Can an online library of classic video games ever be legal?

Enlarge / The Q*Bert’s so bright, I gotta wear shades. (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images | Gottlieb)

For years now, video game preservationists, librarians, and historians have been arguing for a DMCA exemption that would allow them to legally share emulated versions of their physical game collections with researchers remotely over the Internet. But those preservationists continue to face pushback from industry trade groups, who worry that an exemption would open a legal loophole for “online arcades” that could give members of the public free, legal, and widespread access to copyrighted classic games.

This long-running argument was joined once again earlier this month during livestreamed testimony in front of the Copyright Office, which is considering new DMCA rules as part of its regular triennial process. During that testimony, representatives for the Software Preservation Network and the Library Copyright Alliance defended their proposal for a system of “individualized human review” to help ensure that temporary remote game access would be granted “primarily for the purposes of private study, scholarship, teaching, or research.”