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!).
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.
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.
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...
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.
Telaneo · · focus · HN ↗
We can do better than that.
charcircuit · · focus · HN ↗
Telaneo · · focus · HN ↗