Re:Nintendo's Wii U and 3DS stores closing means game over f...
by xp84 on Friday March 24, 2023 @03:23PM
(#35294180)
I'm sympathetic to this, I really am. But this has always been the case for IP, even in the analog era. If you carefully traced a painting to make duplicates, or re-typeset a book so you could make copies (say, a university that wanted to provide cheap textbooks for the whole student body), that was always in breach of copyright law.
The only thing that's changed is how easy it is to actually make the copies. It used to be a considerable to super-unfeasible amount of work for most of the things that were protected by copyright, and now it's laughably easy for almost every work.
From an ethics point of view that change alone isn't the justification we need for making a change. I think perhaps exceptions that honor the aim of preservation of culture, while still allowing IP-based business models to work, would be more defensible.
Quick example law: When any form of DRM is used in a product that is 'sold' (licensed) to the public, the company must provide to the Library of Congress an unencumbered copy of the software which will automatically be made publicly available after a fixed embargo of 15 years. This applies to both "games" and also to the firmware, so that the games can be played. A console, beginning 15 years after its launch, must be able to be made user-flashable to accept non-DRM software. (The means to do this would be required at the launch of the device, to avoid businesses dissolving before the 15 years elapses)
The only thing that's changed is how easy it is to actually make the copies. It used to be a considerable to super-unfeasible amount of work for most of the things that were protected by copyright, and now it's laughably easy for almost every work.
From an ethics point of view that change alone isn't the justification we need for making a change. I think perhaps exceptions that honor the aim of preservation of culture, while still allowing IP-based business models to work, would be more defensible.
Quick example law: When any form of DRM is used in a product that is 'sold' (licensed) to the public, the company must provide to the Library of Congress an unencumbered copy of the software which will automatically be made publicly available after a fixed embargo of 15 years. This applies to both "games" and also to the firmware, so that the games can be played. A console, beginning 15 years after its launch, must be able to be made user-flashable to accept non-DRM software. (The means to do this would be required at the launch of the device, to avoid businesses dissolving before the 15 years elapses)