Yes, that's my concern too, Bill. The only way I'd be interested is if we had a big pot of money and some support from a big non-profit organization. I think IGDA has a preservation society. Something like that might be worth looking into. The thing is, though, Mobygames doesn't really own the "copyright" to its information about the games (just the descriptions). As far as I know, you can't copyright facts like the year a game was released or who worked on it. For that matter, if the box scans and screenshots belong to anybody, it's the copyright holder of the games in question. Actually, I wonder if there have been court cases (surely there must have been some!?) where a games publisher sued a reviewer or publication it didn't like over screenshots or footage captures. I could see a situation where a game had really big problems and the reviewer was using screenshots or footage captures to expose it. It's conceivable that a publisher would want to shut down the operation and try to censor that content...In that case, the magazine could argue fair use (criticism is protected). But how exactly is what Mobygames does criticism? I'm not quite sure how a scan of a box counts as criticism, especially since they never say anything about it.
In any case, any argument that I can copyright screenshots I take of games just strikes me as malarkey. I didn't have anything to do with the graphics in that game, and in fact just pressed one key on my keyboard to capture it. Unless I'm using that screenshot in some kind of criticism or fair use application, a publisher would seem to be on solid ground asking me to take it down. Seems like what Mobygames does is use all those scans, images, and so on in a purely commercial way. People go there to browse games, see the boxes, etc., and hopefully click on some of the advertising and bring in some revenue for them. How is that fair use? Even their reviews are user-submitted, and of course they claim full copyright even of that. I'd of course turn a blind eye to all this if they were freely sharing this content with others, but they want to claim it for themselves.
Yes, that's my concern too, Bill. The only way I'd be interested is if we had a big pot of money and some support from a big non-profit organization. I think IGDA has a preservation society. Something like that might be worth looking into. The thing is, though, Mobygames doesn't really own the "copyright" to its information about the games (just the descriptions). As far as I know, you can't copyright facts like the year a game was released or who worked on it. For that matter, if the box scans and screenshots belong to anybody, it's the copyright holder of the games in question. Actually, I wonder if there have been court cases (surely there must have been some!?) where a games publisher sued a reviewer or publication it didn't like over screenshots or footage captures. I could see a situation where a game had really big problems and the reviewer was using screenshots or footage captures to expose it. It's conceivable that a publisher would want to shut down the operation and try to censor that content...In that case, the magazine could argue fair use (criticism is protected). But how exactly is what Mobygames does criticism? I'm not quite sure how a scan of a box counts as criticism, especially since they never say anything about it.
In any case, any argument that I can copyright screenshots I take of games just strikes me as malarkey. I didn't have anything to do with the graphics in that game, and in fact just pressed one key on my keyboard to capture it. Unless I'm using that screenshot in some kind of criticism or fair use application, a publisher would seem to be on solid ground asking me to take it down. Seems like what Mobygames does is use all those scans, images, and so on in a purely commercial way. People go there to browse games, see the boxes, etc., and hopefully click on some of the advertising and bring in some revenue for them. How is that fair use? Even their reviews are user-submitted, and of course they claim full copyright even of that. I'd of course turn a blind eye to all this if they were freely sharing this content with others, but they want to claim it for themselves.
Matt Barton, Managing Editor
Location: St. Cloud, Minnesota, USA
Email: matt@armchairarcade.com