A group of video game preservationists wants the legal right to replicate “abandoned” servers in order to re-enable defunct online multiplayer gameplay for study. The game industry says those efforts would hurt their business, allow the theft of their copyrighted content, and essentially let researchers “blur the line between preservation and play.”
Both sides are arguing their case to the US Copyright Office right now, submitting lengthy comments on the subject as part of the Copyright Register’s triennial review of exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Analyzing the arguments on both sides shows how passionate both industry and academia are about the issue, and how mistrust and misunderstanding seem to have infected the debate.
Source: Game industry pushes back against efforts to restore gameplay servers | Ars Technica
That’s the problem with the Cloud(tm). IMHO you paid for the game and thus should have the right to play it, also after the games company takes down the server hosting it. If the game industry doesn’t like it, they should keep the servers up. Maybe that’s the case they should argue: once you sell a server centralised game, you are obligated to keep up the server for perpituity.
Robin Edgar
Organisational Structures | Technology and Science | Military, IT and Lifestyle consultancy | Social, Broadcast & Cross Media | Flying aircraft