HiGame

One of the murky areas of US copyright law where user rights, corporate ownership, and the modern digital age sometimes collide is the question of abandonware. The term refers to software for which support is no longer available and covers a broad range of circumstances — in some cases, the original company no longer exists, and the rights to the product may or may not have been acquired by another developer, who may or may not intend to do anything with them.

The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) has filed a request with the Library of Congress, asking that body to approve an exception to the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) that would allow “users who wish to modify lawfully acquired copies of computer programs” to do so in order to guarantee they can continue to access the programs — and the Entertainment Software Association, or ESA, has filed a counter-comment strongly opposing such a measure.
Let’s unpack that a bit.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, is a copyright law in the United States. One of the areas of law that it deals with is specifying what kinds of access end-users and owners of both software and some computer hardware are legally entitled to. One of its most controversial passages establishes that end users have no right to break or bypass any form of copy protection or security without the permission of the rights holder, regardless of how effective that protection actually is. In other words, a company that encrypts a product so poorly that a hacker can bypass it in seconds can still sue the individual for disclosing how broken their system actually is.

The Librarian of Congress has the authority to issue exemptions to this policy, with the instruction that they do so when evidence demonstrates that access-control technology has had an adverse impact on those seeking to make lawful use of protected works. Exemptions expire after three years, and must be resubmitted at that time (this caused problems after the Librarian authorized jailbreaking cell phones in 2010 was not renewed in 2013).



The GameSpy multiplayer service shutdown flung many titles into legal limbo and uncertain futures

The EFF has requested that the Library of Congress allow legal owners of video games that require authentication checks with a server, or that wish to continue playing multiplayer, to be allowed to remove such restrictions and operate third-party matchmaking servers in the event that the original publisher ceases to exist or to support the title. The request covers both single-player and multiplayer games, and defines “no longer supported by the developer” as “We mean the developer and its authorized agents have ceased to operate authentication or matchmaking servers.”

This is a significant problem across gaming, and the shift to online and cloud-based content has only made the problem worse. The EFF does not propose that this rule apply to MMOs like EVE Online or World of Warcraft, but rather to games with a distinct multiplayer component that were never designed to function as persistent worlds. To support its claim that this is an ongoing issue, the EFF notes that EA typically only supports offline play for its sports titles for 1.5 *to 2 years, and that more than 150 games lost online support in 2014 across the entire industry.

The ESA staunchly opposes

The ESA — which was on record as supporting SOPA — has filed a joint comment with the MPAA and RIAA, strongly opposing such measures. In its filing, the ESA argues the following:

• The EFF’s request should be rejected out of hand because “circumvention related to videogame consoles inevitably increases piracy.”
• Servers aren’t required for single-player gameplay. In this alternate universe, Diablo III, Starcraft 2, and SimCity don’t exist.
• Video game developers charge separate fees for multiplayer, which means consumers who buy games for multiplayer aren’t harmed when multiplayer is cancelled. Given that the number of games that don’t charge for multiplayer vastly exceeds those that do, I’m not sure who proofed this point.
• The purpose of such practices is to create the same experience as the multiplayer once provided, which means that it can’t be derivative, which means there is no grounds to allow anyone to play a multiplayer game after the initial provider*has decided to stop supporting the server infrastructure.

This line of thinking exemplifies the corporation-uber-alles attitude that pervades digital rights policy in the 21st century. The EFF is not asking the Library of Congress to force companies to support an unprofitable infrastructure. It’s not asking the Library to compel the release of source code, or to bless such third-party efforts, or to require developers to support the development of a replacement matchmaking service in any way.

The EFF’s sole argument is this: Users who legally paid for a piece of software should have the right to try to create a replacement server infrastructure in the event that the company who operated the official version quits. The ESA, in contradiction, argues that multiplayer function over the Internet “is not a ‘core’ functionality of the video game, and permitting circumvention to access such functionality would provide the user greater benefits than those bargained and paid for. Under these facts, consumers are not facing any likely, substantial, adverse effects on the ability to play the games they have purchased.”



The disastrous debut of SimCity demonstrated everything wrong with always-online play.

Try to wrap your head around that one, if you can. If you bought a game to play multiplayer, and EA disables the multiplayer function, the ESA argues that this does not adversely impact your ability to play the game, despite arguing in the same sentence that restoring your ability to play the game’s multiplayer would confer upon you greater benefit than you initially paid for.

It is literally impossible to simultaneously receive greater benefit than you paid for if functionality is restored while losing nothing if that functionality is denied.

The real reasoning is a great deal simpler: If you’re happy playing an old game, you might be less likely to buy a new one — and in an industry that’s fallen prey to kicking out sequels on a yearly basis, regardless of the impact on game quality, the phantom of lost sales is too frightening to ignore.


More...