On October 25, the US Copyright Office denied the invocation in exemption of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to support the preservation of games legally.
The DMCA would allow the sharing of digital access to preserved games where historians and researchers can look for digital games through emulators. The Video Game History Foundation also claimed that nearly 80% of games released in the US before 2010 are out of print. Those games are only legally preserved via excess prices and the retro gaming market.
According to the VGHF statement:
“For the past three years, the Video Game History Foundation has been supporting with the Software Preservation Network (SPN) on a petition to allow libraries and archives to remotely share digital access to out-of-print video games in their collections.
“Under the current anti-circumvention rules in Section 1201 of the DMCA, libraries and archives are unable to break copy protection on games in order to make them remotely accessible to researchers.”
In response to the supporters, The US Copyright Office exclaimed that they did not reveal that removing the single-user permit and off-premises access would lead to “non-infringing.” The government added that it will raise the market risk because of the fame of legacy video games.
Entertainment Software Association and other industry lobby groups stated that the preserved games are used for recreational purposes that might be riskier.
Unfortunately, the VGHF is unhappy with the results after struggles of three years. VGHF founder and director Frank Cifaldi posted on X (formerly Twitter), “This fails the needs of citizens in favor of a weak sauce argument from the industry, and it’s disappointing.”
