[game_preservation] GDC 2009 Report, Roundtable Notes

[Henry Lowood]

Hmm, Andrew, "Less need to keep the paper once it is scanned."  I don't 
think anybody said that.  I disagree with the statement, and Steve was 
talking about his need to keep the paper, so that he could give it to a 
repository for safe keeping, once it was scanned.   I think that point 
was missed in the notes.  Also, I would rather not put out in public a 
discussion about an individual's papers.  So perhaps let's just remove 
that bit.

Also, could you remove the notes about the Edge article that was not 
written?  What I said did not come out right, and besides, that was just 
an informal comment, not meant for broadcasting.

Henry

Rachel "Sheepy" Donahue wrote:

> Thanks for the notes!

>

> A few comments:

>

> Scanning is not a valid preservation method!!! Ahhhh! ;)

> Just saying so because it sounded like you were saying you "didn't 

> need" the physical items if they were scanned.. but paper is much more 

> straightforward and cheaper to preserve!

>

> You say:

>

> " Fair use is very unexplored territory around this. No test cases for 

> any of this stuff. Only way to test things is in court. Fair use for 

> literary material is cannot copy more then part of the work..."

>

> Mind, my response is entirely from a US IP law perspective.

> I was at an archives conference a few months back and had the good 

> fortune of going to a session with a pretty knowledgable (to this 

> peon) IP lawyer. I asked her what shrink wrap license meant for the 

> fair use exemptions that exist in copyright law, and she said that as 

> there is precedent for people making personal agreements to circumvent 

> that sort of law, "agreeing" to the license means forfeiting those 

> rights completely.

>

> There's also a fair amount of case law (in the US) -- especially from 

> before the DMCA was enacted -- regarding shrink wrap licenses, but it 

> is really painful to wade through if you're not a lawyer. There were 

> some consumer protection laws that were suggested, but ultimately 

> didn't get passed, if I recall. I haven't looked at much of the legal 

> literature surrounding DMCA, though (yet).

>

> "An IGDA position to have an official archivist at every company"

>

> I obviously support this ;)

>

> "Maybe having the SIG being a coordinator like the IEEE History 

> Centre. We can also go to the other SIG's and get the history of their 

> area of history covered."

>

> This might be a little crazy, but when I first thought of the survey I 

> thought it would be really cool if something like the American 

> Institute of Physics did for physics could be done for the game 

> industry. Basically they went around to the major physics industry 

> names and took a look at record keeping/generating practices of the 

> company as a whole and invididual scientists. The report is really 

> cool and loaded with useful information, and will prove to be an 

> important tool in preserving the history of physics (which is what AIP 

> strives to do). I think it's a good model for any organization looking 

> to preserve industry history; not just the sciences.

>

> http://www.aip.org/history/pubs/hopi.html

>

> Obviously a HUGE undertaking, and would probably face a lot of 

> difficulty getting to the people in the know since game development is 

> a bit more of a closed industry, and I don't think developers view the 

> IGDA (I could be wrong!) with the same sort of respect AIP gets. So 

> getting in the door is harder.

>

> "A final point on how much it costs to preserve one game - the cost 

> can be from zero to who knows. Say $50,000 if just being asked to 

> preserve something ? a big number to do it, just because people like 

> numbers!"

>

> The cost is difficult to calculate because it isn't a one-time, fixed 

> cost. Sure, the initial "archiving" of the game may be relatively 

> inexpensive.. but what does sustaining it cost? There will be money 

> involved in maintaining the servers, migrating emulator code (or the 

> game itself), refreshing media, etc, and that's trickier to project.

>

> Ok, I'm done.

> Rach

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-- 
Henry Lowood
Curator for History of Science & Technology Collections;
     Film & Media Collections
HRG, Green Library
557 Escondido Mall, Stanford University Libraries
Stanford CA 94305-6004 USA
http://www.stanford.edu/~lowood
lowood at stanford.edu; 650-723-4602

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