[game_preservation] Abandonware

[Simon Carless]

 It's anywhere between tens of megabytes to tens of gigabytes, I believe. 1
terabytes hard drives are less than $200 nowadays, so shouldn't be a big
problem :)

s!

On Sun, Jun 15, 2008 at 8:49 PM, Captain Commando <evilcowclone at gmail.com>
wrote:


> Wow, that list is pretty amazing. Thanks for sharing! Out of curiosity, how

> much space does all this software take up? I don't see any 'meta-metadata'

> regarding that, but it was a question regarding the feasibility of actually

> archiving all this stuff onto hard drives, digital tape, or optical media

> for long-term storage. Obviously this doesn't include every single piece of

> software made for those platforms though...

>

> -DM

>

>

> On Sun, Jun 15, 2008 at 9:28 PM, Simon Carless <simon at archive.org> wrote:

>

>> 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<http://www.tosec.org/userfiles/Complete_%28TOSEC-v2007-03-14_CM%29.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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>>>

>>

>>

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>>

>

>

> --

> The sleep of Reason produces monsters.

>

> "Until next time..."

> Captain Commando

>

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