Thread

Pirating the Pirates

711 points · 405 comments · piotrgrabowski

javcasas · 1790612674 · focus · HN ↗
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.
1. mahboi · 1790619677 · focus · HN ↗
  The old video games aren't illegal to own.
  1. javcasas · 1790625757 · focus · HN ↗
    They may be illegal to run if they are made to depend on servers, even for single player, and those servers are taken offline.
    On top of the shenanigans we have seen recently about revoking paid licenses to watch movies.
    mahboi · 1790628205 · focus · HN ↗
    That's not illegal, it's just... you can't play the game. Or you can but it's hard. But it's not all that common of an occurrence.
    kevinmgranger · 1790695975 · focus · HN ↗
    There is zero practical difference between owning a game they don't allow you to play and not owning it. Thus if taking steps to make it playable is illegal, then the equivalent to ownership is illegal.
    mahboi · 1790725425 · focus · HN ↗
    The steps you're referring to are reverse-engineering the online component of a defunct online-only game, right? That's supposedly legal: <a href="https://www.tomshardware.com/news/old-online-games-preserved-federal-government,37992.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.tomshardware.com/news/old-online-games-preserved...
    someonebaggy · 1790678190 · focus · HN ↗
    You can do illegal things if you don't get caught.
    cindyllm · 1790678721 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]

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