ESA lawyer frets about some sort of terrifying ‘online arcade’ if preservation is made easier

rockpapershotgun.com:

Last week, a government hearing took place between representatives of the Video Game History Foundation, the Rhizome project, and the Software Preservation Network among others, with legal representation for the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and the AACS among 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. As reported by 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 full list of proponents at the hearing - which was streamed by developer Scott Percival on Twitch (starts 4:05:00) - were as follows: Phil Salvador (VGHF), Laine Nooney (NYU), Dragan Espenschied (Rhizome), Jonathan Band (Library Copyright Alliance), and Kenda Albert (SPN.) Those in opposition included Englund, and representatives of the AACS, DVD CAA, EMPA, and RIAA. In the interest of transparency, I would like to make clear that I do hold some journalistic bias, in that I hold the proponents to be collectively based, their opponents less so. “We’re likely see a situation like the ‘online arcade’ that I’ve been warning about for the last several proceedings,” said Englund at one point.

“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 reserve almost complete 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.”