Right, and many of the games posted are only 20 years old! No one in their right mind would suggest 20-year-old books and movies should be released for free to the public. So why are videogames the exception? Just because the format they were originally released on is no longer playable by most people? But the same argument applies to movies originally released on VHS, should we release those for free now?

HTML5 and beyond.

It's certainly my hopes that as many applications as possible will move in that direction (both online and offline).

It's as close to a universal interoperable platform as we can get atm.

Unity is already taking steps in that direction by beta-testing the export to html via WebGL.

The only downside is that most of html games (if not all?) don't provide a rebindable keys option for people who don't have qwerty keyboard. Some people don't care about resolution so it's sometimes too big (working on a 733p screen so with firefox and windows bars, max size would be 600p height). Also, the fullscreen option script freezes my browser (firefox). So I hope devs will account all that small technical issues which makes a big difference (playable or not).

20 years is damn long for enjoying the privilege of exclusivity of protection by society and law (not to mention crazy things like "life plus 70 years").

So, some "right minded" scientist, Rufus Pollock of Cambridge University, proposed 2009 a length of just 15 years, based on a reasonable economical model (and not on lobby group interests) for the first time:

FOREVER MINUS A DAY? CALCULATING OPTIMAL COPYRIGHT TERM: "The optimal term of copyright has been a matter for extensive debate over the last decade. Based on a novel approach we derive an explicit formula which characterises the optimal term as a function of a few key and, most importantly, empirically-estimable parameters. Using existing data on recordings and books we obtain a point estimate of around 15 years for optimal copyright term with a 99% confidence interval extending up to 38 years. This is substantially shorter than any current copyright term and implies that existing terms are too long."

(previous work: OPTIMAL COPYRIGHT OVER TIME: TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE AND THE STOCK OF WORKS) (ars technica)

There's a large difference here, as video games are abandoned by their creators far more quickly than movies and books. On average at least. Someone still holds rights to a lot of these games, but in general, the higher the technology required for the medium, the faster it is let go. Books can have rights held onto by families for literally centuries. Movies by studios (most of whom had little to do with their creation) for quite a while so far. Games, however have a shorter life span in general. It's apples and oranges when you compare the VHS to a Commodore 64. Simply put, the original material can be reprinted onto modern media no matter how old it is. Games have to be changed or use 3rd party software to work on modern equipment. Most creators won't take the effort, and therefore the data can easily be lost if rights holders try to enforce their rights (most don't because the rights holders don't exist any longer or because the new rights holders don't realize they hold rights to a specific product or just don't care). If the original creator doesn't make a profit from the sale of something, I don't give two shits about any kind of "piracy" or anything. The point of copyright is not to prevent users from getting something for free, it is to prevent people from stealing from the original creator. If the original creator can no longer profit from it, then the copyright has already served its purpose and SHOULD be relegated as null and void.

Upping the thread with an interview of an "archivist" of Internet Archive about games preservation:
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/238156/Saving_video_game_history_begins_right_now.php

The purpose of he copyright was to give the original creator a reasonable amount of time to exclusively profit before either rejoining the normal workforce or continuing to create new content. They sure didn't start out 75 years with infinite options for renewal like the Mickey mouse laws do now. Originally depending on the content and media you got from 18 months to seven years of protection then had to keep on doing something, not just resting on your laurels.

And this is a large part of the problems with copyright laws today.

Who owns Washingtonpost? Who onwons Gogs competition?

Sorry for the necro-post - hopefully it is justified.

It seems the Internet Archive page for Master of Orion links to a mobygames page for the same game.

The mobygames page has links to buy the game from Ebay, Amazon, or to "download" from GOG.

The GOG "download" page links to the remastered Master of Orion page.

Not sure, I'm not savvy on this particular game's history but at a glance it seems that commercialism has won out here.

Research a classic game and get sent to the expensive remake rather than the original.

You should probably have started a new thread and provided a link to the old one as context.

However, as you've done it anyway now, wouldn't this be better feedback to give to MobyGames rather than GoG?

After all, GoG sells the original (https://www.gog.com/game/master_of_orion_1_2).

Yeah it sounds obvious when you say it.

Then again you have a username with three letters and you were very nice even when giving criticism. Are you in academia by any chance? :)

Again sorry for the thread-necro. You are absolutely right that the issue is with mobygames and not with the Internet Archive. And a bit late to correct a 5 year old post.

As far as I know, the MobyGames marketplace links just put the game title through to the site in question, and on GOG "Master of Orion" takes you straight to the remaster, while the original is in the "Master of Orion 1+2" package.