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.
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)