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Comment on U.S. Copyright Office rejects DMCA exemption to support game preservation

Armok_the_bunny@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

I mean, that all sounds to me like a really good argument for preserving copies of every single version of every game. To go back to your Shakespeare example, it would be a massive loss if any of those adaptations were not preserved to be found by those who went looking, so all we had to go on was records of people talking about them. In fact, there are at least a few examples of exactly that: Homer’s Illiad and Odyssey are only parts of a much larger series which we only know exist because we have other records discussing it.

Yeah, just taking snapshots of everything isn’t going to let you perfectly recreate the culture surrounding a game at any point in time, but having those snapshots around is important for giving context to other records you have.

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NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
But how feasible is it to have a recording of every single time any high school brit lit class put on Shakespear? Uhm… okay, the NSA got you covered but you get my point.

But, again, is a copy of the state of WoW on October 25th 2024 all that important when you consider that what really matter are the players and… I dunno, I guess they are talking about the expensive mounts?

Which gets back to the argument of preserving the games themselves (which I think has a lot of merit) versus preserving the culture around them. And people tend to conflate the two because they think “we are preserving culture” gives them a stronger argument.

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- grue@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  
  But how feasible is it to have a recording of every single time
  
  More feasible than it ever has been before, if not for the evil motherfucking copyright gatekeepers who would steal it all from us!
  
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- gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  
  But how feasible is it to have a recording of every single time any high school brit lit class put on Shakespear?
  
  significantly less so than video games, which are digital files that are at least for a while all stored on a companies servers
  
  But, again, is a copy of the state of WoW on October 25th 2024 all that important when you consider that what really matter are the players
  
  You wouldn’t be copying a specific date, you’d be copying a game version. Opinions on how granular it should go vary, but in a game like FFXIV for example I’d say every major number patch. I’d quote like to go back and remember how things looked, felt, and we’re back then even without the players, which are the least important part of preserving that game world to me
  
  Which gets back to the argument of preserving the games themselves (which I think has a lot of merit) versus preserving the culture around them. And people tend to conflate the two because they think “we are preserving culture” gives them a stronger argument.
  
  Ah, I think I get what’s happening here: video games are culture. Youre misinterpreting it as meaning “the culture around games” but we mean it literally as “a work of art/part of culture”, like “high culture art” or similar phrases. People preserve paintings, why not games? Both are culture
  
  Because they are very different problems. And conflating the two is how you end up losing masters because “there are VHSes with it on it”.
  
  You’re the only person conflating them
  
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