http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/10/fighting-to-keep-abandoned-games-dead/?ncid=rss_truncated

Publishers are fighting to keep abandoned games dead
Jessica Conditt | @jessconditt | April 10th 2015 at 3:23 pm

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit group that defends civil liberties in the digital world, is facing off against the Entertainment Software Association, the organization that represents most major video game publishers in the US. The EFF wants to allow players to put abandoned games back online and has asked the US Copyright Office for an exemption from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This would allow players to legally modify the code of online games that are no longer supported by publishers, in the hope of reconnecting these titles to new, third-party servers. This includes games like Battlefield 1942, Star Wars: Battlefront, SOCOM 4, Resistance: Fall of Man and Mario Kart Wii. Many modern games rely on servers to function; if Activision pulled the plug on Destiny, for example, even its single-player campaign would disappear, since the entire game needs an online connection.

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I’ve often thought that ABANDONWARE and Out-of-print-books should be in the “public domain”.

When we, as a society, seek to encourage writing by means of the “copy right”, then it’s is incumbent on the writer to keep his copyrighted published work available. When a book is “out of print”, the copyright should lapse or suspend.

Argh!

It’s like the content creator reneges on their side of the bargain.

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