[game_preservation] This is really the last snippet on the DMCA exemption - I promise

[Henry Lowood]

One last bit from the exemption application from U. Michigan. It 
directly addresses use for preservation.

"2. Availability for Use of Works for NonProfit Archival, Preservation, 
and Educational Purposes

After a TPM‐encumbered, PC‐accessible work is released, security risks 
are likely to
increase over time as new problems are found. Unfortunately, the 
motivation of the
publisher of the work to mitigate the risks is based primarily on the 
economic return of
selling more copies of the work. As soon as the cost of fixing security 
flaws exceeds the
potential profits of increased sales, the publisher is likely to stop 
releasing fixes.
Alternatively, the publisher could simply go out of business. However, 
the unfixed security
flaws leave consumers still using the work vulnerable to attack. Thus, 
using such a work
safely in the long run will require some unofficial method of correcting 
security flaws.
Without an exemption to the DMCA to allow security researchers to 
continue to investigate
works that are no longer supported by their publishers yet still 
prevalent in the wild, the
use of older works will become increasingly fraught with security risks."


-- 
Henry Lowood
Curator for History of Science&  Technology Collections;
   Film&  Media Collections
HRG, Green Library, 557 Escondido Mall
Stanford University Libraries, Stanford CA 94305-6004
650-723-4602; lowood at stanford.edu; http://www.stanford.edu/~lowood