[game_preservation] support

[n8dunn at juno.com]

>Can we;
>
>a) capture a screen of a legally owned game and then use that image 
>for
>      i) personal use only
>      ii) instruction / education in a classroom
>      iii) education through a collection or museum available to the 
>general public for free.

I'm also not a lawyer, but I believe that the copyright laws allow use of copyrighted materials for education. Whether that only applies to the classroom, or if it could extend to a museum collection, I'm not sure. As far as personal use, you may be breaking a copyright law, but who's going to find out, or care? For example, if you wanted to take a screen from your favorite game and use it as your wallpaper, I think that would be fine, unless some FBI agent with an agenda happens to see it, no one would care. I think in general, since the archival process could be seen as education, that even full software could be backed up, though access to it would have to be non-copyable. For instance, set up a building which the public could visit, and have various computer stations set up which have old games on them. Though it's public exhibition, it's education, and may pass. As for posting old games on a website, that probably wouldn't be OK unless permission was given by the copyright holder, since people can download and distribute the software. I would say that the same would go for old code.
Again, I'm not a lawyer, and everything I just wrote is based on my limited knowledge of the copyright laws, so feel free to disagree with me and correct my thinking. :-D

Cheers,
Nate



Nathan Dunn
--------------------------------------------------------
Graduate 2004 Full Sail Real World Education Game Design and Development Degree Program
http://www.geocities.com/n8dunn/Resume.doc

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