Including circumventing DRM
Today, the United States Librarian of Congress defined more of what can be considered fair use across various forms of media and devices, including video games.
The Librarian clarified that players are allowed to modify their copy of a game to circumvent server-based authentication in certain situations where the original servers have been shut down. Museums, libraries, and other archives are even allowed to jailbreak consoles if needed to get games working again.
The new exemptions are only for games that can’t be played at all if a server is shut down, meaning these exemptions don’t apply if just the online multiplayer portion isn’t available but the rest of the game is still playable.
While this isn’t exactly the most exciting news, it means that in the future, all the online-only DRM-based games can be enjoyed by future generations as long as the systems they are on can be jailbroken. Hurray future generations, we did it, we did it! Yay!
Victory for Users: Librarian of Congress Renews and Expands Protections for Fair Uses [EFF]