern hardware. The only point of doing it now instead of later is so that people commit copyright infringement.
This must be some powerful combination of magical thinking plus a lack of awareness of the context. In the early 2000's, the time I'm recounting, nobody thought of AI. And it wasn't about copyright infringement since the people in the abandonware community I'm talking about owned the goddamn games, they were trying to digitally preserve them and make them available to others. You really need to be familiar with these people and their goals before you "refuse to believe" anything; uninformed opinions just won't do.
It helps to get a perspective about both the time and the type of games we're discussing. In fact, if you were at all a participant of the community back then, you'd know in which little regard warez kiddies were held.
Even without AI the time it takes to break DRM is not decades and many schemes are trivial to break. And a lot of pirates who share copyrighted material had that material originate from a legal purchase. That doesn't make it any less worse.
I think you're simply unfamiliar with the topic. Have you ever interacted with abandonware communities from 20+ years ago? Since you're so sure their goal was copyright infringement.
In many cases, all that remains of these games is the cracked digital versions, the physical versions don't exist anymore. The abandonware crew did all the preserving, without them there wouldn't be anything to release, AI or not.
Also, a lot of "legally available" software from today (say, via GOG who do own the rights) has the fingerprints of crackers who made it possible for the software to run today.
> And a lot of pirates who share copyrighted material had that material originate from a legal purchase. That doesn't make it any less worse.
Regular pirates distribute recent games, which is obviously an entirely different matter. The abandonware community is/was concerned with preserving digital artifacts and games for posterity, and making old stuff playable today. Games that otherwise would have been lost, forgotten, or simply impossible to play. Those are completely different goals, and it's wrong to claim they did it "to commit copyright infringement".
I don't want to offend you, but your initial claim that abandonware crews decades ago should have somehow foreseen AI would make cracking/fixing easier is the most deranged thing I've read in a while. It also doesn't address that something you cannot play in your lifetime is effectively unavailable and lost to you.
>Since you're so sure their goal was copyright infringement.
It was the means towards their goal at the very least. These people could be maintaining a private archive of this software and other material in a temperature controlled room to preserve it until copyright expires. The legal paths of archiving exist, but these people choose to do it illegally often knowing that other people are going to down and use the software.
>The abandonware crew did all the preserving, without them there wouldn't be anything to release
Usually there is a copy or backup somewhere. Just because a pirated copy is more accessible that doesn't mean that pirates should get all of the credit.
>and it's wrong to claim they did it "to commit copyright infringement"
You are taking this too literally. "Regular pirates" don't want to commit copyright infringement either. It is just the means they achieve their actual goals.
>It also doesn't address that something you cannot play in your lifetime is effectively unavailable and lost to you.
No one has a right to use anyone else's software. I don't have a right to use Windows 3.1 in my lifetime. I don't have a right to play some random game from the 90s that only had 100 copies made. It's okay for software to be unavailable or be lost.
>No one has a right to use anyone else's software. I don't have a right to use Windows 3.1 in my lifetime. I don't have a right to play some random game from the 90s that only had 100 copies made. It's okay for software to be unavailable or be lost.
If you replace software with book, music or movie, would you still claim that? That would kill a lot of culture and cultural studies. Are software that different? More specifically, are games that different?
LLMs right are generating tons of software that will ultimately never be archived. I think you should come to terms with reality. Not everything is distributed to other people. Not everything is saved to disk. A LLM will generate a script to calculate something, then eventually that script is deleted to make room for something more important.
> [copyright infringement] It was the means towards their goal at the very least.
Which one is it? Before, you claimed it was their goal (what they wanted to do). You cannot have it both ways. The actual goal matters.
> These people could be maintaining a private archive of this software and other material in a temperature controlled room to preserve it until copyright expires. The legal paths of archiving exist, but these people choose to do it illegally often knowing that other people are going to down and use the software.
As I said, this just shows you are unfamiliar with the goals of abandonware. They were preserving the games in playable form, and they needed them to be played, because games are not static artifacts; they must be experienced. Besides, asking them to keep copies in temperature controlled rooms is ridiculous, these were passion projects done on a budget, out of commodity hardware and rented servers. This started before torrents by the way, and some abandonware communities frowned upon the notion of just downloading a big file of everything anyway.
> Usually there is a copy or backup somewhere
No, there often wasn't. Resist the urge to reply "well, theoretically..." and consider that maybe I know about this a bit more than you.
> You are taking this too literally. "Regular pirates" don't want to commit copyright infringement either. It is just the means they achieve their actual goals.
I'm taking this the way you wrote it, how else? Don't backpedal. The goals of pirates and abandonware crews were different (though, of course, there was some cross-pollination).
> No one has a right to use anyone else's software. I don't have a right to use Windows 3.1 in my lifetime. I don't have a right to play some random game from the 90s that only had 100 copies made. It's okay for software to be unavailable or be lost.
"Right" is a made-up thing (often broken by the industry that later enforced similar rights; do you know the history of Hollywood studios?). And no, it's not ok. Just because you think some made-up legal right trumps human cultural experience doesn't mean you're right.
It's not ok for software (or books, or movies) to be lost. It matters. Just not to you. I think basically 99% of your argument boils down to "I don't care enough about games preservation, and therefore I don't see the problem".
You are the only ones talking about goals so I'm not sure how to even answer this. I believe that pirates use the idea of preservation to justify why they pirate things and to make them feel less bad about breaking the law and stealing from others.
>out of commodity hardware and rented servers
Those servers were likely more expensive than properly storing it at their house.
>No, there often wasn't.
In practice there tends to be. If you are in the retro hardware / software community you will see rare things come up on auction. The idea that all copies just disappeared does not match reality.
>The goals of pirates and abandonware crews were different
But both of those groups distributed pirated software.
>It's not ok for software (or books, or movies) to be lost.
Then I would encourage you to preserve archival copies of things you want to see preserved.
> You are the only ones talking about goals so I'm not sure how to even answer this. I believe that pirates use the idea of preservation to justify why they pirate things and to make them feel less bad about breaking the law and stealing from others.
No, I'm not the only one: you mentioned what you thought was the goal in your initial comment (copyright infringement) and you're restating it now. Again it's very telling this is your "belief", but you acknowledged tacitly that you are unfamiliar with how abandonware projects worked, never having talked to the people. But I have. Do you think it would be maybe wise to acknowledge your beliefs are not based on actual knowledge?
The goals matter. In fact, they matter to you as well, because you've been arguing from a position of belief about the goals ("justify why the pirate things") that is simply incorrect. Why not update your knowledge instead?
> In practice there tends to be. If you are in the retro hardware / software community you will see rare things come up on auction. The idea that all copies just disappeared does not match reality.
This is simply false. I don't think you are into "the retro hardware / software" community at all, I dare you to claim otherwise. Also, rare things do come up on auction, but this doesn't mean as a norm they exist! And the people involved in these projects are breaking all kinds of copyrights and have always been persecuted for this, which you'd know if you were involved in those communities.
> But both of those groups [pirates and abandonware groups] distributed pirated software.
I talked about goals. Your answer is a non-sequitur, because it argues about something that wasn't in dispute. Please try not to do this.
> Then I would encourage you to preserve archival copies of things you want to see preserved.
You haven't the faintest idea of what I do or don't do. More importantly, we're not discussing me, are we? Please try sticking to the point.
At this point you're sounding like a mix of dishonesty and willful ignorance.
Copyright law is about finding a balance between, on one side, incentivizing creators via granting them a legal monopoly on publishing, and on the other side, the philosophical notion of freedom of speech, which would allow anyone to republish, remix, and repurpose any preexisting work. The original formulation of this legal monopoly was that it was supposed to be short enough that it would expire well within the average person's lifetime, a notion which has long been gutted via regulatory capture.
> Isn't that one of the whole points of copyright? So the authors can print new copies and not have to compete with other people releasing copies they made?
The more important point of copyright is 'to promote the progress of the useful arts'. The 'securing for a limited time to authors and inventors, the exclusive right to their writings and inventions' is just the means. Do the means in this case seem to work well in achieving that goal?
> Nothing is stopping people from keeping an archived copy until copyright expires.
Except the 70+ years it takes before you're legally allowed to publish it, or even just adapt it. If I'm going to play things by the book, even if I archive it when I'm 10 years old, sales stop on day two of the copyright period, and the rights expire the day after it's 70 years years old, I will be 80+ years old when I'm legally allowed to let people download it, or I myself can publish an adaptation (or more likely, I'll have died and my archive version will be lost in the estate sale).
The original game might be stopping people. It's not like games have a good track record of continuing to work for decades. DRM of all kinds poses a huge problem in this regard, but so does garden variety technological change. The GOG preservation team has quite a few videos about deeply technical work they needed to do to make e.g. Prince of Persia run properly on modern PCs. Sure I can just pirate a copy for PS2 and run it with PCSX2, but thats “piracy" (even though I still have a working original disc!).
So, no: there's a lot stopping people, especially copyright law, from keeping around working copies of their games.
> copyright expires
Not in your lifetime. 70 years after death if the author brings us out into centuries. Books written 60 years before my kids were born won't be out if copyright until they are in their 40s, for example.
A fun way to frame the copyright lifetime absurdity is to point out that in a few years there will be books published on the 1900s that will be copyright protected until the 2100s.
Even GOG has some oddities were the available copy is not the original experience.
My recent experience of trying to play the original Mafia game.
Booting it up a GoG copy, I found that there was no music while driving (a core memory of my original play through).
This music has been removed...
This also affected small radios you'd find playing music, they now dead.
It really took away from the game experience
I ended up scratching out my original CD copy of the game, installing version 1.0 of the game. It had all the music and better visuals
The patches removed visual features for performance, not GoG's fault here, not sure why GoG hosts an inferior version, its quite a downgrade. The music removal I do not understand.
(This all was particually obvious in an early mission, where you have to beat up some parked cars with baseball bats, the patched version show minimal dents and zero scratches, and the radio sitting in the corner make no sound. This completely changes in the V1.0 copy, so much more atmosphere)
This happens because the original publisher signed a deal for the commercial music with a limited time.
So when that time expired, any further releases had to remove the music.
Another example of how copyright makes preservation difficult.
I mean, it's obvious: copyright seeks to create a mechanism to compensate creators by creating scarcity. They succeeded.
It turns out archiving those creations effectively is in direct tension with that scarcity. So we made a system to incentivizes creation, and then destruction of the creation. This is visible with the "copyright cliff" in books, but also the incredible difficulty of legally keeping computer programs running over the decades. Copyright's restrictions on derivative works, coupled with the insanely long copyright term, create a sort of digital wasteland, with only those willing to go underground having great collections of old programs.
> Nothing is stopping people from keeping an archived copy until copyright expires.
Which people? In the case of abandonware, the original software is often not in the hands of the copyright holder anymore, due to neglect or lack of interest. Sometimes all or most relevant physical copies have become damaged. All that remains is a (cracked) file download in an abandonware website. Thanks to the abandonware community it gets preserved.
Besides, a piece of software history only serves its purpose if you can experience it. With no way of legally experiencing it (you cannot buy it) how do you propose to experience it? You cannot always wait it out, you might die first due to how long copyright lasts. Or is this nebulous concept of copyright more important than human experience?
> People who have a legal copy of the game can preserve that copy until copyright expires.
No, that's the point. "Can" doesn't mean they do; only "pirates" kept copies. Copyright owners didn't care, only got involved on the legal side of things. When copies became "legal" again, they were often cracked copies.
I know you keep ignoring this, but that's just because you're unfamiliar with how the abandonware community worked.
> You don't need to be able to experience it. There are many things in life that I can't experience and that's okay.
Games are not static works of art. A game needs to be played in order to be preserved. If you were familiar with the abandonware community you'd know this was their mission. Just because you don't care about this doesn't mean it's not important.
All your comments so far boil down to: "I don't care about old game preservation, and so I don't see the problem with copyrights." Which is a you rather than us kind of problem.
So why can't those "pirates" keep legal copies instead of an illegal one.
>A game needs to be played in order to be preserved
Does a bottle of wine need to be drunk in order to be preserved, or does storing it in a wine cellar preserve it. The idea that you have to be able to play something for it to count as being preserved is not accurate.
>I don't care about old game preservation, and so I don't see the problem with copyrights.
My opinion boils down to:
* Preservation does not justify piracy
* Preservation is often used as a euphemism for piracy
> So why can't those "pirates" keep legal copies instead of an illegal one.
Often those copies are legal (as in purchased; e.g. the abandonware archive of Home of the Underdogs started with the personal collection of legally purchased games of the owner; she also scanned manuals, cover artwork and whenever possible any goodies that came with the games; as much as possible from the game was preserved). Other times the legal copy just doesn't exist. In either case, the goal of games preservation is that the games are played; these are paintings hanging on a wall.
> Does a bottle of wine need to be drunk in order to be preserved, or does storing it in a wine cellar preserve it. The idea that you have to be able to play something for it to count as being preserved is not accurate.
Games are not wine, and you're wrong.
> Preservation does not justify piracy
Yes, it does. It's just that you're not interested in preservation. You went as far as claiming that it's ok for games/software to die; do you realize anything else you claim about "using AI" or "keeping copies somewhere" and "temperature controlled rooms" is more or less nonsense? The fundamental thing is that you don't care about preserving games. Everything else you're saying is a red herring. If you're ok with games being lost forever, then of course every measure to preserve them will seem excessive or pointless to you. (Please don't insist with "copyright holders surely have a copy...", I've already explained that they often don't. Do me the courtesy of not rehashing refuted claims).
> Preservation is often used as a euphemism for piracy
Wait, before you claimed it wasn't. Now you claim it is. Keep your story straight. Also, you more or less didn't dispute you're completely unfamiliar with abandonware, only basing your opinions on prejudice (and some deranged nonsense about AI), so it's very hard to take your arguments seriously.
>the goal of games preservation is that the games are played
If their is a goal to allow people without a license to play a game protected by copyright to play the game, I can not support it.
>Games are not wine, and you're wrong.
But both can only be experienced by taking it out of where its being preserved and playing / drinking it.
>Yes, it does. It's just that you're not interested in preservation.
I do support preservation but not the flavor of preservation which is piracy. For example someone finds "lost media" and since it's "lost media" that means they can just upload a TV episode protected by copyright for others to watch for free.
>Wait, before you claimed it wasn't. Now you claim it is. Keep your story straight
This confusion is intentionally done by pirates to make what they are doing sound legitimate. There are 2 flavors of preservation. Legal preservation which follows the law in how one preserves the work and illegal preservation which is essentially piracy.
> If their is a goal to allow people without a license to play a game protected by copyright to play the game, I can not support it.
> I do support preservation but not the flavor of preservation which is piracy. For example someone finds "lost media" and since it's "lost media" that means they can just upload a TV episode protected by copyright for others to watch for free.
As established previously, this all stems from you not valuing preservation. If you value copyright over culture, you don't value culture. "Piracy" and "copyright" are arbitrary terms, and copyright is not a goal in itself; it sometimes gets in the way.
> This confusion is intentionally done by pirates to make what they are doing sound legitimate. There are 2 flavors of preservation. Legal preservation which follows the law in how one preserves the work and illegal preservation which is essentially piracy.
The confusion is only created by you. Out of malice, I must assume at this point, since you've implicitly acknowledged you didn't engage with abandonware communities and therefore can only infer (incorrectly) what their motives were. I, in contrast, did engage, talked to the owner of HOTU (one of the largest ones back in the day) and know how they collected games and what their motives were. Having no counter to this, you keep ignoring it and instead rehash the same debunked points.
There's only one kind of preservation: the one that actually preserves stuff.
At this point I know you understand this, you're just willfully ignorant or maliciously distorting the argument.
javcasas · · focus · HN ↗
charcircuit · · focus · HN ↗
Nothing is stopping people from keeping an archived copy until copyright expires.
the_af · · focus · HN ↗
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[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entertainment_Software_Association" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entertainment_Software_Associa...
LostMyWords · · focus · HN ↗
[0] <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/3053050/how-one-company-is-bringing-old-video-games-back-from-the-dead" rel="nofollow">https://www.fastcompany.com/3053050/how-one-company-is-bring...
the_af · · focus · HN ↗
It seems petty to me that copyright holders (or their legal proxies) aggressively sought to shut down abandonware sites without any plan to make the software available in any shape. I mean, these were marginal pieces of software, no longer money earners, and the abandonware sites served as digital museums.
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[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Culture_(book)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Culture_(book)
charcircuit · · focus · HN ↗
I refuse to believe this train of logic. By the time copyright expires AI will be able to handle removing copyright protection and making it able to run on modern hardware. The only point of doing it now instead of later is so that people commit copyright infringement.
the_af · · focus · HN ↗
This must be some powerful combination of magical thinking plus a lack of awareness of the context. In the early 2000's, the time I'm recounting, nobody thought of AI. And it wasn't about copyright infringement since the people in the abandonware community I'm talking about owned the goddamn games, they were trying to digitally preserve them and make them available to others. You really need to be familiar with these people and their goals before you "refuse to believe" anything; uninformed opinions just won't do.
It helps to get a perspective about both the time and the type of games we're discussing. In fact, if you were at all a participant of the community back then, you'd know in which little regard warez kiddies were held.
charcircuit · · focus · HN ↗
the_af · · focus · HN ↗
In many cases, all that remains of these games is the cracked digital versions, the physical versions don't exist anymore. The abandonware crew did all the preserving, without them there wouldn't be anything to release, AI or not.
Also, a lot of "legally available" software from today (say, via GOG who do own the rights) has the fingerprints of crackers who made it possible for the software to run today.
> And a lot of pirates who share copyrighted material had that material originate from a legal purchase. That doesn't make it any less worse.
Regular pirates distribute recent games, which is obviously an entirely different matter. The abandonware community is/was concerned with preserving digital artifacts and games for posterity, and making old stuff playable today. Games that otherwise would have been lost, forgotten, or simply impossible to play. Those are completely different goals, and it's wrong to claim they did it "to commit copyright infringement".
I don't want to offend you, but your initial claim that abandonware crews decades ago should have somehow foreseen AI would make cracking/fixing easier is the most deranged thing I've read in a while. It also doesn't address that something you cannot play in your lifetime is effectively unavailable and lost to you.
charcircuit · · focus · HN ↗
It was the means towards their goal at the very least. These people could be maintaining a private archive of this software and other material in a temperature controlled room to preserve it until copyright expires. The legal paths of archiving exist, but these people choose to do it illegally often knowing that other people are going to down and use the software.
>The abandonware crew did all the preserving, without them there wouldn't be anything to release
Usually there is a copy or backup somewhere. Just because a pirated copy is more accessible that doesn't mean that pirates should get all of the credit.
>and it's wrong to claim they did it "to commit copyright infringement"
You are taking this too literally. "Regular pirates" don't want to commit copyright infringement either. It is just the means they achieve their actual goals.
>It also doesn't address that something you cannot play in your lifetime is effectively unavailable and lost to you.
No one has a right to use anyone else's software. I don't have a right to use Windows 3.1 in my lifetime. I don't have a right to play some random game from the 90s that only had 100 copies made. It's okay for software to be unavailable or be lost.
barbafant · · focus · HN ↗
If you replace software with book, music or movie, would you still claim that? That would kill a lot of culture and cultural studies. Are software that different? More specifically, are games that different?
charcircuit · · focus · HN ↗
the_af · · focus · HN ↗
If you think copyright is a goal rather than a means for culture, then you're wrong and everything you say stems from something misguided.
charcircuit · · focus · HN ↗
Telaneo · · focus · HN ↗
Telaneo · · focus · HN ↗
We can do better than that.
charcircuit · · focus · HN ↗
Telaneo · · focus · HN ↗
the_af · · focus · HN ↗
Which one is it? Before, you claimed it was their goal (what they wanted to do). You cannot have it both ways. The actual goal matters.
> These people could be maintaining a private archive of this software and other material in a temperature controlled room to preserve it until copyright expires. The legal paths of archiving exist, but these people choose to do it illegally often knowing that other people are going to down and use the software.
As I said, this just shows you are unfamiliar with the goals of abandonware. They were preserving the games in playable form, and they needed them to be played, because games are not static artifacts; they must be experienced. Besides, asking them to keep copies in temperature controlled rooms is ridiculous, these were passion projects done on a budget, out of commodity hardware and rented servers. This started before torrents by the way, and some abandonware communities frowned upon the notion of just downloading a big file of everything anyway.
> Usually there is a copy or backup somewhere
No, there often wasn't. Resist the urge to reply "well, theoretically..." and consider that maybe I know about this a bit more than you.
> You are taking this too literally. "Regular pirates" don't want to commit copyright infringement either. It is just the means they achieve their actual goals.
I'm taking this the way you wrote it, how else? Don't backpedal. The goals of pirates and abandonware crews were different (though, of course, there was some cross-pollination).
> No one has a right to use anyone else's software. I don't have a right to use Windows 3.1 in my lifetime. I don't have a right to play some random game from the 90s that only had 100 copies made. It's okay for software to be unavailable or be lost.
"Right" is a made-up thing (often broken by the industry that later enforced similar rights; do you know the history of Hollywood studios?). And no, it's not ok. Just because you think some made-up legal right trumps human cultural experience doesn't mean you're right.
It's not ok for software (or books, or movies) to be lost. It matters. Just not to you. I think basically 99% of your argument boils down to "I don't care enough about games preservation, and therefore I don't see the problem".
charcircuit · · focus · HN ↗
You are the only ones talking about goals so I'm not sure how to even answer this. I believe that pirates use the idea of preservation to justify why they pirate things and to make them feel less bad about breaking the law and stealing from others.
>out of commodity hardware and rented servers
Those servers were likely more expensive than properly storing it at their house.
>No, there often wasn't.
In practice there tends to be. If you are in the retro hardware / software community you will see rare things come up on auction. The idea that all copies just disappeared does not match reality.
>The goals of pirates and abandonware crews were different
But both of those groups distributed pirated software.
>It's not ok for software (or books, or movies) to be lost.
Then I would encourage you to preserve archival copies of things you want to see preserved.
the_af · · focus · HN ↗
No, I'm not the only one: you mentioned what you thought was the goal in your initial comment (copyright infringement) and you're restating it now. Again it's very telling this is your "belief", but you acknowledged tacitly that you are unfamiliar with how abandonware projects worked, never having talked to the people. But I have. Do you think it would be maybe wise to acknowledge your beliefs are not based on actual knowledge?
The goals matter. In fact, they matter to you as well, because you've been arguing from a position of belief about the goals ("justify why the pirate things") that is simply incorrect. Why not update your knowledge instead?
> In practice there tends to be. If you are in the retro hardware / software community you will see rare things come up on auction. The idea that all copies just disappeared does not match reality.
This is simply false. I don't think you are into "the retro hardware / software" community at all, I dare you to claim otherwise. Also, rare things do come up on auction, but this doesn't mean as a norm they exist! And the people involved in these projects are breaking all kinds of copyrights and have always been persecuted for this, which you'd know if you were involved in those communities.
> But both of those groups [pirates and abandonware groups] distributed pirated software.
I talked about goals. Your answer is a non-sequitur, because it argues about something that wasn't in dispute. Please try not to do this.
> Then I would encourage you to preserve archival copies of things you want to see preserved.
You haven't the faintest idea of what I do or don't do. More importantly, we're not discussing me, are we? Please try sticking to the point.
At this point you're sounding like a mix of dishonesty and willful ignorance.
pjc50 · · focus · HN ↗
charcircuit · · focus · HN ↗
hulitu · · focus · HN ↗
kibwen · · focus · HN ↗
Telaneo · · focus · HN ↗
The more important point of copyright is 'to promote the progress of the useful arts'. The 'securing for a limited time to authors and inventors, the exclusive right to their writings and inventions' is just the means. Do the means in this case seem to work well in achieving that goal?
> Nothing is stopping people from keeping an archived copy until copyright expires.
Except the 70+ years it takes before you're legally allowed to publish it, or even just adapt it. If I'm going to play things by the book, even if I archive it when I'm 10 years old, sales stop on day two of the copyright period, and the rights expire the day after it's 70 years years old, I will be 80+ years old when I'm legally allowed to let people download it, or I myself can publish an adaptation (or more likely, I'll have died and my archive version will be lost in the estate sale).
rpdillon · · focus · HN ↗
The original game might be stopping people. It's not like games have a good track record of continuing to work for decades. DRM of all kinds poses a huge problem in this regard, but so does garden variety technological change. The GOG preservation team has quite a few videos about deeply technical work they needed to do to make e.g. Prince of Persia run properly on modern PCs. Sure I can just pirate a copy for PS2 and run it with PCSX2, but thats “piracy" (even though I still have a working original disc!).
So, no: there's a lot stopping people, especially copyright law, from keeping around working copies of their games.
> copyright expires
Not in your lifetime. 70 years after death if the author brings us out into centuries. Books written 60 years before my kids were born won't be out if copyright until they are in their 40s, for example.
dghlsakjg · · focus · HN ↗
Dead_Lemon · · focus · HN ↗
It really took away from the game experience
I ended up scratching out my original CD copy of the game, installing version 1.0 of the game. It had all the music and better visuals
The patches removed visual features for performance, not GoG's fault here, not sure why GoG hosts an inferior version, its quite a downgrade. The music removal I do not understand.
(This all was particually obvious in an early mission, where you have to beat up some parked cars with baseball bats, the patched version show minimal dents and zero scratches, and the radio sitting in the corner make no sound. This completely changes in the V1.0 copy, so much more atmosphere)
Kubuxu · · focus · HN ↗
rpdillon · · focus · HN ↗
I mean, it's obvious: copyright seeks to create a mechanism to compensate creators by creating scarcity. They succeeded.
It turns out archiving those creations effectively is in direct tension with that scarcity. So we made a system to incentivizes creation, and then destruction of the creation. This is visible with the "copyright cliff" in books, but also the incredible difficulty of legally keeping computer programs running over the decades. Copyright's restrictions on derivative works, coupled with the insanely long copyright term, create a sort of digital wasteland, with only those willing to go underground having great collections of old programs.
the_af · · focus · HN ↗
Which people? In the case of abandonware, the original software is often not in the hands of the copyright holder anymore, due to neglect or lack of interest. Sometimes all or most relevant physical copies have become damaged. All that remains is a (cracked) file download in an abandonware website. Thanks to the abandonware community it gets preserved.
Besides, a piece of software history only serves its purpose if you can experience it. With no way of legally experiencing it (you cannot buy it) how do you propose to experience it? You cannot always wait it out, you might die first due to how long copyright lasts. Or is this nebulous concept of copyright more important than human experience?
charcircuit · · focus · HN ↗
>With no way of legally experiencing it (you cannot buy it) how do you propose to experience it?
You don't need to be able to experience it. There are many things in life that I can't experience and that's okay.
the_af · · focus · HN ↗
No, that's the point. "Can" doesn't mean they do; only "pirates" kept copies. Copyright owners didn't care, only got involved on the legal side of things. When copies became "legal" again, they were often cracked copies.
I know you keep ignoring this, but that's just because you're unfamiliar with how the abandonware community worked.
> You don't need to be able to experience it. There are many things in life that I can't experience and that's okay.
Games are not static works of art. A game needs to be played in order to be preserved. If you were familiar with the abandonware community you'd know this was their mission. Just because you don't care about this doesn't mean it's not important.
All your comments so far boil down to: "I don't care about old game preservation, and so I don't see the problem with copyrights." Which is a you rather than us kind of problem.
charcircuit · · focus · HN ↗
So why can't those "pirates" keep legal copies instead of an illegal one.
>A game needs to be played in order to be preserved
Does a bottle of wine need to be drunk in order to be preserved, or does storing it in a wine cellar preserve it. The idea that you have to be able to play something for it to count as being preserved is not accurate.
>I don't care about old game preservation, and so I don't see the problem with copyrights.
My opinion boils down to:
* Preservation does not justify piracy
* Preservation is often used as a euphemism for piracy
the_af · · focus · HN ↗
Often those copies are legal (as in purchased; e.g. the abandonware archive of Home of the Underdogs started with the personal collection of legally purchased games of the owner; she also scanned manuals, cover artwork and whenever possible any goodies that came with the games; as much as possible from the game was preserved). Other times the legal copy just doesn't exist. In either case, the goal of games preservation is that the games are played; these are paintings hanging on a wall.
> Does a bottle of wine need to be drunk in order to be preserved, or does storing it in a wine cellar preserve it. The idea that you have to be able to play something for it to count as being preserved is not accurate.
Games are not wine, and you're wrong.
> Preservation does not justify piracy
Yes, it does. It's just that you're not interested in preservation. You went as far as claiming that it's ok for games/software to die; do you realize anything else you claim about "using AI" or "keeping copies somewhere" and "temperature controlled rooms" is more or less nonsense? The fundamental thing is that you don't care about preserving games. Everything else you're saying is a red herring. If you're ok with games being lost forever, then of course every measure to preserve them will seem excessive or pointless to you. (Please don't insist with "copyright holders surely have a copy...", I've already explained that they often don't. Do me the courtesy of not rehashing refuted claims).
> Preservation is often used as a euphemism for piracy
Wait, before you claimed it wasn't. Now you claim it is. Keep your story straight. Also, you more or less didn't dispute you're completely unfamiliar with abandonware, only basing your opinions on prejudice (and some deranged nonsense about AI), so it's very hard to take your arguments seriously.
charcircuit · · focus · HN ↗
If their is a goal to allow people without a license to play a game protected by copyright to play the game, I can not support it.
>Games are not wine, and you're wrong. But both can only be experienced by taking it out of where its being preserved and playing / drinking it.
>Yes, it does. It's just that you're not interested in preservation.
I do support preservation but not the flavor of preservation which is piracy. For example someone finds "lost media" and since it's "lost media" that means they can just upload a TV episode protected by copyright for others to watch for free.
>Wait, before you claimed it wasn't. Now you claim it is. Keep your story straight
This confusion is intentionally done by pirates to make what they are doing sound legitimate. There are 2 flavors of preservation. Legal preservation which follows the law in how one preserves the work and illegal preservation which is essentially piracy.
the_af · · focus · HN ↗
> I do support preservation but not the flavor of preservation which is piracy. For example someone finds "lost media" and since it's "lost media" that means they can just upload a TV episode protected by copyright for others to watch for free.
As established previously, this all stems from you not valuing preservation. If you value copyright over culture, you don't value culture. "Piracy" and "copyright" are arbitrary terms, and copyright is not a goal in itself; it sometimes gets in the way.
> This confusion is intentionally done by pirates to make what they are doing sound legitimate. There are 2 flavors of preservation. Legal preservation which follows the law in how one preserves the work and illegal preservation which is essentially piracy.
The confusion is only created by you. Out of malice, I must assume at this point, since you've implicitly acknowledged you didn't engage with abandonware communities and therefore can only infer (incorrectly) what their motives were. I, in contrast, did engage, talked to the owner of HOTU (one of the largest ones back in the day) and know how they collected games and what their motives were. Having no counter to this, you keep ignoring it and instead rehash the same debunked points.
There's only one kind of preservation: the one that actually preserves stuff.
At this point I know you understand this, you're just willfully ignorant or maliciously distorting the argument.
Telaneo · · focus · HN ↗
You're being wilfully obtuse if this is your genuine opinion about video games. Your opinion is bad and you should feel bad.