Rosetta's Stone: In 1799 this stone was found by one of Napoleon’s armymen, it was named after the place were it had been found. The stone shows the same text in three different writings: Old Greek, Egyptian Hieroglyphs and Egyptian Demotian
If it weren't for Rosetta's stone** we still would be very much in the dark trying to decipher hieroglyphs and our knowledge of this ancient rich culture would be very limited. Copy protection and product activation is in a way our current Rosetta’s stone, so our systems can understand and run the games. But unlike the old Stone, this modern day version of Rosetta’s stone can only exist by the grace of people investing money (maintaining product activation services, technical support and so on) into the modern day Rosetta slate. With the stone gone, because the company has dropped support or has gone out of business, the code becomes meaningless and cannot be used.
On the short term copyright and product-activation is nice and makes sure the money keeps coming in but on the long run it’s just a hindrance. In order to make our current culture available and even enjoyable for future generations just let go of ‘money hoarding intellectual property rights’-schemes after a period of time and make the content freely available or accessible. And if the companies aren't willing, emulation could be our Rosetta's stone!
Have we become a throw-away disposable culture where nothing is to last? I sure hope not. What a contrast this is from the last couple of days I spent in Egypt admiring some of the most ancient cultures in the world. I just came back from Egypt, where fiancée Elise was assisting Prof Otto Schaden* in his work in the valley of the Kings in tomb KV63. And Matt's comment about both he and the other Mat having to become 'digital archaeologists' in order to get some games running, struck a chord.
Walking around those tombs in the valley of the King, looking at the cartouches and hieroglyphs and observing very closely the work done by archaeologists trying to make sense of what they find with help of their current knowledge about ancient Egypt made me think about Rosetta’s stone.
If it weren't for Rosetta's stone** we still would be very much in the dark trying to decipher hieroglyphs and our knowledge of this ancient rich culture would be very limited. Copy protection and product activation is in a way our current Rosetta’s stone, so our systems can understand and run the games. But unlike the old Stone, this modern day version of Rosetta’s stone can only exist by the grace of people investing money (maintaining product activation services, technical support and so on) into the modern day Rosetta slate. With the stone gone, because the company has dropped support or has gone out of business, the code becomes meaningless and cannot be used.
On the short term copyright and product-activation is nice and makes sure the money keeps coming in but on the long run it’s just a hindrance. In order to make our current culture available and even enjoyable for future generations just let go of ‘money hoarding intellectual property rights’-schemes after a period of time and make the content freely available or accessible. And if the companies aren't willing, emulation could be our Rosetta's stone!
My 2 cents.
* Otto Schaden
http://www.kv-63.com/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Schaden
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KV63
Armchair Arcade Editor