dmca industry mini-game bling..

First, a very good thing. The results of the Copyright Office's DMCA rulings are in, and the Internet Archive's application about archiving classic software, which I was involved in, was one of the few classes approved by the Copyright Office - this means we have the next 3 years to really get organized and archive classic software. The specific access circumvention exception is for:

Computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and which require the original media or hardware as a condition of access.

A few people online seem to think that gives abandonware carte blanche, which isn't the case - copy controls and EULA rules still apply if you're not an archival institution, and if things are copyrighted, you can't make them available for public download anyhow - but this is an important step to allowing archiving for posterity. I'm going to be chairing a roundtable about classic game archiving at Game Developer's Conference 2004, so I'm hoping that, in concert with Stanford and other organizations, we will have got some way into analyzing the mammoth problem by then.

It's been cool to see a number of developers stopping in and commenting at Slashdot Games recently - even if they sometimes feed the trolls, heh. Notable among them are Denis Dyack of Eternal Darkness/Metal Gear Solid:Twin Snakes developer Silicon Knights, who commented on his hardware standardization views, a Neversoft designer deflecting criticisms about lack of Xbox Live support for Tony Hawk's Underground, and even the designer of the Lord Of The Rings pinball machine explaining how he makes the rules, but doesn't design the pretty playfield pictures.

I got hold of Puzzle & Action 'Sasi-Su!!' for my arcade machine today (it's an ST-V cartridge, basically the arcade version of the Sega Saturn), and it's a blast - a two player mini-game fest with cartoony 3D graphics, featuring fun vignettes like balloon popping, robber beating, and bomb shoving. Not sure if it came out on the Saturn, but it's neato.

Random quote of the day, taken from MTV as they covered the theft of Nelly's hideously over-the-top jewelry - 'If you see any unusual bling out there, please tell the authorities.' That's right, kids, keep an eye out for that 'unusual bling' - maybe it's stashed in a magpie's nest or something?