• US Congress Says it's legal to circumvent DRM to fix electronic devices
    52 replies, posted
I'm surprised this was able to pass in our current Congress. This is clearly something pro-consumer and morally good, shouldn't the weasels currently in charge run from it like roaches from fire?
It being online isn't explicitly the issue. You just can't modify the game itself for online play. If you only modify the game itself insofar as getting it working locally, then you're within the exception. If an outside program can be used, without modifying the game, to make it function online, you start to enter a grey area. But it's not explicitly in violation.
Fantastic news!
dude if you even ATTEMPTED to make this argument in court, a competent prosecutor would hand you your ass six ways from Sunday. just because Hamachi is "modified local play" doesn't change the fact that the intent of its use is specifically to circumvent this law lmao good luck
Not really. It's neither explicitly allowed nor prohibited. A prosecutor would have to argue quite a lot to make a good enough case that your use is prohibited. Because if you aren't modifying the game itself to enable online play, then there is not specifically a problem. Hamachi or a similar service that doesn't modify the game wouldn't be an issue with the DMCA. So they would have to argue something that isn't stated at all in the text.
In addition, to archive an MMO should require getting a server running as most functions wouldn't work otherwise.
Yeah, it's great. Facepunch should really organize some games of Eldewrito or something.
Seems odd to me that this would come from the US Congress of all places. What's the catch?
bring back the miiverse boys
The Librarian of Congress was appointed by Obama
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Congress
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Congress#Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act "The Library of Congress, through both the Librarian of Congress and the Register of Copyrights, is responsible for authorizing exceptions to Section 1201 of Title 17 of the United States Code as part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This process is done every three years, with the Register receiving proposals from the public and acting as an advisor to the Librarian, who issues a ruling on what is exempt. After three years have passed, the ruling is no longer valid and a new ruling on exemptions must be made.[74][75]" [emphasis mine] It's temporary. To fix it properly, there needs to be an actual law.
So are private WoW servers now legal? Is there business in hosting servers for dead games without getting sued?
https://i.gyazo.com/6b3313aa4dab0995b7c1b471df680c93.png
You say that ironically...
That's an explicit exception to the exception. Anything networked is out.
Revive? ElDewrito's still here. The playercount just went through the floor after MS scared the mainstream players off.
I've been looking into this a bit since it happened and i still don't quite understand how this got pulled off. Corporate interest and the lobbying money is completely counter to this. Hopefully this extends to more rossman esque right to repair bills.
Blizzard still supports wow so no. They'd have to shut down all the servers first for it to be legal.
Didn't someone on Facepunch go ballistic once because people were talking about the "wrong" online halo third party thing at some point?
If you mean ElDewrito, Microsoft shut that down because it was distributing engine assets that were still in use by the company (halo 3's engine)
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