US Copyright Office rejects video game preservationists’ request for DMCA exceptions

The US Copyright Office has confirmed it will not grant video game preservationists exceptions under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

In a statement, the Video Game History Foundation (VGHF) said that for the last three years, it had been supporting the Software Preservation Network (SPN) in a petition to “allow libraries and archives to remotely share digital access to out-of-print video games in their collections”.

However, despite the Copyright Office’s decision to prevent licensed game archivists, the VGHF said it had “no regrets about going through this process”.

“Over the last three years, working on the petition has helped us generate important research, notably our Survey of the Video Game Reissue Market in the United States report, which proved that around 87 percent of video games released in the United States before 2010 remain out of print,” the organisation said.

“Our combined efforts with SPN have raised significant public awareness of these issues and have already made an impact throughout the game industry and preservation communities.”

The statement went on to say that the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) “declared that [it] would never support remote game access for research purposes under any conditions”, and the game industry’s “absolutist position”, forces researchers to explore “extra-legal methods to access the vast majority of out-of-print video games that are otherwise unavailable”.

“We’re not done fighting here,” the VGHF concluded. “We will continue our advocacy for greater access and legal allowances for video game preservation and working with members of the game industry to increase internal awareness around these issues.

“We encourage members of the game industry who are disappointed by the Copyright Office’s decision to ask their leadership to push for greater support for the work of libraries and archives within their industry groups.”

Xbox recently established a new team dedicated to video game preservation and forward compatibility.

Xbox president Sarah Bond wrote to Xbox staff to reaffirm the company’s commitment to hardware development and a plan to “future-proof” Xbox’s digital libraries to “build on Xbox’s strong history of delivering backward compatibility”.