Unique computer games may be lost
Associate Professor Susan Corbett says a little known part of New Zealand’s cultural and computing heritage is under threat due to the passage of time.
Susan Corbett, Associate Professor of Commercial Law at the School of Accounting and Commercial Law
A little known part of New Zealand’s cultural and computing heritage is under threat due to the passage of time.
Unique computer games and software, developed in New Zealand in the late 1970s and early 1980s because of import restrictions, need to be copied and digitally preserved or they will deteriorate.
Susan Corbett, Associate Professor of Commercial Law at the School of Accounting and Commercial Law at Victoria Business School, says the copies are needed for the same reason that New Zealand preserves copies of its books in the National Library.
"It's our cultural heritage and editorial record. Otherwise, one day people will say, 'What happened to all those original works?'"
The problem is, it's now exceedingly difficult to trace the people and companies who created the games in order to establish ownership of copyright.
The games were typically created by school boys who sent their computer code to be published in computer magazines. Another company then produced the games using the published code.
The boys would now be aged in their 40s and 50s and the companies are no longer trading.
A Victoria University-funded project that tried to trace copyright of three games – Dungeons Beneath Cairo, City Lander and Poker – and archive them came up with few leads.
Only one of the three games was published by a registered company, which ceased trading in 2000 with few records now available.
An advertisement in the Computer Society’s newsletter also received no response. As the consent of copyright holders needs to be obtained before the software can be copied, the project had to be shelved.
Associate Professor Corbett is a member of an interdisciplinary Australasian team, funded by the Australian Research Council, working on the problem of these 'orphan works' – works whose copyright owner cannot be traced by potential secondary users.
The project leader of the team, Associate Professor Melanie Swalwell – who previously worked for Victoria University and is now based at Flinders University in Adelaide – is now researching for a Popular Memory Archive website devoted to exhibiting Australian and New Zealand games and artefacts-from the 1980s.
Technical expertise is provided by other team members including Dr Ian Welch, of the Engineering and Computer Science School at Victoria University, who is exploring ways to make these old games playable on new platforms.
The Melbourne-based Australian Centre for the Moving Image is also an ally and has hosted two conferences. Now Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision – formerly the New Zealand Archive of Film, Television and Sound – is lending a hand.
It is in the early stages of collecting material by attempting to make connections with collectors and potential donors of the rare games in New Zealand. Associate Professor Corbett knows of one collector who has two large sheds full of them.
Some legal commentators have argued that an exception to normal copyright practices could be made, as this is a case of cultural heritage preservation.
The Australian Law Reform Commission has recommended a 'fair use' defence could apply.
In New Zealand, a select committee that reviewed the New Zealand Copyright Amendment Bill in 2007 acknowledged the need for appropriate orphan works legislation.
The select committee recommended that the then Ministry of Economic Development should review the possibilities as a matter of urgency, but such a review has not yet been carried out.
Associate Professor Corbett set out suggested amendments to New Zealand copyright law in a 2010 paper in The WIPO Journal – Regulation for Cultural Heritage Orphans: Time Does Matter. These amendments would allow cultural heritage institutions and researchers to preserve orphan works in compliance with international copyright law.