The headline makes it sound like IA gets a special exemption, but they don't. They got a DMCA anti-circumvention exemption passed allowing anyone to bypass DRM on formats that use obsolete hardware.
I regularly see people say IA can avoid DMCA strikes through a special exemption, but that is not the case. The rights holder could demand anything they archive be taken down, even these floppy disc games they secured an exemption for.
It's great they got this passed, but it's not some major thing for them.
Nothing has actually happened yet though aside from lots of meetings. As the latter link explicitly says, the library/archive exception provides very little in the way of specific additional rights to digital archives.
One thing IA has going for them at least is that even though some material they have cannot be online and viewable by anyone, you can physically access their location and get access to any and all of the content, DMCA strikes be damned or not. Thanks to their library status if I'm not mistaken.
What if all lawyers were physicists too? We send electricity and light over wires and fibers to transfer the data using physics, thereby we are physically transferring the data.
I think the argument is around accessibility and ability to copy it. If it's available from your home, everyone could easily access it and also easily copy it.
If you have to go to a dedicated computer, at a physical location (California, US no less), basically only a small percentage of people actually have access to it, and are more or less unable to copy things at a grand scale.
I don’t know how does that work but they became the de facto console ROM site. You not just can upload games but you can download them too, it’s not simply archiving but sharing too.
The full SEGA library. Full Nintendo library (except the newest Switch games). Every single PS1-PS2-PS3 games. All the Xbox and Xbox 360 games. I love it because used physical games are insanely expensive and some of the digital stores are also shutting down (WiiU/3DS this month). And on top of that easy to get out of region games that never released for example outside of Japan.
Anyways I except one day the companies going after IA. Especially Nintendo, they shut down several ROM sites yet IA have 10x times more and better selection.
1) There should be a compulsory fee option offered by every copyright registration office for them to provide a license (and possibly reproduce a copy of the work).
2) Enforcement of availability to maintain copyright, without the availability of the work it should default, irrevocably, to public domain.
3) Reasonable coverage: At least in the US copyright is intended to promote the progress of science and 'useful arts' (skilled 'trades'/work). The scope should be extremely narrow, and maybe even eliminated since _publishing_ is now vastly cheaper than ever before.
4) Reasonable duration: Even ignoring the coverage aspect, the duration should reflect a useful lifetime of information and the evolution of ideas and culture. Today's world moves far faster than in ages past, and yet copyright's been abused as an extension of what should be _trade_ mark.
5) Trade Mark is the intended consumer protection mechanism. Brand names and likenesses associated with them are covered by Trade Mark. Use in a for profit context that represents that brand.
> There should be a compulsory fee option offered by every copyright registration office for them to provide a license (and possibly reproduce a copy of the work).
So should a AAA title that costs millions to produced be forced to license their game for the same amount as my tic tac toe game?
> Reasonable coverage: At least in the US copyright is intended to promote the progress of science and 'useful arts' (skilled 'trades'/work). The scope should be extremely narrow, and maybe even eliminated since _publishing_ is now vastly cheaper than ever before.
Publishing has been a relatively small part of the cost of media for awhile. It’s actually producing the content that’s expensive.
>>So should a AAA title that costs millions to produced be forced to license their game for the same amount as my tic tac toe game?
Math and government solved that years ago with a little thing called the percentage... We have applied that in various ways to extract fees (aka taxes) from people for various things in a progressive way.
This is not a new or novel problem.
Copyright by design is suppose to be commercially protective of work, and if you want the government to protect your commercial works I think a user fee for that service is both ethical and correct. It would be far more ethical to charge a % to protect copyright than it is to seize a % of a person labor and most people have no issues with doing that
So it should be based on what math? The cost of production? Ever heard of “Hollywood accounting”?
Mandatory licenses is how streaming music works where you don’t choose your own playlist (Pandora) and public performances like when music is played in public over speakers like at gyms. Music writers and composers (but not voice) falls under mandatory licenses for radio and streaming music
> you want the government to protect your commercial works I think a user fee for that service is both ethical and correct
Copyright also protects open source licenses. Should they also be charged the same fee?
If the RIAA can figure out licensing costs for music than the MPAA can figure it out for movies and whatever EA is part of can figure out video games. Sure some random guy on the internet won't be able to work it out in a few minutes but if that's the crux of your argument you have a shit argument.
The big difference is that the variability in how much it costs to write a song is much difference between how much it costs to create “Get Out” and how much it costs to create “Avengers: Infinity War”.
Also there are multiple licenses for “music”.
- if you write a song and it is used as part of a “performance” for radio, streaming services, etc there is a standard mandated licenses. But those mandated licenses don’t apply to movies or cover versions
- Radio stations are not required to pay “singers” when they play a song. There is a mandated license for composers and writers.
- Services like Spotify and Apple Music where you can create your own playlist have to make individual deals with record labels for the entire performance. But even then, there are standardized licenses for writers and composers.
- if you use a “performance” in a tv show or movie. You have to negotiate with all of the writes holders individually - singers, writers and composers. But if you are willing to use a cover version, you only have to deal with the writers and composers .
Sounds like the industry hashed this out and we ended up with a system that might be a little complicated but is broadly acceptable to people. What do you see the barrier being for movies and video games?
And why not have everyone pay it? If you offer free licensing then you pay nothing. Open Source and commercial SaaS will have no fees. If you want people to have to pay for licensing then you set the price by paying some percent of the price you want to set annually. We can even have first 20 years free so small artists don’t get bought out by huge corps.
The industry didn’t hash anything out though. You still can’t use a “performance” - ie a combination of lyrics, music and voice without negotiating directly with the rights holders.
That’s why you still can’t find “Welcome Back Kotter” on streaming and many old TV shows on streaming had to use different music than when they originally aired on TV.
And what do you base your mandated licensing on? The cost of production? Movie studios have played games with that for decades. That’s what is called “Hollywood Accounting”. Video game makers could do the same.
And let’s not forget that 70% of Spotify’s revenue goes directly to the music labels. Streaming music is a horrible business to be in as a standalone business. It only makes since for Apple and Amazon as a larger services/devices play.
> I love it because used physical games are insanely expensive
Depends on the game and the store. You may get better prices with local stores, or local classifieds. Unfortunately, high demand, low production games are insanely expensive, swamped with pirated reproductions, or both. But if you do what you must for those games, I think there's fair prices to be had on the others. My local stores have a reasonable selection of japanese games, or at least a selection, but I imagine that varies a lot, I am on the west coast.
I've been saying for years that piracy is preservation. There are entire platform software libraries that would simply not exist nowadays without past piracy.
If you care about the longevity of media, especially less popular media, then you'll pirate it. Anything less is failing to see the forest for the trees.
I don't understand this statement. Are you trying to use banking-software-2002.exe file to transfer a balance?
The IA is a best effort (and a damned good one too) and so if I want to get Commander Keen running again I can! I still run it in VM/Emulation/whatever isolation.
Do YOU have Commander Keen available, fully vetted on your trusted archive platform?
There are 7 Commander Keen core games: a trilogy (Invasion of the Vorticons, Keen 1-3), a duology (Goodbye, Galaxy, Keen 4-5), and two standalone games (Aliens Ate My Babysitter, Keen 6 and Keen Dreams, Keen 3.5). The complete pack includes Invasion of the Vorticons and Goodbye, Galaxy, which gives you five of the seven.
Aliens Ate My Babysitter has never been commercially rereleased and is owned by Softdisk, not iD Software
Keen Dreams was -- believe it or not -- bought at auction by a kid named Javier Chavez who didn't know anything about programming or games and subsequently got himself permanently banned from Steam after posting a bunch of alt-right political stuff (!) and eventually changing his developer username to contain homophobic insults against the guy who owns Steam. He also released a reskin of the open source Hovertank 3D that changed the plot to be about killing refugees.
You can see some documentation of the above (note: obviously this has insults, slurs, homophobia, insulting people by calling them Jews, etc.)
Anyway, after he was banned from Steam, the company Nightdive Studios initially reached an agreement with him to transfer ownership to them. They released a more technically polished version on Steam. At some point he began to contest their licensing arrangement and he had the game pulled again. There is a Switch release licensed by him.
If you want to buy Keen Dreams from him, you can do so at https://www.keendreams.com/, knowing you are giving money to the person I described above. You might notice that the "About us" page reads "We’re a small team of independent devs with a huge liking for older and unappreciated games, who took it upon us to re-release them to new players to enjoy! Look out for our releasr of Keen Dreams soon to be succeeded by more!" or that the main page features an incredibly JPEG artifacted low resolution image of the title screen and other gems like "Commander Keen keen dreams was considered the “lost episode” of Commander Keen, a franchise of 2d side scrolling games developed by id software decades ago." [sic] or "Smooth as butter 60fps gameplay, after all 30fps that’s so next gen consoles…" [sic]
Right, I'm not speaking against GOG or id Software. They run businesses and it seems like a totally reasonable decision to exclude these. Doesn't change the fact though, that it is good to have the original releases properly archived.
It's not really a new situation. We've dealt with tons of cases like this and generally decided that it's not a good idea to remove media from history because we've found their authors to be horrible people. Contexts, like the one you described, should only add to the history, not remove from it.
Oh hey, I remember hearing about that kid, he iirc also DMCAed a bunch of people giving him negative coverage if I'm not mistaken (but I could be). I'm surprised id Software didn't actually DMCA that reskin, Hover Tank 3D is GPLed and as far as I can tell, he never actually acquired the license, nor did he release the source.
Here's hoping Nightdive can figure something out, their development of the system shock remake looks very promising, I think they'd be good stewards for that kinda thing.
1. well known signature hashes documenting what an non-tampered CD iso should have.
2. you are absolutely correct in that old software sometime comes infested with known malware/virus... however one also needs to acknowledge it was often in the original files too (Sony root kit etc.)
3. 86box is slow, but can contain most nastiness that came with old PC games
=)
> How do you know the CD Hash Sig is genuine though?
You don't, unless you trust the source of it, or supply your own.
> I see this with hash values on websites next to ISO and other files.
This doesn't solve the problem you have in mind - verifying the file is genuine; it solves the problem of verifying that what you got is what you expected, i.e. what the site promised. The hash is there so you can detect download errors (used to be a much more frequent thing than it is now). Secondarily, because the files usually sit on a different server than the site itself, the hash lets you detect some cases of your download being tampered with in-flight, or the file itself altered on the server. Not all of such cases, just those where the attacker could affect the download, but couldn't modify the website itself.
> This doesn't solve the problem you have in mind - verifying the file is genuine; it solves the problem of verifying that what you got is what you expected
Exactly.
> Secondarily, because the files usually sit on a different server than the site itself, the hash lets you detect some cases of your download being tampered with in-flight, or the file itself altered on the server.
That assumes the download file is on a different webserver, but if they can gain access to one server, its not beyond the realms of possibility they can alter the hash values on another webserver.
I just find all this crypto stuff to be misleading whilst it overstates its effectiveness.
Those cryptographic hashes that sit on the same sever or are under control of the same group that publish the file itself really came about so you could verify untrusted copies like mirrors and CDs, not data integrity or hacks on the trusted source or a connection to the trusted source.
Actually, the signed hashes tend to only provide a out-of-band chain of accountability.
The old Microsoft signed drivers and Application publishers certs were not perfect. This was because the chain of trust eventually breaks down in time (insufficient strength, leaked signing key re-pack, and most people didn't check installer signatures).
FOSS projects can also suffer integrity rot on rare occasion, but it tends to be individuals feigning ignorance as their BS is reverted.
Archive.org allows one to often search for the CD hash and files of interest in the Wayback Machines snapshot copy of the publishers website. This method does still require the publishers cert or known hash to verify contents are valid. =)
I regularly see people say IA can avoid DMCA strikes through a special exemption, but that is not the case. The rights holder could demand anything they archive be taken down, even these floppy disc games they secured an exemption for.
It's great they got this passed, but it's not some major thing for them.