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Good Idea: As Video Game Preservation Often Falls To Fan Groups, Release Every Game's Source Code

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When it comes to the video game industry, there has been some recent recognition that copyright laws and the ways that publishers utilize them have hampered the ability to preserve this sort of art. In the olden days of a decade or so ago, the challenges around preserving video games centered around both the publisher's unwillingness to allow a group access to source code to preserve a game and the deterioration of physical game media. But in these modern times, this has changed. Now, the challenges are the publisher copyright question... and that same publisher's ability to simply stop supporting the online resources modern games and platforms require to run. Given the ongoing war on emulators by the likes of Nintendo and a rather insane industry stance that preservation is trumped by copyright concerns, there is a very real risk of losing the ability to preserve video game history at all.Recent rumors that Sony is going to shut down online stores for a bunch of old hardware, has thrown the question of what happens to digital purchases in sharp relief.

Yesterday, TheGamer reported that Sony has plans to shut down the online PS3, PS Vita, and PSP stores that service those older consoles. While this has yet to be confirmed, and Sony has not responded to Kotaku’s request for comment, the internet discourse around this potentially troubling news immediately began to swirl.If these stores go away, PS3, PS Vita, and PSP players will be unable to purchase new digital games. While there aren’t yet concrete details about what, if anything, is happening, the rumors have many PlayStation gamers understandably worried about the continued viability of their digital purchases.
Add to all of that the question of game preservation. With purchases being digital and potentially just going away at Sony's whim, and with source code locked up by developers and publishers... what happens to antiquated PlayStation games when the cord is pulled? How would a museum or interest group preserve these games? How will future generations be able to enjoy and participate in this art?The answer, of course, is piracy.
This kind of real preservation is rarely done by corporations. Instead, communities form around games and keep them alive for years beyond their normal commercial lifespans. These people are doing some impressive things. Look at the continued work on the unofficial but fantastic PC port of Super Mario 64. Or just a few days ago, The Hidden Palace uploaded over 700 PlayStation 2 game prototypes and dev builds, uncovering and preserving a huge bit of game history in one fell swoop.Meanwhile, publishers like Nintendo use lawyers to crack down on the availability of emulator-playable ROMs for games that are no longer sold. Nintendo even explicitly limits how long it will sell certain games. None of this helps preserve these works. In fact, it actively hurts efforts to do so.
And so the public's interest in video game preservation sits on a single train track, with the copyright enforcement train hurtling towards it from one direction and publishers' decisions to stop supporting the online resources needed for digital purchases from the other. The result, if left alone, will be a train wreck, at least as far as the public interest is concerned.So, what's the fix? Well, as per usual, the fix would be for game developers and publishers to give up just a bit of control over their products in a way that would allow preservation to occur.
Release all games on PC, preferably alongside their source code. Having PC game releases with source code would make certain aspects of game preservation much easier, and could allow even the oldest games to survive for decades to come. It frees games from being tied to one single platform or the whims of whatever capitalist entity published it.This isn’t a wild, unproven theory. One of the most-ported and played classic games is the original Doom. id Software released its source code back in 1997, only four years after Doom’s launch. Since then fans have created numerous “source ports” of the game, to the point that Doom’s now playable on almost any device with a screen.As a result, Doom has also stayed relevant. That’s important, because while the source ports have made it extremely easy to play Doom without buying it (all it takes is a quick search to find the necessary content files) that hasn’t hurt the IP. I’d argue the opposite! One possible reason Doom is still around—and we just got a big DLC expansion for the series’ latest game, Doom Eternal—is people still give a shit about Doom in 2021. And people still give a shit because it’s incredibly easy to play Doom. It’s only a few clicks away and its enthusiastic community has taken its source code in directions id never imagined.
This doesn't directly solve the PlayStation problem, of course, though there are avenues to explore there as well. But it's at least a start towards giving the public the tools to do the game preservation themselves, since developers and publishers often are incapable or unwilling to do it. And, as the Kotaku post notes, this should be seen not as some threat to the gaming industry, but a boon. Doom is the perfect example as to why.But, regardless, it is well past time that we do something about this. It is not tenable that we lose what is now a couple decades worth of art preservation just because it's being sacrificed at the copyright altar.

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posted at: 12:00am on 30-Mar-2021
path: /Policy | permalink | edit (requires password)

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Drone Operator Sues North Carolina Over Its First Amendment-Violating Surveyor Licensing Laws

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It's always a problem when a private citizen starts horning in on the government's racket. The government has plenty of rackets and likes them to stay in their possession, undisturbed and unthreatened.When the government feels threatened, it starts making threats. And, since it has almost all the power, its threats usually work. But sometimes it gets sued. That's what's happening here: a government regulatory body has decided the incumbent interests it has propped up for years is more important than little things like the First Amendment.A drone operator in North Carolina is suing the state because it claims he can't fly drones over land and take pictures without the proper license. It's not a commercial drone operator license. (He has that.) It's a license that basically says the government has given him permission to photograph the land underneath the drones his company operates. (h/t Techdirt reader Vidiot)Here's the impetus of the lawsuit being brought by photographer Michael Jones, as summarized by Miriam McNabb of Drone Life:

Hiring a surveyor is an expensive business, but necessary if you want to establish legal property lines. What if you just want to see what your property looks like, or create a visual map of your property or work place in order to help make decisions about new development or see what type of topography you have? While previously, you may have had to hire surveyors to make a map, now that information is readily available by using aerial images. Commonly available commercial drone software is designed to do exactly this: creating orthomosaic maps and 3D images.Surveyors apparently don’t like the competition. In North Carolina, they’re trying to push drone operators out of business. “…drone entrepreneurs on the cutting edge are finding a very old industry standing in the way: land surveying. In North Carolina, the Board of Examiners for Engineers and Surveyors [the NC Board] sends warnings to drone operators saying that certain photography amounts to surveying without a license and threatens them with possible criminal prosecution.”
Michael Jones is being represented by the Institute for Justice. His lawsuit [PDF] claims that, first of all, he's not actually engaging in the land surveying that falls under the control of the North Carolina Board of Examiners. Or, at least, he shouldn't be, but the Board has engaged in some weird form of eminent domain, rolling up every possible definition of aerial drone photography and converting it into something it can sell licenses to engage in.
In North Carolina... drone start-ups have found themselves targeted by a centuries-old profession: land surveyors. As most people would understand it, “land surveying” involves establishing legal boundaries between tracts of land. Yet the North Carolina Board of Examiners for Engineers and Surveyors (Board) takes a far more aggressive view. According to the Board, capturing and disseminating data about the dimensions or elevations of land—or the size of objects on land—requires a full-blown land-surveyor license. Drawing even rough approximations of property lines on images requires a land-surveyor license. Even stitching aerial photos together using orthomosaic software requires a land-surveyor license.
So, the stuff many wouldn't associate with the licensed act of surveying is considered subject to Board rules and regulations. The Board's aggression manifested itself with an investigation of Jones' company, 360 Virtual Drone Services. The Board claimed Jones was engaging in unlicensed land surveying. But Jones has never presented himself as a "surveyor," nor has he offered surveying services to anyone. All he has done is take photos of land from the air at the request of customers. That didn't stop the Board from threatening him with civil and criminal "consequences" unless he was willing to open up his wallet and participate in the local government's licensing scheme.Jones refused. And has greeted these threats -- ones delivered to at least another half-dozen drone companies in North Carolina -- with allegations that this regulation violates his First Amendment rights.
[B]oth the Board and the statutes it enforces violate the First Amendment at a bedrock level. Simply, the projects the Board targets—aerial photos, data, 3D digital models, and the like—are speech that is fully protected by the First Amendment.
As Jones points out in the lawsuit, the restrictions the board places on aerial photography are content-based. Some aerial photos are fine but those containing any sort of useful data, like the stuff that appears on sites like Google Maps (elevations, geographical coordinates, property boundaries), are considered to be land surveying even if -- as Jones has made clear to customers -- he does not offer surveying services. He has also made it explicit the photos customers purchased from him did not establish property lines and could not be used for legal purposes.At this point, Jones' drone photography business is on hold. Hopefully the court will find in his favor and let him get back to work. If the state really wants to protect surveyors, it should nudge them towards getting commercial drone operator licenses. This would foster competition, rather than ensure surveyors who have been slow on the tech uptake still have a captive market.

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posted at: 12:00am on 30-Mar-2021
path: /Policy | permalink | edit (requires password)

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