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Internet Arcade

archive.org

32 pointsLeoPanthera11 comments

This seems a strange move from Archive.org, I expect the arcade to be shutdown due to DMCA...

That site has been up for almost 10 years.

Not that I am complaining, but how is this legal at all? Can we start posting links to pirated movies on hacker news?

Technically it isn't legal, but in most cases the copyright owner no longer exists, or no longer remembers that they own the copyright. With no one complaining, the games stay up. The only complaints I know about came from Nintendo and Amiga, both of whom are deluding themselves.

So what makes it illegal? If the law requires the copyright holder to complain, and complaints are handled according to the law, what’s illegal there?

Also, why do you say Nintendo is deluding themselves? There are no obvious Nintendo properties at least on the most viewed list. The most popular game is Sonic 2…

It is illegal to distribute copies unless you are the copyright holder. It is, however, a civil offense and so the copyright holder must ask for it to stop or, if that fails, file a lawsuit. IF one of those copyright holders shows up with a lawsuit, they can use the years and years of distribution to pile on damages, and the fact that IA knows it is technically illegal to make it stick. IA is betting that it won’t happen. Most of those companies are defunct, or have been sold so many times that nobody remembers them specifically. Some, like Sega, seem content to ignore it and passively benefit from reminders of past success. Quite a few authors of ancient games have written reviews of their games on IA; that subgroup seems uniformly overjoyed that people can play their games again.

Nintendo is deluding themselves because they think that every one of their old properties can earn them more money in the future, and that’s all they care about. If someone has an urge to play Mario, Nintendo would prefer that they satisfy this need by purchasing the most recent Mario–themed game rather than by playing the original in emulation. The same goes for all of their lesser works as well. Thus they complained and IA has hidden all the Nintendo items.

Amiga, or the two or three companies that bought various parts of it, are deluding themselves into thinking that they can release a new Amiga computer and operating system in the future, revitalizing the old business.

Thanks for your detailed and informative reply!

I do have to say, at least for Nintendo, the delusion seems to hold up to reality pretty well. Maybe it doesn't really apply in this IA thing, since it is possible to find, for e.g., a playable Super Mario World game in there if you just search the whole archive instead of just this IA Arcade collection. But in practice that doesn't keep Nintendo from enjoying continued success with re-releasing old games at full prices.

See for example the upcoming Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe, a $60 remake of a 2011 Wii game, originally priced at $50 (this was what Nintendo charged for new games at the time, when they were still trying to undercut the competition.)

Note also Super Mario 3D All Stars, released 2020 with three full Mario games (via emulation), from 1996, 2002, and 2007, also for $60 price, but discontinued and no longer available since 2021. It was one of the best selling games in 2020. FWIW, can still be found on Amazon, but currently priced at $75.

They have a handful of games that they can remake until the end of time, but for each of them there are probably a dozen games that they’ll never bother with.

The short answer is no, it’s not legal. The longer answer is that the Internet Archive’s goal is preservation of content and ensuring that it can be accessed and used as time goes by.

Notice there’s no Donkey Kong or Donkey Kong Jr. there — I’m sure they didn’t forget them, but Nintendo is very aggressive when it comes to protecting their copyrights.

Archive.org does respond to DMCA requests, but they definitely don’t look hard for re-uploads of content that’s been taken down in the past.

Honestly I think this is a good thing, because without internet archives and the mass preservation of data they perform we’d collectively lose a whole lot of knowledge gained over the years.

I really lament the fact that so much of the modern internet is behind authentication or other means to prevent archiving.

> ...Honestly I think this is a good thing, ...

I don't think this is the case. My understanding is that, being officially a non-profit "library" and an "archive", Internet Archive is in the unique position of not having to delete content that gets DMCA'd by the copyright owner. They can just remove access to it by the general public, while still preserving it so that it can be made available once copyright on it expires, or even be accessed with permission, e.g. for research purposes that can be assumed to be protected by fair use.

Where stuff can get controversial is when the Internet Archive lets just anyone access material that's still in copyright, but that's exactly what's addressed by the DMCA takedown process.

You don’t have to call yourself a library in order to keep or possess works copyrighted by others. You are only restricted from making new copies and distributing those new copies to others. You may make new copies for archival or other personal purposes, provided you don’t distribute them to others. You may, however, distribute to others the copies that you got from someone else. (You can lend, sell, or give them away; all are legal.) That is, if you buy a copy of some copyrighted work (such as a book or CD or a computer game), you can legally sell that copy on to someone else. You can also duplicate that work for your own purposes, provided you don't distribute those copies to anyone else.

Naturally if you have made copies for personal purposes, you are supposed to destroy them if you pass the “original” copy on to someone else. If you don’t then you have made additional copies and distributed them, which is copyright infringement.

That is one reason that the Internet Archive keeps their “original” copies of any physical item that they digitize in one of their warehouses. It is also why they keep track of how many of those “original” copies that they possess, and use that to limit the number of digital copies that they lend out at any one time.

It is also why they try to keep track of the original publication date of those works, so that they can open them up to unlimited distribution once they get old enough that they no longer qualify for copyright protection. In few days, pretty much everything created in the US in 1927 becomes part of the Public Domain! <https://blog.archive.org/2022/11/30/public-domain-day-2023-r...>

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