
How can archive.org release 2,500 free DOS browser games (Dune, Oregon Trail)? - logicallee
The Internet Archive has released 2,400 MS-DOS games free to play in browser.<p>Write-up: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;blogs&#x2F;the-switch&#x2F;wp&#x2F;2015&#x2F;01&#x2F;05&#x2F;you-can-now-play-nearly-2400-ms-dos-video-games-in-your-browser&#x2F;<p>Link to games:
https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.org&#x2F;details&#x2F;softwarelibrary_msdos_games&#x2F;v2<p>I wonder how they could do this?  The WP article does not mention copyright issues.  This includes premium titles of the time including Dune, Prince of Persia, Oregon Trail, Wolfenstein, etc.  They are hosting the complete game to play right in the browser (see second link.)
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hncomment
Maybe you've heard the expression, "it's easier to ask for forgiveness than
permission"?

Being rigorous about permission-in-advance can result in an involved, costly
process that often reaches dead-ends and unthinking default ass-covering
"no"s.

On the other hand, being bold and then waiting for objections can achieve much
more. And by the pragmatism of common-law, and the rough precedents of DMCA
takedown procedures, it's plausibly legally defensible! Or at least in
practice not too risky.

Most complainants don't want a legal battle, just a prompt fix-upon-request.
And some may even be unofficially indifferent to non-profit reproduction, as
long as they don't have to go on-record giving permission. In that way, they
reserve the right to object at any arbitrary later date, without incurring any
negotiation/legal overhead in the meantime.

------
dalke
Presumably they have copyright permissions. For example, see the work done by
Jason Scott of archive.org with the author of Prince of Persia to track down
the source, at
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8)
. But it's archive.org and they push the edge; in part because we don't know
where that edge is.

~~~
mtmail
Correct, it's an exemption.
[https://archive.org/about/dmca.php](https://archive.org/about/dmca.php)

(originally submitted by user tosh)

~~~
dangrossman
The exemption is to the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause, not to copyright
protection itself. Those exemptions allow you to break DRM in certain
circumstances -- they don't grant you any extra rights to
copy/distribute/perform works you don't have rights to.

------
eridal
besides Prince of Persia, anybody knows of source code release for any of
these games?

------
orionblastar
Not all games have permission to be archived.

Nobody here on Hacker News or the Internet seems to care about copyright of
old DOS Video Games and permission to download and play them. It is like they
are being given free candy, and they enjoy it, even if technically it was
stolen.

But there is a DMCA takedown page that copyright holders can request their
games be taken down.

I figure some of the video game makers that have games on Steam and Gog.com
will issue takedown requests.

Enjoy it while you can. The Underdogs did an DOS video game abandonware
archive 10 years ago and had to take games down as well.

We are all into this playing old games on modern systems craze, so much that
we don't really care about copyright and permissions anymore.

The Internet Archive is a non-profit and claims to use the library defense.
The Pirate Bay once did this as well, but it didn't work.

Some games like Prince of Persia got released to the public so no permission
problems there.

BTW some of the games are really porn, beware if you got your sons and
daughters looking into the old DOS games.

~~~
dalke
A lot of the material on archive.org doesn't have permission to be archived.
They did not seek out each copyright holder of GeoCities when they made their
archive, available from
[https://archive.org/web/geocities.php](https://archive.org/web/geocities.php)
. Are you going to say that that was stolen? Or was it saved?

And, sorry to break this to you, but we never really cared about copyright and
permissions in the first place. Look at the uproar over TRAC when Mooers
couldn't get copyright for it at all, so tried to enforce trademark protection
over it. Look at the Gates' Open Letter to Hobbyists in the 1970s. Look at the
sheer joy of people using the original Napster in 1999.

The games industry of the 1970s and early 1980s didn't even really pay
attention to trademarks, which is how we ended up with the classic BASIC game
"Star Trek".

~~~
orionblastar
I wrote some things, I had a few Geocities web pages, I worked on some DOS
Games, I wrote some games in Commodore 64 BASIC, I helped make text files for
a community college BBS in 1989. All of which got used without my permission.
I never saw one penny for such things.

But I see how it works now, I don't own my own works, and they are free to be
copied and put on display for others to use for free.

In the early 1970's and 1980's there was still a 'fair use' clause in
copyright. For non-commercial use, for educational use, for parody/satire,
etc. The DMCA changed that so after 1999 copyright law and IP law was more
strict. That is why you could have a game in BASIC named Star Trek and not
have Paramount care that you did. That is why there were several versions of
the old BBS game Tradewars, originally written in BASIC for a TRS-80, and then
converted to IBM BASICA, and then in Turbo Pascal, and then Tradewars 2002.
Because all of that was done before the DMCA passed.

I can tell by the downvotes that the community here does not care about
permission and encourages the copying and saving of older material as some
sort of library.

Stuff I worked on as side projects way back in the day, appear to be part of
Archive.org and other sites. Yet nobody cares.

Will the side projects people write today get copied and saved in the same
way? Will all of the time we spend on working on side projects go to support
some archive site?

