Back in April, I wrote about a hearing that took place between representatives Video Game History Foundation, the Rhizome project, and the Software Preservation Network, in which they argued the case for a DMCA exemption that would allow researchers to remotely access out-of-print games in libraries and archives. Representatives from the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and the AACS were in opposition, with ESA legal representative Steve Englund at one point fretting about some sort of hellish “online arcade that (he’d) been warning about for the last several proceedings”.
Last Friday, as per a statement released by the VGHF and spotted by PC Gamer, the US Copyright Office officially denied the exemption.