[game_preservation] Abandonware

[Simon Carless]

Here's a post I made on the most recent renewal of the DMCA exemption for
abandonware - but as Andrew notes, this only applies to libraries/archival
institutions:

http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2006/11/dmca_exemption_for_game_archiv.php

This abandonware question seems to go round and round on the SIG from time
to time, and the answer, I think, is simple. Leave the abandonware work to
the crazily committed grey market orgs such as TOSEC:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOSEC

For those who haven't seen, it's basically the best index of games with
associated ROMs ever created - here's a recent .DAT file:

http://www.tosec.org/userfiles/Complete_(TOSEC-v2007-03-14_CM).zip

Needless to say, you can find the complete sets on various torrent sites,
and I don't really believe they are in danger of being lost. It would be
nice for official archives to keep copies of them, but that would mean the
archive would have to have physical copies of each of the games, of course.

The problem with abandonware is that many people are willing and happy to
stretch the concept of abandonware to any out of print game, no matter if it
has commercial value or not.

So maybe the SIG should cover and even archive the DATs from TOSEC,
abstractly. Since that's just metadata. Just no linking to Home Of The
Underdogs pages, etc.

s!

On Sun, Jun 15, 2008 at 3:50 PM, Andrew Armstrong <andrew at aarmstrong.org>
wrote:


> There's a large body of worthwhile research there which I had forgotten to

> put in our resources section. It is still very worthwhile, and if not more

> so due to each articles respective age. While it might have dried up right

> now, a future project for the SIG certainly will be more articles like those

> :) so maybe in the future a push can be lead to get a few people

> contributing there.

>

> Problem is it must take a long while to properly research each article in

> any kind of depth. I presume if anyone wanted to contribute to the features

> they still could though? (you won't remove it entirely I hope!)

>

> And your thoughts on it are noted, a shame such a mission was thwarted even

> if illegal, although it is interesting to know the past of it, since I had

> no clue (I wasn't even online in 1997). I'll keep in mind your view it is

> still worthwhile though, which I do agree with.

>

> Andrew

>

> Jim Leonard wrote:

>

>> Andrew Armstrong wrote:

>>

>>> Thanks for the article link in any case Mike, I should really categorise

>>> the Mobygames features articles into the resource list properly.

>>>

>>

>> While I'm flattered, I don't think you'll be seeing many MobyGames feature

>> articles in the future.  I think that aspect of Moby has atrophied.  Still,

>> I did do legitimate research on the subject back then.

>>

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