Feds Say You Don’t Have a Right to Check Out Retro Video Games Like Library Books
Feds Say You Don’t Have a Right to Check Out Retro Video Games Like Library Books
The U.S. Copyright Office denied an exemption from the DMCA to allow gaming historians to access out-of-print games they can’t legally get.
The U.S. Copyright Office denied an exemption from the DMCA to allow gaming historians to access out-of-print games they can’t legally get anywhere else.
The arguments used to make the First Sale Doctrine apply to books a hundred years ago are equally applicable to games and other software, and consumers should demand they're given the rights they deserve to use the copies of media they've paid for. You should be able to sell on a used video game once you've finished it, or lend it to a friend, just like you can with a book or a DVD.
That said, the title's a little misleading. Libraries only lend each copy of a book to one person at a time (if it's a physical book, it's pretty obvious that it can only be in one place at once), and the ruling the headline refers to says that a copy of a retro game can only be lent out to one person at once, which is understandable, even if it's a massive pain when plenty of games don't have many working copies left in circulation.
65This ruling seems insane since libraries can already lend new games. I think mine still has wiiu stuff.
15
Complete bullshit. Waste energy and make your own archives then I guess.
34Or pirate an emulator and cut out the middle man!
20There is something to be said for experiencing the game on its intended hardware. Compare seeing the Mona Lisa to seeing a photo of the Mona Lisa. The image is the same, and for most people, that's enough. However, there are some minor details you can only get from the real deal.
However, that doesn't mean that piracy is off the table, just a bit more challenging. Most retro consoles have either an everdrive type cartridge available, or an optical disc emulator that will let you run ROMs on the original hardware with a minor modification to the console. Get one of those and a good quality CRT TV and you're off to the races.
If you want a solution thats a bit more multi-purpose, then I recommend looking into the MiSTer project, which uses an FPGA to emulate the system at a cycle-accurate chip level, rather than software to read ROMs natively on generic computer hardware.
4
Like I forgot how to napster. Dawg.
27I'm in Canada and my library has everything from brand new ps5 games to GameCube era and original Xbox/PS2. And I live like a block away. They better not mess with that cause I haven't bought a video game in years
8We are truly blessed.
2
So…like…blockbuster was a national crime syndicate?
4This is the right determination by the USCO. This is a place where the legislature is the party responsible for acting in the face of a clear issue with a clear solution. Congress will fix this, right?
1