ESA oppose allowing libraries to offer scholars remote access in recent hearing
Last week, a government hearing took place between representatives of theVideo Game History Foundation, theRhizomeproject, and theSoftware Preservation Networkamong others, with legal representation for the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and theAACSamong those in opposition. The hearing was a follow-up to the SPN petitioning the US copyright office, last year, for a DMCA exemption that would allow researchers to access games in libraries and archives. Asreportedby Game Developer, ESA legal representative Steve Englund said in the hearing that, currently, there’s “[no] combination of limitations [ESA members] would support to provide remote access."
“The preceding three years ago, the proponents of this exemption sought to maintain complete discretion over how they would provide remote access to preserve games,” began Englund. “[Now] they’re trying to reservealmostcomplete discretion.” What Englund referred to as “not much movement,” Band described as his fellow proponents “bending over backwards to meet any concern - however far fetched - that’s been raised.”
The proposed exemption, according to Englund, “doesn’t prevent users from lying, or libraries from providing a simple checkbox, where users could confirm they have a purpose of scholarship or research.” Nor did Englund believe it would curtail use for what he calls, horror of horrors, “recreational play.”
As Kendra Albert points out, the ESA’s main concern here is widespread public access to games, which the proponents aimed to alleviate by suggesting the sort of special collections models used by libraries, while preserving the ability to tailor security concerns around “the needs of a particular researcher who is accessing it, and to what the institution feels comfortable providing”.
Englund used school libraries and sites like the Internet Archive as examples of “beneficiaries of the exemption” that exist outside of the “good faith” scholarly organisations represented in the hearings proponents, suggesting that the ESA don’t believe these institutions will uphold the same standards, or at least believe this line of argument is a good excuse. Englund then continued to - what’s the legal term? - fill his diaper about the prospect of naughty users playing games for fun, calling human review an “incomplete” procedure.
Asreportedby Game Developer, “attempts previously made by the Library of Congress were halted by the ESA, which said it’d rely on publishers to take care of those efforts themselves.” Elsewhere in the hearing, Albert says that “harming scholarship and teaching because there might be an interest in recreational play…doesn’t feel fair to [those who] put a lot of effort into making these works available.”
