Abandonware and Emulation Now Legal?

[Chacrana]

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6162308.html?tag=latestnews;title;1

Interesting news... I wonder how it'll affect emulation as far as being a legal grey area.

[RAMSTORIA]

dont think itll effect emulation much, especially with things like the VC and XBLA.

but abandonware sounds like itll be good to go. finally i can play chopper 2 on my DOS emulator on my pc without worry!

[mbstuff]

Honestly, did anybody really worry about getting jail time for playing abandonware on their computers?

It's about time somebody recognizes the public good of letting copyright lapse when the commercial value of something goes down to zero.

[Cao Cao]

And once again a major news site completely misinterprets an addition to the DMCA to make the readers think "ZOMG teh RoMz are l3gal!!!1!". I believe these new exemptions for the DMCA essentially make up a software-based extension to the part of the act (passed a while back) that made it legal to bypass copyright protections on technology that is no longer produced. Or in other words, the original part made it legal to install a mod chip (Or other means of bypassing copyright protection) in consoles such as the Dreamcast. This new extension allows you to bypass the software means of copyright protection (An example would be the old "Enter word X of paragraph Y on page Z of the manual") on outdated software. It also makes it legal to bypass dongles that many older pieces of software used as copyright protection.

Simply put, you can now legally write and/or download cracks for your old software to bypass their protection, but it is still illegal to download the software itself.

(On a note unrelated to games, unlocking cell phones is legal now, and that's something to cheer about)

(NOTE: This post was based on the article's summary of the new exemptions. If someone out there has a link to the actual text of the this extension, feel free to provide it.)