has announced the classes of works subject to the exemption from the prohibition against circumvention of technological measures that control access to copyrighted works

hmm, changes nothing on the copyrights. Move on nothing to see here...

Besides Dosbox makes programs no longer obselete therefore this new lwc's arguement totally invalid

You should learn to read before you post. They are talking about "formats", "original media" and "hardware" and how librians "for the purpose of preservation or archival reproduction" are allowed to copy the media regardless of what copy protection measure that is built into the media.

That means that if you have a paper-tape with an Univac Algol compiler, then it is okay to copy the code from the paper-tape to a modern media like a CD-ROM.

Or if you have the Fortran version of Conquest for an PDP-11 on an old 8" floppy disc, then you may copy that too.

Or if you have Leisure Suit Larry 1 for an IBM XT on a 5½" floppy disc then you may copy that too - if you are an librarian and wants to preserve or archive the game. It doesn't say anything about giving you the rights to suddenly play a copy that you download from a shady site somewhere.

You should learn to read before you post.

Are you talking about me 😕 If so, I just came here to ask if it's great as it seems (I relied on the source I read it at) - I'm sorry to have taken space and disturbed you from reading the really important posts like "2 hours and my DIFF files still do nothing" and "Dude, where is my DOSBox?".

As for my question about DOSBox, if you were a librarian, the question is would you treat DOSBox as part of the game (thus it's not obsolete and would never be as long as DOSBox like programs would be around!) or as part of the solution (under the new decision)?

> I just came here to ask if it's great as it seems

Wonder how you found that 😀 Had to read that paper a few times until
i got some idea about what they're talking.
But even without the paper i don't see how dosbox would allow for
circumvention of hardware measures (meaning "old pcs") as dos games
usually were programmed to run on a wide range of systems.

lwc wrote:

As for my question about DOSBox, if you were a librarian, the question is would you treat DOSBox as part of the game (thus it's not obsolete and would never be as long as DOSBox like programs would be around!) or as part of the solution (under the new decision)?

If you were a traditional librarian, would you try out the receipies copied from an old cook book to make sure that the copy was okay? Or would it be enough to see that the information was copied as-is?

DOSBox is not necessary in order to verify the copy process.
__________________

Edit: If you disagree with my interpretation of the proposed legislation, please read from the last paragraph on page 30 to the 1st paragraph on page 33 of this document:

http://www.copyright.gov/1201/docs/1201_recommendation.pdf

Pay attention to the paragraph on page 31 that reads:

The Register cannot recommend an exemption based on the speculative fear that the statutory phrase “technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title” might be construed as including operating systems or hardware that were never intended or designed to operate as access controls. While it may be that old software designed to run on now-obsolete hardware or with now-obsolete operating systems may not be accessible on newer hardware or with newer operating systems, that does not convert the hardware or operating system – which of course were originally designed to permit access to the software that was designed to run on them – into a “technological measure that effectively controls access to a work.”

I can understand MiniMax' response, since a) he is right, it is plainly written and doesn't offer much in regards to make abandonware more legal and b) this has been posted in other forums that as well and irritates the heck out of me. I really hate how people try to find obscure documents that don't have much to say on the matter to legalize abandonware. Abandonware is morally right (IMHO) but everyone should be intelligent enough to see it is not legally right.

I already wrote I took it from a news site that had it all wrong. Don't make me an enemy of the state...

Anyway, I still didn't get it - is there a chance with DOSBox the librarian couldn't say the games are really obsolete or would they just say DOSBox is what they're entitled to do with those games with this new permission?

DOSBox just doesn't count in this at all. Again *read* what it says and what others wrote here. Your question can be answered by what MiniMax wrote:

They are talking about "formats", "original media" and "hardware" and how librians "for the purpose of preservation or archival reproduction" are allowed to copy the media regardless of what copy protection measure that is built into the media.

All it allows a librarian is to make copies of the original media in a new format to preserve the game. So in 15 years when there won't be any floppy drives manufactured anymore, librarians are allowed to use any means to make an image of the old floppies, regardless whether there is a copy protection on the floppy. The librarian can very well use DOSBox for that but who cares what he uses.