“Most of the world’s video games from close to 50 years of history are effectively, legally dead. A Video Games History Foundation study found you can’t buy nearly 90% of games from before 2010. Preservationists have been looking for ways to allow people to legally access gaming history, but the U.S. Copyright Office dealt them a heavy blow Friday. Feds declared that you or any researcher has no right to access old games under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA.”
So libraries are also illegal? Books, DVDs, VHS, CDS, etc. You can replace games with any of those.
They’ve been actively fighting libraries over the years, with renewed fervor in the last decade. As numerous others have pointed out before–including the article I linked–if libraries hadn’t already been such a long-standing concept for centuries, they would 100% not be allowed to come into existence nowadays. Hyper greed has poisoned every facet of modern society.
BS. Greed is a motive that has been here always. The difference is in ability. That ability lies in preventing public from organizing, crowd control. It’s been given by the Internet and computers. Because where before public would organize in their own spaces, now it’s someone else’s ground where all kinds of meddling and weird rules can exist.
What must be obscure has become apparent for those who want it.
Because of ability to process information and fulfill manipulations of worldwide scale.
That aside, the ethos of breaking rules doesn’t exist.
Some people think they can do any evil to a person who disrespects them, and surely don’t owe them what they paid for, or payment for their work, or something else. Some other people think that any obligation is lit in titanium, and whatever were the circumstances of taking it, you owe it in full, and if there’s contradiction, then the less certain obligation loses. Some people think this depends on one’s weight in society.
All these are defeated by power. The first kind - they are just miserable slaves, no honor at all, and they’ll always be manipulated to others’ goals, and will never know when to make a dignified sacrifice, but they will be sacrificed. The second kind - they think they are honorable, but of the internally contradictory net of obligations they choose those imposed by power, and ignore those countering it, and pretend to be oblivious of there being a system in their choices, they are hypocrites and the least reliable kind. The third kind - these are obedient jackals, you might get betrayed by them, but generally can safely treat them as furniture.
In some sense following rules is surrendering your own dignity and responsibility. A person responsible for themselves decides whether to follow every rule existing.
OK. Shorter - when you have a city, eventually you’ll have to demolish something old to build something new. When you have a house\apartment, eventually you’ll have to throw out some old furniture, break some walls, dispose of the garbage.
It’s similar with legal systems. Between nice good IP laws supposedly protecting creators and ability to freely communicate and exchange information, the latter is more precious. It’s our common interest to resolve the contradiction without conflict, but those people seem to think they don’t have to compromise. It doesn’t matter what they think.
You misspelled neoliberal capitalism
Libraries are clearly communist… or anarchist… either way, I hate it!
We used to rent these games from Blockbuster Video! On DVD when we had DVD burners and little to no drm! How did it suddenly not become acceptable?
Lobbying. The greedy fucks will lobby until they get their way
Physical rentals are still legal. This is only about the legality of online rom downloads.
I’m speaking mainly of the distrust against the public having access for fear that we’d abuse it and not give them a cut. We can’t have access to these things now, but we used to. Regardless of form, regardless of piracy.
It’s more of a move to restrict ownership when you make a purchase, that has a farther reach than just games. I could see this being applied to cars, houses, etc. In that you only rent a license, and don’t actually own anything. I see this as just a first step, and the logic they use to justify it doesn’t make sense.
??? There was no change. It was always illegal. This was a petition to change it to be legal and the petition was denied.
Despite it being illegal, Internet Archive has hosted and I hope will continue to host rom collections like tiny best set go.