IDSA Forces Arcade Game Manual Archive Offline

AtariKee writes "The IDSA and the DMCA has struck again, this time forcing the maintainer of Stormaster.com, a coin-operated video game manual and tech information archive, to shut down. Stormaster has been an invaluable resource for collectors of classic coin-operated video games for years, and this loss further demonstrates the idiocy that is the DMCA. I can understand ROM images to some extent, but 25 year old coin-op operator/tech manuals? The full text of the IDSA's letter can be read on Stormaster's site." Previous Slashdot posts about IDSA (Interactive Digital Software Association) show that this is typical of the organization.

Comments

Hmmm...

[Tyrdium]

IDSA has a good faith belief that the Internet site found at http://www.stormaster.com/ infringes the rights of one or more IDSA members by offering for download one or more unauthorized copies of one or more game products protected by copyright, including, but not limited to:

It looks like what he's being accused of is having warez on his site, not manuals. Of course, if the manuals also included schematics for some reason (repairs?), then by having the schematics up on his site he would be allowing someone to reproduce the game. I'm not sure what was in the manuals, since I never got a chance to see them...

Overseas

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just give the site content to somebody living in a country where "freedom" still means something.

Re:Is anyone surprised?

[gilesjuk]

It might have been fairer for the DMCA to have had a cutoff point, like minus 10 years from the introduction of the act.

There are plenty of Commodore and Sinclair ROMs, manuals and diagrams on the net. They're available to keep such old gear working for future generations to see. What next, ban the distribution of classic car manuals and sue people for producing reproduction parts?

Re:Is anyone surprised?

[NewbieProgrammerMan]

A few years ago I read an article suggesting that a dark age of sorts could come about because we are storing so much information in electronic form only. IIRC, their premise was that information might not get rolled forward onto new media when its original storage medium becomes obsolete.

Originally, I thought this was just a little farfetched, but I worry a little about trends I see. Some companies now seem to desire the ability to turn a profit on any innovation for all eternity by maintaining everlasting copyrights, patents and IP rights. Maybe this will be one of the driving forces that causes the loss of knowledge about old technology and "unimportant" information.

I think the US will pay a big price in the long term by passing these "mediocrity protection" laws. I would not be surprised at all to see more and more smart people begin going to countries where they won't be blocked at every turn when they try to build on other people's work.