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[Giard]

There was a similar thread last year, and Stumpokapow taught me that pretty much 99.9999% of all games are still easily found...if you have the money. There are tons of DOS games available on eBay.

They should make old games more accessible, certainly, but if you want, you CAN get old games.

 

[aeolist]

There are no gamers that work in libraries or at a university?

Not sure what your point is here. Gamers aren't necessarily going to have the technical expertise necessary to do this, they'd have to be gamers with cracking and coding skills meaning they're more likely to get a job at some kind of software company. And even if there are gamers with the requisite skills working at some kind of library or university do you really think they'd have the budget to pay them to do nothing for years but develop a perfect emulator in order to preserve old console games?

They'd have to do it on their free time and release it online which would make them pirates anyway in the eyes of the law.

 

[Forkball]

That was/is a major problem of video games: the inability to play older games. You can buy movies made a hundred years ago in stores, but if you want a game that was made ten years ago, you have to go on some Lord of the Rings-esque journey. Companies are doing a good job of putting older titles on digital distribution platforms, but there are times when it takes a copious amount of effort to legally play a title so people just resort to piracy *coughearthboundcough*

 

[Bing147]

You guys are forgetting or ignoring the recent trend of reselling old games digitally.

So is ok to pirate super mario 3 when nintendo is still selling it?

Or even better how 5-6 years ago. When they were not selling it. Just because you thought its old enough that it was ok to pirate? Even though time proved other wise.

If we were following the original intent of copyright law then absolutely this is okay. They had their chance to make a profit on it and did so. I already made a point using the film His Girl Friday as a point. It fell into public domain but the studio who produced it is still able to make a profit, they just have to continue working to do so and make a better version of it than the public can. That's okay, after a certain point if the public can do it better they should be able to.

 

[KevinCow]

And, really, tying piracy to some noble cause like historical archiving is just another attempt to justify the behavior.

Do you think you could let go of this assumption that anyone who agrees with the OP is just an evil pirate trying to justify his ways for just a few minutes, and then try reading the OP and posts that agree with it again?

I don't pirate, I doubt charlequin does, and I'm sure most of the people agreeing with the OP are the same. Nobody's arguing that torrenting the latest Call of Duty is a noble endeavor. Read this thread without your preconception that we're pirates who are just trying to justify our behavior, and maybe you'll understand what we're actually talking about.

 

[Des0lar]

There was a similar thread last year, and Stumpokapow taught me that pretty much 99.9999% of all games are still easily found...if you have the money. There are tons of DOS games available on eBay.

They should make old games more accessible, certainly, but if you want, you CAN get old games.

But it's not only about that you "can" get them. Someone needs to preserve them too. Can I still play my Mario64 on N64 in 50 years. Probably not. So either I play it on Virtual Console or I have to download it in case Nintendo goes bancrupt and their IPs are all lost.

 

[MC Safety]

Sorry, but tell me how someone other than the ROM modders would preserve something like a cartridge based game of which the source code was lost.

Also why should it be possible for publishers to release videos to the Internet (e.g.) Youtube and then say that I am not allowed to view this because I live in another country. I am sorry but no explanation can justify that imo. Why do you put it there in the first place if you don't want people to see it. They are hurting their own business by not adapting to the internet. Why can't I legally purchase a series from the publisher? Why can't I watch a DVD that I bought in the US on my European DVD player? Why have lost far too many consumer rights in that regard all because of copyright laws. I don't like this one bit. And I don't like that pirates more often than not get the better product for free than what I have bought with my money.

I understand the questions you pose, but that does not justify piracy. Nor does your desire to have everything you want in the form you want it.

I think the discussion of copyright reform would be beneficial. Beyond that, I have no interest in answering your latest round of "But what about ...?" Rest assured, as someone who has created content he has no desire to see pirated, my answers will not change.

I don't pirate, I doubt charlequin does, and I'm sure most of the people agreeing with the OP are the same. Nobody's arguing that torrenting the latest Call of Duty is a noble endeavor. Read this thread without your preconception that we're pirates who are just trying to justify our behavior, and maybe you'll understand what we're actually talking about.

I'm not sure I called anyone a pirate here. And why do you assume I don't understand what you're talking about?

 

[charlequin]

Gotta extract that rent.

Troo dat.

For example, we muddle along quite nicely now despite not having the complete works of Heraclitus.

is your argument seriously "who gives a shit about culture anyway, fuck culture"

I think people's lives are definitely worse off in aggregate for not having the complete works of Heraclitus, the full text of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the complete cut of Metropolis (at least until it was recently restored!), the full run of the first ten series of Doctor Who. Knock out the early years of film or the Baroque period of music or impressionist painting and you leave a world where the expression of one of humanity's unique talents is immeasurably lessened.

And all for... what? So a content aggregate corporation can make a few extra bucks of of it in the present? What an awful philosophy.

I hate to throw a huge wrench into this "piracy is good!" thread, but the Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes it legal for nonprofit libraries and archive institutions to make digital copies.

Wrong. The DMCA creates a system for creating explicit Fair Use exemptions for the anti-circumvention portion of the DMCA, all of which need to be renewed on a three-year basis and have an exceedingly narrow application. In 2003, there were two specific exemptions added for archival purposes, but one of them (that allowed the archival of software on obsolete hardware and storage formats) was not extended in 2010 and therefore no longer applies.

I doubt anybody making the copies of these games is doing it specifically for these historical purposes.

There are definitely some people. byuu (the creator of bsnes), for example, has a project to gather documentation and hardware information, scans of packaging and labeling, etc. for every SNES cartridge ever released. That inherently involves a violation of technical copyright law, but clearly for straightforward archival purposes.

And I was just pointing out that "piracy isn't theft" is a big mantra for people who don't want to pay for stuff.

Also people who prefer to discuss things in a factual way rather than resorting to misleading emotional arguments!

 

[aeolist]

If we were following the original intent of copyright law then absolutely this is okay. They had their chance to make a profit on it and did so. I already made a point using the film His Girl Friday as a point. It fell into public domain but the studio who produced it is still able to make a profit, they just have to continue working to do so and make a better version of it than the public can. That's okay, after a certain point if the public can do it better they should be able to.

Or like any of thousands of public domain books that people still buy. You can download the Project Gutenberg version for free but people still buy retail versions because of the translation efforts or quality printing and binding. It forces companies to put effort into releases.

Funny that media companies constantly complain about piracy by saying that they can't compete with free when book publishers have been doing it for decades.

 

[Des0lar]

I understand the questions you pose, but that does not justify piracy. Nor does your desire to have everything you want in the form you want it.

I think the discussion of copyright reform would be beneficial. Beyond that, I have no interest in answering your latest round of "But what about ...?" Rest assured, as someone who has created content he has no desire to see pirated, my answers will not change.

You would rather your content is destroyed than preserved even if it is by illegal means? Really?

I mean I haven't done anything in that regard, but if I were to write a book I would rather people download it for free after the copyright runs out than someone holding to it forever, so that it never sees a rerelease.

 

[aeolist]

ITT people who understand some of the complexities of the real world argue with moral absolutists who think that certain acts are morally wrong just because they're illegal.

 

[Postman]

You keep ignoring the main point of this thread because your eyes are so fixed on the word piracy.

When the IP is in limbo, when a publisher leaves the business, what to do with the stuff? If it wasn't for uploaders people would never be able to play it.
Super Mario Bros. 3 is still owned by Nintendo and Nintendo has a service called virtual console so nobody here is arguing that you should pirate SMB3.
But what about GoldenEye, what about the countless games that are forgotten right in this moment? What about all the cartridge games that will be forgotten and unusable. There needs to be at least someone that uploads this stuff so that it doesn't get lost.



Show me a library that employs people to circumvent DRM in games to make them archivable. Or people that make ROMs of old cartridge games. Please do it.

Yeah but 5 years ago there was no virtual console and t here were sites to easily get roms for nes games. Now it is a big source of revenue for some game companies.


As far as legitimate archiving goes. There has to be rules set up and permission given. Maybe not even the compiled file itself but the source code. My point on this is that just because SOME PERSON thinks its ok to do does not really make it ok.

If going forward nintendo agrees to give a university a copy of all its games from here on out or agree to catalog its old games. Then yes that would be good.

Old games from companies out of business would have to be decided and agreed on by a committee dedicated to preserving OLD NON IP OWNED games not by some guy in his basement.

 

[Theonik]

You guys are forgetting or ignoring the recent trend of reselling old games digitally.

So is ok to pirate super mario 3 when nintendo is still selling it?

Or even better how 5-6 years ago. When they were not selling it. Just because you thought its old enough that it was ok to pirate? Even though time proved other wise.

I don't think these concepts are mutually exclusive, even a lot of these games can only be resold digitally today because of pirates archiving them especially with arcade releases. For example. As for whether it is OK to pirate these games? This is a really difficult question to answer, I don't think people here are really trying to open that can of worms, the point being made is about the necessity of piracy in the preservation of these games, not whether it is morally right to pirate in general. Rationally one could even acknowledge that the conclusion to that question would be meaningless because realistically there will always be people who don't care and are willing to pirate games for whatever justification they give to their own actions.
Edit: But, also in theory if the creators were able to make a profit with those old properties then yes rationally it should be OK to pirate them as the purpose with which the copyright on these properties were granted has be fulfilled. It is equally OK for Nintendo to sell that software in VC, the benefit they could then offer would be convenience.

 

[Dreamwriter]

Not sure what your point is here. Gamers aren't necessarily going to have the technical expertise necessary to do this, they'd have to be gamers with cracking and coding skills meaning they're more likely to get a job at some kind of software company. And even if there are gamers with the requisite skills working at some kind of library or university do you really think they'd have the budget to pay them to do nothing for years but develop a perfect emulator in order to preserve old console games?

They'd have to do it on their free time and release it online which would make them pirates anyway in the eyes of the law.

No, they would not have to release it online, that's not the point of a historical archive. Nor would anyone have to create emulators, because the hardware still exists and is functional, even for the oldest computers and game consoles. The law isn't about playing games in your home, it's about creating historical archives.

But if you want an example of this kind of thing, check out M.A.M.E - it wasn't created as some piracy tool, M.A.M.E. was specifically created as a tool for preserving history. This is why they don't create shortcuts just to get a game to run, they only care about accurately recreating the arcade machine hardware in a digital format. M.A.M.E.'s creators are not happy about the use their emulator has been put to, and have many rules in their TOS about how it is to be used. So yes there are people who would create emulators to preserve history.

Your argument seems to be, since nobody you know of is creating an archive, then it's not possible. Which is an odd argument...

 

[Strummerjones]

I think I'll just leave this link here.

MAME is the perfect example of the kind of situation the article talks about. There are all kinds of systems emulated therein with either copy protection or outright "suicide" tamperproof hardware that ensure the games would be lost forever with time (and many already are). A large number of those games were only ever emulated by analyzing the work of professional bootleggers, which provided crucial clues as to get the games playable.

As evidenced from the link above, even big name companies lack the source code or even staff with the skills needed to reverse engineer those kind of old games in any kind of financially viable manner. If it was left to them huge amounts of gaming history would be lost for good. Even today we get technical support recommending players to download no cd cracks - created with the original intention of letting pirates play for free - as the official way to play otherwise incompatible games from the recent past due to botched DRM. While piracy of recent titles is nothing to condone, the labours of a previous generation's piracy can be a real boon for publishers looking to make money.

 

[TheExodu5]

ITT people who understand some of the complexities of the real world argue with moral absolutists who think that certain acts are morally wrong just because they're illegal.

Just like every piracy thread. It always boils down to people saying "but piracy is wrong! Stop trying to rationalize it!" without wanting to take a look at the greater complexities involved.

I'm surprised we haven't even gotten to "piracy is stealing!", "No, it's copyright infringement!" arguments yet.

Looking at piracy from a moral standpoint is fruitless.

 

[jim-jam bongs]

Great article. It's something I've been thinking about a bit lately as I go through and rip ISOs of my old retail games so I don't have to keep an optical drive in my gaming PC.

I understand the questions you pose, but that does not justify piracy. Nor does your desire to have everything you want in the form you want it.

The thing is, nobody is trying to justify piracy because this kind of piracy is already justifiable. We're questioning whether it's even appropriate to describe it as piracy.

 

[Postman]

One or 2 good instances does not make it RIGHT. I am sure alot of other companies who have the exact opposite to say about mame.

 

[charlequin]

There are no gamers that work in libraries or at a university?

In literally 99+% of cases where a legitimate organization archives or cracks something for a nominally legal use, they use a tool developed by a pirate to do so. If libraries were going to archive DRM-free copies of software for future preservation, they'd be doing so with legally-mandated DRM-free copies provided by the copyright holders for archival if those were available -- but since they aren't, they'd either not be doing it or they'd be doing it by downloading warez-scene cracks.

 

[Postman]

In literally 99+% of cases where a legitimate organization archives or cracks something for a nominally legal use, they use a tool developed by a pirate to do so. If libraries were going to archive DRM-free copies of software for future preservation, they'd be doing so with legally-mandated DRM-free copies provided by the copyright holders for archival if those were available -- but since they aren't, they'd either not be doing it or they'd be doing it by downloading warez-scene cracks.

I was thinking more of the ability to catalog legitimately. not hack game code. see my post above.

 

[TheExodu5]

I was thinking more of the ability to catalog legitimately. not hack game code. see my post above.

And how do you catalog legitimately?

 

[aeolist]

In literally 99+% of cases where a legitimate organization archives or cracks something for a nominally legal use, they use a tool developed by a pirate to do so. If libraries were going to archive DRM-free copies of software for future preservation, they'd be doing so with legally-mandated DRM-free copies provided by the copyright holders for archival if those were available -- but since they aren't, they'd either not be doing it or they'd be doing it by downloading warez-scene cracks.

Good example: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...nts-theater-of-the-absurd-at-dmca-hearing.ars

Teachers want to be able to rip DVDs and extract clips to use in the classroom for educational purposes. To do this they would need to use tools that crack CSS which is the DVD encryption standard. It's really old and the programs needed to do so are widely available online. Nobody is going to develop their own software in-house just for one or two uses, they're going to get something developed by "pirates".

Response to this request from media companies? They should play a DVD on a TV and record the clip they want with a camcorder.

 

[jim-jam bongs]

Postman you appear to actually agree with the article but haven't yet realised that fact. The point is that, right now, there is no legitimate way to archive copy-protected software for historical purposes, hence archiving requires piracy and circumvention.

 

[AcceptableGhost]

Honestly this is probably one of the best things about the current state of the internet. Archiving is taken out of the hands of the maker and put into the hands of the public. Companies don't give a shit about archiving their shit, they are just there to make money (which is fine). Archiving is put into the hands of people who actually care. I have seen archivist communities - and they do exist. There are plenty of projects out there with people trying to protect old system's catalogs.

People who make cracks for games are doing gods work honestly - eventually the only way to be able to play your PC game most likely will be to crack it yourself. Will Ubisoft's Assasin's Creed II server be up forever? Will they actually take the time to release an offline version of it?

Though obviously, if you can purchase a product in a legal way, that is the way to do it no doubt. That said, I don't look down on anyone who would pirate an out-of-print product. In this day and age (with DD) - no responsible company should let their backlog go "out of print".

 

[Des0lar]

If going forward nintendo agrees to give a university a copy of all its games from here on out or agree to catalog its old games. Then yes that would be good.

Old games from companies out of business would have to be decided and agreed on by a committee dedicated to preserving OLD NON IP OWNED games not by some guy in his basement.

Sounds all fine and dandy in theory but nobody does this. And there won't be a commitee to decide what to do with IPs that are lost in limbo for the next 20 years. Until then there will be lots of stuff lost.

 

[Postman]

And how do you catalog legitimately?

See my post above. Just having people declare they are cataloging through piracy is not how to do it. you need organization, rules, hearings for old non owned ip ... ect

Everything else is just excuses.

 

[Postman]

Sounds all fine and dandy in theory but nobody does this. And there won't be a commitee to decide what to do with IPs that are lost in limbo for the next 20 years. Until then there will be lots of stuff lost.

So that makes you entitled to pirate it?

 

[TheExodu5]

See my post above. Just having people declare they are cataloging through piracy is not how to do it. you need organization, rules, hearings for old non owned ip ... ect

And how do you propose those come to fruition? Do you think software companies are going to allow these organizations unrestricted access to their unencrypted software?

You're living in a fantasy world.

 

[jim-jam bongs]

See my post above. Just having people declare they are cataloging through piracy is not how to do it. you need organization, rules, hearings for old non owned ip ... ect

Everything else is just excuses.

:lol

Holy shit

 

[kinoki]

The only reason we have so many texts preserved from the middle ages is because there were tons of monks writing texts over and over making numerous copies of the same text. The only reason we have a Gilgamesh-epic to read is because it was used as a writing exercise in ancient times.

If we don't copy and copy alot (and I mean a huge lot) we won't be so lucky as we were with the dead sea scrolls. Copyright laws be damned.

 

[KevinCow]

Postman, I'm curious how absolute you are in your viewpoint. Would it ever be okay to download something for free, without the permission of the original creator?

Would it be okay 10 years from now? 20? 50? 100? 500? 1000?

In the year 5012, do you still think it would be horrible and illegal and wrong for someone to download a copy of Super Mario Bros. without Nintendo's permission?

 

[Tain]

Without MAME we wouldn't have Taito Memories. We wouldn't have decent ports of a ton of great games. The only way to play a number of games would be to track down a PCB, which is already becoming harder and harder to do for more and more games. In twenty years, for many of the games, it could very well be impossible. These MAME rom catalogs showed up at the right time.

I don't understand how anybody could be fine with the original versions of Rastan, Bubble Bobble, and The New Zealand Story not being preserved and eventually ceasing to exist. That's serious "I don't give a shit about video games at all" territory.

Relying on companies to preserve what they think needs to be preserved is ridiculous.

 

[TheExodu5]

Just like every piracy thread. It always boils down to people saying "but piracy is wrong! Stop trying to rationalize it!" without wanting to take a look at the greater complexities involved.

Case in point.

One or 2 good instances does not make it RIGHT. I am sure alot of other companies who have the exact opposite to say about mame.

See my post above. Just having people declare they are cataloging through piracy is not how to do it. you need organization, rules, hearings for old non owned ip ... ect

Everything else is just excuses.

So that makes you entitled to pirate it?

 

[aeolist]

Sounds all fine and dandy in theory but nobody does this. And there won't be a commitee to decide what to do with IPs that are lost in limbo for the next 20 years. Until then there will be lots of stuff lost.

The law and content industries are bad at dealing with stuff like this: http://www.publicknowledge.org/blog/google-books-rejection-highlights-need-orphan

Another example from another industry: There's a lot of books out there that only exist in paper form and don't have clear IP ownership. Nobody is able to sell these works in physical or digital form, which means that they're not getting converted to any kind of permanently preservable archive since there's no financial incentive and no library or university has the budget for a massive book-scanning project.

Google's trying to tackle this and even though there's a lot of questionable legality involved it's a damn good thing too.

 

[TheExodu5]

Hell, just look at Star Wars if you want an example of what can happen when the original work is not preserved. The movie in its original form basically doesn't exist anymore, aside from a few collector's who (illegally) own early screening reels. Thankfully there are (illegal) non Lucas sanctioned projects dedicated to preserving it as best as possible.

 

[Postman]

The only reason we have so many texts preserved from the middle ages is because there were tons of monks writing texts over and over making numerous copies of the same text. The only reason we have a Gilgamesh-epic to read is because it was used as a writing exercise in ancient times.

If we don't copy and copy alot (and I mean a huge lot) we won't be so lucky as we were with the dead sea scrolls. Copyright laws be damned.

You are comparing something made a thousand years ago that was never sold for profit to something made 10 -20 years ago which was made for the sole purpose of making money?

 

[jim-jam bongs]

Relying on companies to preserve what they think needs to be preserved is ridiculous.

Haven't you been paying attention? Postman is going to convene the first sitting of the International Committee for the Preservation of Video Games to make the tough decisions.

 

[aeolist]

See my post above. Just having people declare they are cataloging through piracy is not how to do it. you need organization, rules, hearings for old non owned ip ... ect

Everything else is just excuses.

Laws change over time as people decide that they no longer apply or are not morally good. Part of this process involves people doing illegal things for good reasons and generating discussion about the subject.

 

[Des0lar]

And how do you propose those come to fruition? Do you think software companies are going to allow these organizations unrestricted access to their unencrypted software?

You're living in a fantasy world.

Sorry Postman but yes, I agree with Exodus. You're living in a fantasy world where somehow the big organisations will solve all the problems for us.

They won't. Not in the forseeable future because they don't care. You have an absolute view on piracy that makes it impossible to argue with you because you can't see the benefits.

What do you say to the Super Meat Boy devs who said they were glad that their game was the most pirated in time of release? They were glad because it was free advertising.
Piracy is not as black and white as it is in your mind.

You are comparing something made a thousand years ago that was never sold for profit to something made 10 -20 years ago which was made for the sole purpose of making money?

I am downloading complete books right now as we speak on my phone for free. And those are books that were sold for profit once.

 

[TheExodu5]

You are comparing something made a thousand years ago that was never sold for profit to something made 10 -20 years ago which was made for the sole purpose of making money?

How do you know it wasn't created for profit? There was surely some motivation behind creating the original works.

 

[Tain]

Haven't you been paying attention? Postman is going to convene the first sitting of the International Committee for the Preservation of Video Games to make the tough decisions.

That would surely be a reliable bunch that would make no disagreeable decisions!

 

[Postman]

Haven't you been paying attention? Postman is going to convene the first sitting of the International Committee for the Preservation of Video Games to make the tough decisions.

You are not getting the real argument here. You guys are forcing your own opinion on the companies who made/ own these games because YOU think it should be done.

It does not work that way.

Nintendo has a copy/ back up of every game they have ever made. They can and do resell them, and they do have the right to stop anyone who infringes on their IP.

You do no have the right to make illegal back ups of what they own for any reason. You do not have to the right to make illegal back ups of anything that has not been released for public domain for any reason.

If you think it is so important you would go through the proper channels get plan written up and have it agreed on by all participants and the state.

If nintendo did not want o be a part of that then you would be shit out of luck. at least until one day if they were out of business for 10 years and never sold off their Ips.

I hope that kind of paints the picture i am trying to convey.

 

[jim-jam bongs]

Oh everyone is getting your argument, Postman old chap. I'd hesitate to call it "the real argument" however.

 

[aeolist]

You are not getting the real argument here. You guys are forcing your own opinion on the companies who made/ own these games because YOU think it should be done.

It does not work that way.

Nintendo has a copy/ back up of every game they have ever made. They can and do resell them, and they do have the right to stop anyone who infringes on their IP.

You do no have the right to make illegal back ups of what they own for any reason. You do not have to the right to make illegal back ups of anything that has not been released for public domain for any reason.

If you think it is so important you would go through the proper channels get plan written up and have it agreed on by all participants and the state.

If nintendo did not want o be a part of that then you would be shit out of luck. at least until one day if they were out of business for 10 years and never sold off their Ips.

I hope that kind of paints the picture i am trying to convey.

You are missing the point of copyright law (in the US anyway, I don't know much about other jurisdictions but for the time being let's just talk about America).

The existence of copyright was written into the constitution with very specific language. The ultimate point is to encourage producers of content to make new cultural works since this benefits society as a whole.

The specific language involved basically says that copyright is not an inherent right, it's a temporary monopoly granted by the state to the author in order to see that they get paid for their work. After a brief time the work no longer belongs to them and it can be reproduced and sold, given away, or changed and expanded on by anyone with the time, money, or inclination to do so.

Going by what it says in the Constitution, if content creators make enough money to survive and produce more works then copyright has worked as intended and the public has upheld their side of the bargain. It was never supposed to be a permanent monopoly over ideas that a corporation could survive on indefinitely after the original author is long dead. Lobbying money has perverted the fundamental idea of copyright in this country and the public needs to push back.

 

[Utako]

I think it is a good and righteous thing that one can hypothetically download every NES, SNES, Genesis, Game Boy, and N64 game ever made in every region in a matter of minutes to hours.

Say what you will about criminal activity, but placing enormous swaths of culture all within the means of nearly everyone makes society richer and individuals better.

 

[charlequin]

You are not getting the real argument here. You guys are forcing your own opinion on the companies who made/ own these games because YOU think it should be done.

Yes, because as citizens, copyright-holding corporations do so only at our granted allowance. The correct order of things is for the needs of the general populace to dictate copyright law and for holders of copyrights to accept the limited protections they are given. Inasmuch as copyright-holders are now trying to assert an absolute moral law over their works, it is clear that the system is imbalanced and in dire need of drastic reform (largely at the expense of those currently invested in copyright.)

 

[XOMTOR]

No university or library is going to have the expertise, time, or budget to circumvent the DRM on the original media or code a near-perfect emulator for old hardware.

Pirates do all of this for free in their own time, and this facilitates archiving and preservation. They don't do it for those reasons but it's a beneficial side-effect of piracy. That's the whole point of the OP.

Good point. Using my example of NOLF earlier, I just did some searching and funnily enough, it appears that there's a "pirated" copy of these abandonware titles where someone has gone through the trouble of writing a custom installer that allows both NOLFs to be easily installed straight to Win7 64.

So, it appears that some filthy "pirate" has done what the IP holder won't. I won't go into the moral implications of that but if you knew how much of a PITA it was to get NOLF1 running off the original disk....ugh. No average Joe is going to be able to get NOLF running on a Win7 machine after purchasing the used disk off eBay.

 

[aeolist]

Good point. Using my example of NOLF earlier, I just did some searching and funnily enough, it appears that there's a "pirated" copy of these abandonware titles where someone has gone through the trouble of writing a custom installer that allows both NOLFs to be easily installed straight to Win7 64.

So, it appears that some filthy "pirate" has done what the IP holder won't. I won't go into the moral implications of that but if you knew how much of a PITA it was to get NOLF1 running off the original disk....ugh. No average Joe is going to be able to get NOLF running on a Win7 machine after purchasing the used disk off eBay.

And under a sane copyright regime other companies or the original publisher would still be free to make money from the games, they'd just have to compete with free. That means making it simpler to get and install, fixing glitches, improving graphics, adding content, etc. Any third parties who went into this kind of business wouldn't have to pay licensing fees which would make them more competitive and more likely to be profitable and self-sustaining. The community would keep everyone honest, establish a base level of quality, and ensure that games which aren't considered to be profitable re-releases stay in circulation.

Consumers win and companies sell more units.

 

[AzureNightmare]

The article is completely correct, the problem is most entertainment companies don't subscribe to such long term philosophies and trains of thought. They only care about the here and now and the short term future as far as profits go, and if they feel they can grind even one more penny out of you for a slightly inferior product at a higher price, they're gonna go for it and make sure their financial interests are protected, no matter what the long term ramifications of such draconian policies are. This is why we have to win, why we have to beat the MPAA, RIAA, and ESA back constantly. We cannot allow them to just do as they please, lest we risk losing priceless parts of our history.

 

[Fredrik]

I honestly don't think the developer care that their game gets pirated 5 or so years after it's release. Nobody is buying it new at that point anyway. The problem is that games are being pirated on day 1.

Anyway, instead of focusing on saving a game from being deleted from history by pirating the game - what about focusing on saving a developer from closing down by buying the game?