Preservare i videogame è hacking, quindi illegale (ci dicono)

La Entertainment Software Association (abbreviata ESA, che ha fra i membri: Nintendo, Disney Interactive Studios, Microsoft e Electronic Arts) non vuole che i vecchi videogame vengano modificati in modo da mantenerli funzionanti — impedendone quindi anche la preservazione.

Dalla Electronic Frontier Foundation:

They say that modifying games to connect to a new server (or to avoid contacting a server at all) after publisher support ends—letting people continue to play the games they paid for—will destroy the video game industry. They say it would “undermine the fundamental copyright principles on which our copyright laws are based.” […]

It’s a serious problem for archives like the Internet Archive, museums like Oakland, California’s Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment, and researchers who study video games as a cultural and historical medium. Thanks to server shutdowns, and legal uncertainty created by Section 1201, their objects of study and preservation may be reduced to the digital equivalent of crumbling papyrus in as little as a year. That’s why an exemption from the Copyright Office is needed.