Game:

Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010)

Duration: 0:58

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation, who are a membership organization that intends to working to protect fundamental rights regardless of technology, has filed legal paperwork seeking exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, specifically targeting videogames.

The EFF are apparently seeking a DMCA exception for games “that are no longer supported by the developer, and that require communication with a server.” They’d like to make it legal to interact with a game that has had online functionality discontinued, specifically for: “continued play, preservation, research, or study.”

EFF Staff Attorney Mitch Stoltz said that this is part of a fight to “make sure copyright law doesn't stop user choice and creative expression,” and the company has argued that the “fair use doctrine enables the manipulation and copying of software code in order to gain access to the ideas and functions embedded within it that are not protected by copyright, including server communication protocols.”

It’s actually very cool to see someone working on this. Especially now that games are getting more and more digital, I really do hope they succeed.