Why we need Software Piracy as a historical archiving tool

Retr0gamer

Really good article here about the benefits of sofware piracy for preserving software. Just think about all the early films that are now lost:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/248571/why_history_needs_software_piracy.html

Varik

National archive can have a copy of any published work (including games) if they choose, for books at least i think they have to be sent them rather than asked if it sold here.

They could copy any game they wanted and store it away for future generations but no one who makes the decision thinks they're worth it.

Overheal

Seriously, you know people are selling Public Domain music on iTunes, for like, money? I'm actually kind of pissed off that I have to pay someone $0.99 To listen to a Beethoven symphony - and at $0.99, that doesn't even give you a full symphony, only part of one! :mad:

/and if thats not public domain why are a dozen different labels shilling beethoven's tunes?!?

/No, I didn't buy it!

GreenWolfe

Overheal wrote: »

Seriously, you know people are selling Public Domain music on iTunes, for like, money? I'm actually kind of pissed off that I have to pay someone $0.99 To listen to a Beethoven symphony - and at $0.99, that doesn't even give you a full symphony, only part of one! :mad:

/and if thats not public domain why are a dozen different labels shilling beethoven's tunes?!?

/No, I didn't buy it!

Wouldn't the performance of a particular work be under copyright, even if the underlying work was public domain?

RobertFoster

Is (part of) your $0.99 not going to the performer in that case? The music may be public domain, but the performance still costs.

Edit: What EarthlyPangaea said.

Retr0gamer

On hardcore gaming 101 they said that a certain site (can't name them here, piracy rules and all that) had the most comprehensive archive of PS1, Saturn and other systems games, more than anywhere else online, with lots of extremely rare forgotten games you can't get anywhere else and even Net Yaroze games for the PS1 and they've all been wiped since Megaupload closed. There's also another site archiving old videogame magazines that has now lost 99% or it's archived material because of the megaupload closure.

In about 50 years time you'll be hearing historians lamenting how many of those games are now lost forever just like with old films and episodes of TV series like Doctor Who. Fans had them all archived when the governments and historical institutions didn't care and they're lost now.

gizmo

I guess it depends on your definition of piracy in this context. A site out there, most likely different to the one Retr0gamer is referring to, has an extensive collection of games deemed "abandonware" by the community. Of course, there is no legal definition of the term and as such, its legality is entirely dubious. That being said, it's been going since 1998 and has been extremely careful about copryright content, even going so far as to remove games which become available for purchase again and instead offering a link to said game. This kind of "piracy" I can completely get behind and given its status are more of a museum for older content rather than a download site, seems to fit the criteria outlined by the author in the above piece.

On the other hand, with the advent of games from previous generations being re-released on services such as XBLA, PSN and Steam, where does this leave the myriad of Sega classics and PSN/XBox/Arcade titles which are now deemed "okay" to pirate by other sites, including the one I assume Retr0gamer is referring to?

Myrddin

I'm gonna go out on a whim here, & say that just because something is copyright protected, doesn't mean it shouldn't be backup up & lost to the passage of time. Everything should be secured, we can worry about the licensing details after first making sure the game is safe & protected.

That's my own personal opinion as a gamer, & collector.

hooradiation

I have a terrible feeling that this will become one of the copy-and-pasted reasons why pirating the latest release is ok.

Which is a shame, because while I disagree with every form of piracy, there is an interesting question of how to archive these older programs properly.
Continuing to rely on piracy and private collectors is sub-optimal, there should be something better.

Or we could just not care. I'm ok with that too.

Monotype

Varik wrote: »

National archive can have a copy of any published work (including games) if they choose, for books at least i think they have to be sent them rather than asked if it sold here.

They could copy any game they wanted and store it away for future generations but no one who makes the decision thinks they're worth it.

Not much good to them having a disc if it needs to be activated or half the content is online. I wonder if somewhere small like Ireland demanded a DRM free version for their archives, would a large publisher just axe sales to Ireland? It would be quite a security risk for them and the National Archives - access to 500 DRM free major games would be very valuable.

I suppose piracy has its place on occasion. I know a lot of people who pirated Photoshop and it has a large underground following. Realistically, they're not going to spend €600 no matter how good the software is. However, if they go into that line of work, Photoshop will be the skills they have and they'd be likely to push for its use and earn Adobe official sale. I can't imagine that private sale to piracy ratios would be good at all but they have earned a name for themselves.

I've previously bought games and circumvented the DRM for myself as I prefer to be in a situation where I have control over the software I'm buying. Buying games today is more like long term leasing. You sign up for a subscription and they choose when you play and what version - it's fair enough to demand homogeneous version for official servers only. I agree with the article here, forced updates replace old work (and break mods) and if the company folds up, you're left with nothing.

Don't get me wrong now - I believe in supporting developers for their work in software that you use, but having insurance 'backups' is better early on rather than 50 years down the road when you wish you had it. I find myself just not bothering now though. If they can't provide a game loose/free of DRM, it's just not a product I want or even a company I want to associate with. It has to be cheap to try to attract me with those conditions.

There's one force of decay that he missed though. While he mentioned the physical decay of the disks themselves, there's also the obsolescence of the hardware and software to support it. You need someone to write the emulators and even they will only have a limited lifespan. When we're on Windows 13, will we have to use Windows 7 mode with Windows XP mode to use the old software?

penev10

Theres an organisation in England trying to preserve game history, can't remember their name but EDGE had an article on them years ago. They made a point similar to Retro's about back-ups on the net but they are trying to archive physical copies of games I think.

Monotype

Angry Birds boss: 'Piracy may not be a bad thing: it can get us more business'

Rovio's Mikael Hed tells music industry audience that embracing pirates can attract new fans

Rovio Mobile learned from the music industry's mistakes when deciding how to deal with piracy of its Angry Birds games and merchandise, chief executive Mikael Hed told the Midem conference in Cannes this morning.

"We have some issues with piracy, not only in apps, but also especially in the consumer products. There is tons and tons of merchandise out there, especially in Asia, which is not officially licensed products," said Hed.
"We could learn a lot from the music industry, and the rather terrible ways the music industry has tried to combat piracy."

Hed explained that Rovio sees it as "futile" to pursue pirates through the courts, except in cases where it feels the products they are selling are harmful to the Angry Birds brand, or ripping off its fans.

When that's not the case, Rovio sees it as a way to attract more fans, even if it is not making money from the products. "Piracy may not be a bad thing: it can get us more business at the end of the day."
According to Hed, Rovio has taken some more positive lessons from the music industry, including how it sees its customers.

"We took something from the music industry, which was to stop treating the customers as users, and start treating them as fans. We do that today: we talk about how many fans we have," he said.
"If we lose that fanbase, our business is done, but if we can grow that fanbase, our business will grow."

It seems there may be more partnerships between Angry Birds and music artists in the future, too. Hed explained that Rovio sees Angry Birds as a bona-fide "channel" now, with people spending so much time in the app, it is competing with the most popular TV shows in the US in terms of time spent.

"Already our apps are becoming channels, and we can use that channel to cross-promote – to sell further content," he said. "The content itself has transformed into the channel, and the traditional distribution channels are no longer the kingmakers."

Rovio hasn't worked with music companies or artists yet, although that is happening elsewhere in the games industry. Social games company Zynga, for example, has run promotions with Lady Gaga and Michael Buble in its Facebook games.

"We have some discussions with labels about what we could do together to give access," Hed told the Midem audience.
"It is possible to promote music content through our apps as well... We are positively looking for new partnerships, and we have a rather big team working on partnerships, so it's just a case of getting in touch with us and we'll take it from there"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/appsblog/2012/jan/30/angry-birds-music-midem

An interesting take on it. Treat everyone as fans and hope to gain their loyalty.

Retr0gamer

I am totally against piracy since it affects publishers and developers but I really think that there should be a legal way to archive software, even just giving a few institutions an exempt from copyright law for archiving purposes. I've an interest in videogame history and find it fascinating and feel that it would be a shame if many of the earlier works or even modern works that are only available through download services will be lost to time, especially now when unlike with books and films we do have a means to archive all this material instead of losing it.

As far as I know the only company that keeps a massive archive of all their source code, beta's unreleased games and other related stuff is Nintendo. Many companies have admitted to losing the source code to all their old games and have taken to downloading roms from the sites and using them as the basis for a conversion. Sometimes digital watermarks from the websites that host the roms slip through.

To address Gizmo's question, the roms and iso's or old games are already out there and I think that companies should adapt to it. I have access to all these games for free but will download a good conversion just for the convenience of having it on my machine. However I will not support sloppy and overpriced conversions. The Virtual Console and PSN are good examples of this. I won't ever download another Virtual Console game again because all they give us in Europe are the awful PAL conversions. However I make an exception with the Hanabi special games because they are in 60 Hz. Until they offer the superior version I'll be using emulators. It's the same with the European PSN which only has the sloppy PAL versions however I will go out of my way and have done so to acquire the games from the japanese and US service.

There is a right way to do it, the recent Sonic CD re-release I bought even though I'm not a fan of the game it's a fantastic conversion and deserves my support. The Sonic collection on DS in contrast is an unmitigated disaster. If companies price these games right and offer value for money and accessibility then they will sell well. It's the approve Apple took with iTunes and despite music being easily pirated iTunes is doing rather well.

Anyway it's alright having the big games released but I find the smaller unknown games more interesting. I recently discovered a SNES game called Majyuuou which is one of the best games I've ever played. However it was made by a defunct company. The game would have vanished into obscurity if it wasn't for rom sites. Also these obscure games can also tell a story about the bigger games and trends in videogaming, like the recently fan translated 'For the Frog the Bell Tolls' which was the foundation and engine on which Links Awakening was made. It would be a shame to lose all this history.

johnny_ultimate

It's a little inaccurate to compare the destruction of much early TV and cinema to games. The primitive nature of both the technology and archiving made storage nigh on impossible. It's an extremely sad state of affairs that so much great cinema is lost, but it's only in the second half of the twentieth century that film became recognised as a valuable cultural artifact rather than disposable mass entertainment. Add to that the destructibility of celluloid and the difficulties involved in creating copies of works: was almost impossible to avoid the loss of materials.

Since games have, by their very nature, existed in a digital age, there is no 'practical' reason for them not to survive. Whether it be personal collectors or a resourced archiving facility, barring some crazy EMP there's no reason for them to disappear into oblivion. I think 'piracy' is the wrong word to use when a game is unavailable commercially or abandoned by its original creators. I have no problem with a community taking things into their own hands in that case to make sure it's archived. What I do think is curious is that game archiving is going to become more difficult as technology improves. The more online servers are required, the more unlikely it is the next generation is going to be able to experience the games. Even Xbox 360 games like Shadowrun are now little more than paperweights.

Am I incorrect in recalling that The Library of Congress has started keeping select games in their archives as works of cultural importance?

Retr0gamer

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Am I incorrect in recalling that The Library of Congress has started keeping select games in their archives as works of cultural importance?

Yes they are but they are only selecting a handful of games to preserve instead of keeping a comprehensive library. Also a lot of these games are stored on their original media, mostly discs and CD's which have a limited lifespan and in the case of disks a very limited one. Copyright laws at the moment actually forbid the Library of Congress to back up these games on less volatile media.

Auvers

Retr0gamer wrote: »

On hardcore gaming 101 they said that a certain site (can't name them here, piracy rules and all that)

was a colour in the title of the website

Retr0gamer

Nope. It was more a forum and had a particular 16-bit system in the name. I'll say no more.

RedXIV

How much digital space would this take? would we be far past petabyte territory?

gizmo

RedXIV wrote: »

How much digital space would this take? would we be far past petabyte territory?

Depends what range of games you're putting into the archive. If you were going from something like Spacewar to the PS2? Nah, I doubt it. Hell, all of the PS1 and PS2 games released would only come in at a little over 3TB max in total.

RedXIV

gizmo wrote: »

Depends what range of games you're putting into the archive. If you were going from something like Spacewar to the PS2? Nah, I doubt it. Hell, all of the PS1 and PS2 games released would only come in at a little over 3TB max in total.

See this is almost too inviting, I could invest in a few servers and put every game on it myself......I'm actually wondering now what would stop me bar the effort of actually finding all the games. (not that I'm under estimating THAT task)

gizmo

RedXIV wrote: »

See this is almost too inviting, I could invest in a few servers and put every game on it myself......I'm actually wondering now what would stop me bar the effort of actually finding all the games. (not that I'm under estimating THAT task)

An army of well paid lawyers?

RedXIV

gizmo wrote: »

An army of well paid lawyers?

ah I'm sure they aren't bothered looking for little ole me yet anyway.

But this is something I might look into. I've been looking for someway to contribute to the gaming industry, would be nice to start this kinda collection. The only thing is I'd be too paranoid with SOPA at the moment to rent server space so I'd have to get some hardware to dedicate to this

gizmo

RedXIV wrote: »

ah I'm sure they aren't bothered looking for little ole me yet anyway.

But this is something I might look into. I've been looking for someway to contribute to the gaming industry, would be nice to start this kinda collection. The only thing is I'd be too paranoid with SOPA at the moment to rent server space so I'd have to get some hardware to dedicate to this

Not yet, but if they seen you download approximately 4434 games then they might raise an eyebrow at least.

On a serious note though and to follow on from what I asked Retr0gamer earlier, does downloading games which are being re-released via digital distribution not strike you as the wrong side of piracy? PAL releases in Europe aside.

RedXIV

gizmo wrote: »

Not yet, but if they seen you download approximately 4434 games then they might raise an eyebrow at least.

I'll have to work the logistics out on that one

gizmo wrote: »

On a serious note though and to follow on from what I asked Retr0gamer earlier, does downloading games which are being re-released via digital distribution not strike you as the wrong side of piracy? PAL releases in Europe aside.

Oh I agree, If something is being re-released, it shouldn't really be pirated. But as pointed out, games which are re-released aren't always ported with care and some dodgy things can happen in updating the version of the game. I'd be more protective over current generation games being pirated than re-releases for this reason, but anything that robs developers of their hard earned money irks me.

In my case, I'm thinking more about having them in case we do get to the stage where we are losing games to history, I'm quite happy to pay for games I'd actually play In fact I had an argument (or several) with herself about that spending habit already

Retr0gamer

gizmo wrote: »

On a serious note though and to follow on from what I asked Retr0gamer earlier, does downloading games which are being re-released via digital distribution not strike you as the wrong side of piracy? PAL releases in Europe aside.

If it's a dodgy port they can fup off. However if it's something like the Treasure box which has every version of Gunstar Heroes excellently emulated and lots of supplimentary material then yes. I've had a pirated version of Radiant Silvergun for my saturn for years because I wasn't paying ridiculous money to a collector on ebay for it knowing my money wasn't going to treasure but I'm more than happy to pay for it on XBLA knowing my money is going to them even though I've played the crap out of it already.

If I love the game that I've pirated I usually have a version of it in my collection if it is available. Companies should look at offering something more than the pirates have, even something as simple as online leaderboards in something like Radiant Silvergun is a massive advantage.

There's also the case of Capcom that happily supported the GGPO and 2DF fighting game communities, communities that were using roms to play their old fighting games online. Capcom ended up using the GGPO code in SF2HD and had a big fighting game community established when SF4 arrived. Companies should adapt to the fact that their old games are freely available out there instead of moaning that they are because whatever they do it will never change.

amacachi

If they were using only Megaupload they were seriously stupid. Though I feel pretty stupid for not grabbing it while I could've.

Just look at TV from 50/60 years ago. Wait, can't. :pac: Some of Monty Python was only found because a local TV station in Texas happened to hold onto some tapes. Some of Dad's Army is still hardly around. Live sporting events from back in the day? All gone. Seems video games companies don't care, it's up to the big bad pirates to do some good.

EDIT: Apologies, for MP it was some sketches and they turned up in Buffalo and Chicago.