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ESA Rebukes EFF's Request To Exempt Abandoned Games From Some DMCA Rules
eldavojohn writes It's 2015 and the EFF is still submitting requests to alter or exempt certain applications of the draconian DMCA. One such request concerns abandoned games that utilized or required online servers for matchmaking or play (PDF warning) and the attempts taken to archive those games. A given example is Madden '09, which had its servers shut down a mere one and a half years after release. Another is Gamespy and the EA & Nintendo titles that were not migrated to other servers. I'm sure everyone can come up with a once cherished game that required online play that is now abandoned and lost to the ages. While the EFF is asking for exemptions for museums and archivists, the ESA appears to take the stance that it's hacking and all hacking is bad. In prior comments (PDF warning), the ESA has called reverse engineering a proprietary game protocol "a classic wolf in sheep's clothing" as if allowing this evil hacking will loose Sodom & Gomorrah upon the industry. Fellow gamers, these years now that feel like the golden age of online gaming will be the dark ages of games as historians of the future try to recreate what online play was like now for many titles.
Give me back the online play for rally masters! It does not even work on a local network. Such a nice multiplayer game and cannot multi play anymore...
Everything is micro transactions... who would want to remember that?
I don't understand why the European Space Agency would be involved in this.
I am on the EFF's side here, but isn't it the game industry's job? If the game industry wants to be taken seriously artistically, it is ultimately the industry's duty to set up ways to preserve the art. If the industry won't take itself seriously, then individuals attempting preservation are going to end up being blocked over and over again by whatever form our trademark and copyright laws take.
... will hopefully have something more important to do before they get round to this.
David Anderson
these years now that feel like the golden age of online gaming will be the dark ages of games as historians of the future try to recreate what online play was like now for many titles.
While I agree with your premise, you overlook the fact that many of us in the "first gen" of gamers already view this as a "dark age". Personally, I have a fairly impressive game library, spanning a dozen platforms and worth probably tens of thousands of dollars (at original retail price*) worth of games. And I basically stopped buying games about a decade ago, with a few notable exceptions.
Make no mistake, I still game regularly - Between the occasional non-obnoxious modern release, and the back catalog of once-great games that I still haven't played (just finished Fallout a few weeks ago, no idea how I never got into that when it first came out), I figure I have enough material to keep me content for the rest of my life. But I will not play any game that depends on any aspect of the game under the exclusive control of a third party. Open servers and a really viable single-player mode, or GTFO, simple as that.
* Not that I actually paid full retail, which counts as an entirely different problem with modern games - Reselling a game used to mean putting it back in the box (or putting everything you had left in a ziplock bag), and passing it along to someone else for a few bucks. Now, if you even have the option of reselling it, you usually need to do so with the "permission" of the publisher. Fuck that!
Perhaps the security technology in the abandoned games is the similar to that in the non-abandoned games.
If so, the game makers would really not want folks to know how to open the abandoned games.
That would explain the situation.
If so, seems the game makers dug the hole they are in.
Any true nerd would know that ESA stands for the European Space Agency.
Non-nerds ( and their "Editors" ) should clarify other uses.
You mean I only get to do this one thing for three years and after that the results of such an exemption are back to being illegal again? The DMCA is one bad idea after another.
Thank goodness Trinity is curating WOTLK.
The game's publisher has gone astray.
I hate to tell you but this article is clearly a reference to the Ecological Society of America. Why they have an interest in the DMCA and video game hacking is beyond me.
Momento Mori
Which is hopefully going to bite those scumbags (ESA, *AA and kin) in the ass. Please.
Just have the Library of Congress step in and ask to have a copy of every game and its backend supporting software for the archives. Have a game assignement number for tracking like a book. We have an institution, it just needs a storage and process upgrade.
Anyone remember the good old days when we were playing Doom and Monkey Island? 'Cause I don't. Wish there was a possibility to replay those classic originals in a legal way.
Clearly, they're referring to the European Space Agency - and I for one have no idea why they'd care about any computer game except maybe Kerbel Space Program.
evil they closed multiplayer servers for mario cart wii! !!! start the engine for Enola Gey!
What does this have to do with the ESA? The ESA makes law, now?
Just refuse to buy any game that can't be played in standalone mode. If it requires an online server, just say no.
If enough people do this, the companies will have to change their perverted business model.
Can you live without your online gaming habit for a year or two?
It's about console jailbreaking. Good luck preserving the online of those 1-year online pass games.
The point is being missed entirely. If i buy a game that requires infrastructure from the manufacturer to play and the manufacturer decides to just stop providing that infrastructure, all bets are off. I should be free to do whatever I want/need to continue to be able to play that game. if the manufacturer feels like there is still some IP there, then continue to support it. If they feel like they can't afford to continue to support it, then what IP is remaining, really?
As soon as a good becomes "not fit for purpose" the manufacturer of the good should lose all rights associated with it and it should enter the public domain.
...but I recall some economist observing that against market demand, arbitrarily constraining supply will create black markets.
I'm not saying that's how it should be, just how it IS.
I understand that ESA want to control any and all access to products of their developers (on principle, if the developers no longer exist, etc), but I expect that ultimately this will be futile, and lead to their irrelevance sooner rather than later.
-Styopa
Stop buying the crappy new games and bring them to their knees.
I wonder how these people would react if they were told A: their cars needed to have a GPS connection to be allowed to drive, and then B: a few years after owning their cars, the GPS system they used was taken offline and they were told they were SOL and had to buy a new car.
Big corporations make money by cheating the consumers and corrupting the marketplace. These evil rich people can't actually produce real goods and services so the only method they have for making money is to cheat or steal from those beneath them. They've bought out anyone making a good product or providing a real service and then they raise prices and lower quality. They look for any way they can to cheat the consumers. From rip off prices to paying starvation wages, these corporations are pure evil.
The linked article says that "a user cannot hack the server-based authentication and âoematchmakingâ access controls for console-based video games without also hacking the video game console access controls", and then applies the "wolf in sheep's clothing" metaphor to it. I won't argue that this might be a concern for the ESA, and if the concern were a legitimate one, I can even potentially see how it could be a problem with respect to software that hasn't been abandoned, but does anyone have any further details about how they actually came to that conclusion? Bearing in mind that even if such "hacking" were done for genuinely nefarious purposes with respect to inrfringing on the copyright of software that was current and hadn't been abandoned, the EFF isn't suggesting that copyright law have any less claim over such matters, and action could still be taken against such criminals anyways under ordinary copyright law, I just want to understand what kind of point the ESA believed that they had that would ever give them a justification to disallow what is by their own admission a superficially reasonable activity, to use their own metaphor's words, "in sheep's clothing", under the allegation that it could somehow actually be utilized in much more nefarious ways, or any alleged such connection only exists in their own imagination, and from what I can find on the matter, this is the conclusion I am inclined to come to. If the latter is genuinely applicable, then the ESA is basing their entire objection upon a concern that doesn't have any bearing on reality (as I suspect they may be),. and is doing nothing more or less with this objection than making a strawman argument, and should be called on that.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
1. Make a game that requires server authentication and have date X for the launch of the servers.
2. Sell a boatload of games.
3. Take the servers off-line on date X plus 10 seconds.
4. Profits!
According to the ESA, that would be legal and appropriate?
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
The summary (didn't RTFA so please forgive if there's more) clearly states the EFF is bringing up only those games that require a vendor-provided online service to get full functionality and that the vendor has discontinued support for that game. It's not a free for all to open up all games. Only those that the vendor has declared end of life, defunct, abandoned, etc.
Of course the vendors want people to buy the new version of the game instead of wanting to play the one they have. That's the big reason for their objection. It's also a big reason why they take down the online servers.
This shouldn't be that big of a deal. EOL a game, the online services become public domain.
Don't buy games that require an online component unless it comes with the server and matchmaking software for you to run. The gaming industry only gets away with its shit because consumers let it.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
When the publishers and copyright holders cease to produce, market, support and profit from their games, yet there are still consumers demanding the game and those consumers will do whatever it takes to continue playing the games they love. Are the publishers and copyright holder then indirectly promoting the piracy of their own products? It's like giving a suicidal person a gun. The suicidal person makes the choice to kill himself or not, but the other person put him in that situation.
First off, I believe software should have a different copyright length. (Windows XP's copyright expires sometime after 2100. How crazy is that?) I also believe a "use it or lose it clause" should be added to copyright law. If a publisher or copyright holder ceases to publish, market, support and profit from a product, then after X number of years, that game will fall into public domain. I believe this clause should apply to all copyrights and not just software.
ESA = Entertainment Software Association
Some of us might not be gamers and yet due to the wide applications of the DMCA still thought this article looked worth clicking on.
The ESA I knew was the European Space Agency!
I won't pay for any more games/consoles. Piratebay all the way.
Don't worry, the boobus Americanus will continue to pay for this. I have no problem with draconian DMCA. It's what the people demanded. WE have the vote, we have a republic. The Republicrats represent us the way we want to be represented. Get out the vote man.
Go fuck yourself.
Be seeing you...
How do you loose a pair of cities on an industry?
Unless you're talking about DRM, in which case the users are already f***ed.
my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
I'm, you're, he's/she's/it's, we're, you're, they're
Astronest.... :(
It's not "you haven't updated it in awhile", it's "you took away a core component required for it to [fully] function"
In various cases - after less than two years - they took the servers that allowed multi-player offline. In the "good ol' days", this would have been OK, because people were still capable of hosting their own servers. These days, you can only play on "official" servers (which are now offline), so you've either lost the ability to play a fairly key component of the game, or in some cases can't play at all.
The ask is that you be allowed to either
a) Modify the game to play on non-official multiplayer servers (also reverse-engineer things to be able to host your own server)
Or, in cases where the game doesn't work at all because it requires an authentication server which no longer exists
b) Modify the game to remove the shitty DRM which doesn't allow play without authentication
The DRM is getting bad. You're even online-authentication it on games that are pretty much intended for single-play (simcity) or ports of games which are only single-player (Final Fantasy series on iPad/Android). If you have no internet connection, or the master servers are down, the game will refuse to even launch
The vast majority of sports-gamers are also "sports fans" want to play with the CURRENT roster, only a few cheap bastards who buy Madden 09 in 2012 or something go whining about the multiplayer servers going down. Even then, singleplayer and local-multiplayer still work, so their experience is the same as someone playing the old tyme pre-online Maddens
Do we really expect EA to keep the servers for each year's madden release up forever?
For whatever reason, humans (some of them at least) have this need to view the past with rose coloured glasses and then whine about everything modern. Happens with gaming just as anything else.
An objective look at gaming shows we are in an amazing golden age of gaming right now. Tons of games are being made. With that means tons of crap, of course, but plenty of good ones. What's more, basically everyone's needs are being met. Gaming isn't targeted at just one or two demographics, there is a massive variety out there. So we can have both something like Call of Duty, which is designed to appeal to a mass market, and something like Kerbal Space Program which has a much more limited audience. One does not choke out the other and everyone can find something they like.
My problem with games these days lack of time to play all the games I want. I have a big wishlist of games on Steam, and a collection of games I bought but haven't yet installed. However life intrudes and I have only so much time to spend gaming. I wish I could waste more time playing games but I can't.
Very different from my childhood where I would have to play and replay the same games over and over since I had very few.
There are a -LOT- of single player games these days. A lot fo multi player ones too, but that one exists doesn't get rid of the other. Whatever genre you like, you can find some of both.
Since you mention shooters, Wolfenstein the New Order is a single player only shooter acclaimed by critics and fans alike.
" Modifying game software may involve the creation of a derivative work, in the form of a new version of the game that will play without a server authentication check or one that connects to new matchmaking servers. It may also involve the making of intermediate copies while reverse-engineering authentication mechanisms or server communication protocols. These copies and modifications are made in order to access the functionality of lawfully acquired software." This is saying that it could entail reverse engineering, but possibly not as well. This sounds like modifying the source and recompile or making a service that mimics/mirrors the auth server or the game server. Why did this become all about hacking all of the sudden?
please... let me sleep... a little more... yay, no longer annonmyous coward.
"A given examples is Madden '09, which had its"
And nothing of value was lost.
Seriously, games should have thought of this before buying these asnine games that force you to log into some ephimeral DRM network just to let you play.
At this point I have written off almost all major game manufacturers cause of this crap. If I can't play a game offline, then I don't get that game (unless it's 90% discounted on steam, then *maybe*)
I remember being really excited about Starcraft 2, until I found out that the single-player mode is basically one big tutorial sessions, they stripped out local LAN plan, and you have to log into battlenet just to play the game. They did similar with Diablo 3. My interest instantly evaporated and I've basically written Blizzard off because of this nonsense.
EA is another fantastic example. Maxis is now a dead brand cause EA screwed things up so utterly badly. The only reason I can think of that EA is still in business, is because they've managed to tap the demographic of emotionally stunted males with self-esteem and co-dependency issues.
If you look around, we now have a new renessance of indy developers making all sorts of amazing games. There's a reason for that..... they make games without bullshit attached. I can only hope that this trend accelerates and that the existing big box publishers go bankrupt.
The kind of DMCA exception needed is one where it is perfectly legal to create a server that replicates the minimum functionality that removed when the original server was online. So for everything except MMORPG's this is probably not terribly trivial and not that different from TF2 and minecraft servers. End stop.
Where it should remain illegal:
- Running servers for profit, since in order for people to play games online, it would lack the ability to recognize pirated copies of the software.
- Running servers using the original assets, program code or other data that is transmitted to game clients that would otherwise enable piracy/cheating/hacking
- Running servers while the original game is still available (eg MMORPG's.) As there are quite a few "unofficial servers" that try to make money by depriving the original company of revenue. (See Maplestory)
What should be legal:
- If the original developer does not release the (server) software after the server is shutdown, then developers are free to create their own server provided no game assets are redistributed. That includes not redistribution of "free to download" game clients. These must be obtained from the original developer, via the original terms and conditions. If the developer removes access to the original game clients, then...
- The Original game client must not be modified. The game client assets are still copyrighted.
In a sense, the only "legal" sense to play multiplayer and MMORPG games that the servers are no longer available would be through a form of streaming game play (eg OnLive) since this is the only way the original game assets and code are not redistributed.
http://i.imgur.com/dJ1vxbb.jpg
Anyone who parrots that "golden age" industry wank (I wish I could remember which sock-puppet kicked it off a few years back) unironically clearly didn't live through the Age of Legends (Gen 3-4 with Atari/Intellivision/Odyssey/et al as Gen 1).
Well, unless when they sold the game they STATED CLEARLY that the game was not sold, but was an 18 month lease of service then YES WE DO.
Otherwise it is a violation of the contract established at the time of sale - at a minimum they owe the purchaser a percentage refund based on the possible
time the purchaser could play the game - lets say 10-20 years of hardware compatibility availability? 90% should be fair.
You see, when you sell someone an item, YOU HAVE TO DAMN WELL STAND BEHIND IT!
Imagine if you bought a house and it started falling down after 18 months... perhaps that would also just be ok? after all, the seller got what they wanted..
Or are people who want what they paid for just cheap bastards?
Still, I guess you will get your EA shill money no matter.. but then they dont pay you to be a moron do they, you do it voluntarily.
Well, unless when they sold the game they STATED CLEARLY that the game was not sold, but was an 18 month lease of service then YES WE DO.
You see, when you sell someone an item, YOU HAVE TO DAMN WELL STAND BEHIND IT!
Games aren't sold, they haven't been for a long while...they're LICENSED. Look at the back of the damn box, or the manual. And with most games the license notes clearly state the online multiplayer functionality can be discontinued at ANY time and isn't guaranteed to last forever.
Imagine if you bought a house and it started falling down after 18 months... perhaps that would also just be ok? after all, the seller got what they wanted..
Actually there are rules on that, and I do believe that it isn't the sellers responsibility, after a certain period of time. That's what the inspection is for, to catch things that need fixing. Now if something happens AFTER that, it's the new owners responsibility.
Still, I guess you will get your EA shill money no matter.. but then they dont pay you to be a moron do they, you do it voluntarily.
I actually don't play sports games. Are you an overly entitled whiny 12 year old? The reality is that software is licensed, it's that simple.
No, this is about old stuff, so they are clearly trying to protect Earth Orbit Station.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon