Remix.run Logo
▲ Buttons840 2 hours ago

Even better would be broad copyright reforms. Fair Use needs to be expanded and clarified. History has shown players are able to keep games alive themselves by emulators, reverse engineering, custom servers, etc. Expand Fair Use to say that these things are protected if needed to keep the game functional.

▲modeless an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Fair use is already pretty good, but we shouldn't need to rely on it to preserve older games. The reform we need is a dramatically shorter term for copyrights. All older games should be completely out of copyright.

▲ascagnel_ 12 minutes ago | parent [-]

I'd add better handling of copy-protected titles as well. If a game wants the benefit of copyright, they need to make a version of it without DRM available in escrow (held by some entity like the Library of Congress) for when the copyright expires.

One of the big issues with DRM is that it's not legal in the US to break the digital lock even if the work is in the public domain, so that needs to be accounted for as well.

▲f3408fh 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

How do you define functional?

▲astafrig an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Maintaining the same functionality advertised or realised at the time it was purchased.

▲dataflow an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Usable similarly to how it was at the time of first sale?

▲kmeisthax an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

What you want is to repeal DMCA 1201. It is specifically 1201 that is responsible for the most anti-preservation rulings. Custom servers are legally imperiled because Blizzard, the patient zero of the technofeudalist takeover of the US, sued a developer for releasing a Battle.net custom server and won because he didn't implement the CD Key check. It is fairly trivial to make a central server have DRM checks that a third-party replacement can't replicate, even though they legally have to, which makes them effectively illegal.

Expanding exceptions to copyright law would be nice for different reasons, but custom servers and emulation were already legal before companies figured out they could put arbitrarily difficult roadblocks in the way of them.

Also while we're here, DMCA 512 was also a piece of horseshit, albeit less because it curtailed online freedom and more because it isn't a good way to adjudicate low-stakes copyright claims.