Free for a Fee

As part of the US Copyright Office’s regular review of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the EFF and others are asking for an exception that would let users modify games and systems to restore servers for games that have been “abandoned” by their original makers. The Entertainment Software Association, as the industry’s biggest trade group, has been fighting those efforts, and the reason, as ESA president and CEO Mike Gallagher puts it, is simple: “There’s no such thing as an obsolete game.”