[game_preservation] iPhone Game Preservation

[Devin Monnens]

Just a couple responses before I have to hop off to work:

Well, not totally illegal at this point in time for everyone. :)  Libraries

> enjoy an ability to defeat a technological protection measure for the

> purposes of creating a preservation copy of a game though the end of this

> calendar year as one of the limited duration exemptions issued by the

> Copyright Office.



Does this mean they can keep whatever data they archived? Or does
copyrighted data then have to be destroyed? I can't imagine they'd
grandfather it in...

Sadly, I doubt it.  Storage costs go down in digital, but maintenance costs

> go up, since you have to worry about regular migration of assets to new

> hardware (and new formats) in a way you don't in the analog realm.



Some archives use a 1/2 rule for costs when they decide to migrate: they
wait until the cost of the new media costs exactly half of what the previous
media cost. This means the total cost of archiving will only be twice what
it costs to initially preserve:

1 + 1:2 + 1:4 + 1:8 + 1:16... = 2

I believe this system is used by Cornell.

If you use a system like the UVC (or emulation), you don't have to worry
about format migration. Companies will only migrate formats if they find
these files are regularly accessed and so require it, but for games you
generally don't have to (online sellers will generally do the job for you).
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