[game_preservation] Old PC Game Sales for XP/Vista

[Henry Lowood]

Andrew,

GOG is also a download service.   I think DRM is an important issue, but 
from a preservation standpoint, we need to start (I think) with the 
original medium.  If what we are given is downloaded data, what 
information do we have on the source of the data?  Is it legal to 
distribute the titles in this fashion (for payment)? 

A propos DRM, see the recent articles on Amazon and their Kindle 
service.   Same problem.  It turns out that they are able to delete 
e-books (Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm) from devices after the sales.  A 
rights issue emerged, so they reached out and deleted the content (with 
a refund) from the Kindles of customers who had purchased those titles.  
In the U.S., printed books are governed by a first sale law that allows 
you to do pretty much anything with a printed book you buy, including 
reselling it.   With e-books, the purchase is governed by a license, 
which is a completely different situation, in the sense that the 
customer really does not own anything.

So, while it is nice that GOG does not engage in stealthy DRM practices, 
I would want to know more about where they get their data and what the 
terms of sale are.

Henry

Andrew Armstrong wrote:

> Man, no, not Steam, not for us preservationists! might as well suggest 

> EA's download service, hoho...

>

> I've got to seriously suggest we do a paper or some research on the 

> use of online DRM and DRM in general and how it basically makes our 

> jobs impossible. :D I was going to do a basic post/wiki page on it, 

> but finding actual concrete information on what DRM is applied, 

> company policy and so forth is nearly impossible - all the news is 

> bloody vague, a nightmare for research on a topic no company wants to 

> literally come out with "WE OWN THE RIGHT TO STOP YOU USING OUR STUFF 

> IMMEDIATELY". I perhaps will suggest this as a project to investigate 

> - and go out journalistic-ly with this SIG's backing to get some 

> information on all the DRM currently used. :)

>

> Good Old Games I featured on our news feed when it opened last year, 

> by the way :) I've not had the chance to buy anything from it (I have 

> tons of games left to play), but they are DRM free, which is awesome! 

> I agree prices can be a bit heavy sometimes, but it looks like it'll 

> be a good resource if it hangs around (and if it doesn't, anything you 

> have downloaded won't magically go poof :) ).

>

> BTW, if no one knows about it (and I'm trying to contact them, but man 

> is it slow), Liberated Games still has a catalogue of free games: 

> http://liberatedgames.org/

>

> Andrew

>

> Rachel "Sheepy" Donahue wrote:

>> There's also Steam :)

>> http://store.steampowered.com/

>>

>> On Fri, 24 Jul 2009 21:35:00 -0400, Devin Monnens 

>> <dmonnens at gmail.com> wrote:

>>

>>> My friend just sent me this website that sells classic PC games for low

>>> prices. I'm not sure how this relates to preservation, but it's 

>>> great to see

>>> a lot of the old titles still available. (Personally, I think some 

>>> of the

>>> prices should be lower though...)

>>> http://www.gog.com/en/frontpage/

>>>

>>

>>

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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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