Games and Politics: Make Your Choice
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02/06/00: Gamers and the DVD fight
The battle over DVD, which has grown to include such people as the EFF and 2600 may not, at first glance, appear to have much to do with games. However, if you think about the emulation scene you'll see this is similar to a battle that we gamers are still fighting. People who decided to create and host emulators have had to deal with similar threatening letters from lawyers and in some cases similar lawsuits. (See Bleem! and Virtual Game Station stories for details.)
The Bleem! case is the best one to think of here, because Bleem! is a good thing. Bleem! allows you to play some Playstation games on your PC. It's not 100%, and in some cases the games are inferior to the way they play on the Playstation, but it can still be fun. It's also an easier way to defeat regional coding than the mod-chip. If you want to keep your Playstation unmodded but still want to play Japanese games, Bleem! is a good alternative.
Sony hates Bleem! but so far they haven't been able to sue it out of existence. But they'd like it to go away, even though Bleem! doesn't get a penny from the Playstation games they help to sell but Sony still makes their profits. However, so far Bleem! is legal and I consider myself lucky to be living in a country where I can go to the local software store and buy a copy.
The new Playstation II is going to be DVD based, but if the DVD case currently before the courts is won by the plaintiffs, Bleem! will never be able to handle Playstation II games legally. Why? Well, because of a ruling in the New York case against 2600, that's why. The judge basically said that it didn't matter whether or not the only reason for the LiViD project was really to allow DVDs to run under the Linux operationg system. (LiViD seems to be down, check out OpenDVD for now.) The judge basically concluded that reverse engineering was illegal in this case unless the DVD CCA granted permission. Sony is a big part of the DVD CCA, and basically this ruling is a huge victory for the "you will use our content our way even after you've paid for it" mentality on the part of large corporations. Planned obsolesence is not only inconvenient now, it has become legally enforcable. For many years, consumers have had rights which balanced with the rights of copyright holders. One of these rights was fair use. Basically, what fair use means is that if I want to make a copy of some media for my own use, I can. Even if what I want to do is copy a CD to tape so I can listen to it in my car, that's ok, as long as I don't sell the tape or give it away. This concept can be seen to apply to things like Bleem! and LiViD, if I own a Playstation game or a DVD, I have the right to use it, even if I don't have a licensed player (I can't violate patents, but reverse engineering, where I make a player completely on my own, is acceptable.)
As consumers, it is not in our best interests to allow the right to fair use to be destroyed by the courts, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, or greedy corporations that want us to be required to buy tied products and to re-buy products we've already bought multiple times when planned obsolescence kicks in. If you care about a balance between your rights and the rights of corporations, if you want a future where buying a game, a CD, or a DVD really allows you to own your purchase and not to live under the dictates of the people who sold you the media even after you've bought it, then you should take and interest in this.
I suggest you visit 2600 and look at their literature on the subject. It might help to defray their costs if you subscribe to their magazine, or else you could help out by giving money to the Electronic Frontier Foundation who are helping out with the legal fight. I also suggest that you stop buying video tape, DVDs, and console games until the corporations decide to back off on this issue (oh, and going to the movies, too). That's what I'll be doing, myself, and believe me it won't be easy for me. However, I don't want my right to my property to be further eroded by the courts, the legislature and large, greedy corporations. It's up to us, let's show them what we've got!
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