by Ternce » Sat Apr 09, 2016 10:45 am
A judge -has- to buy that. Not only is it the law, it's the only defense to the charges being filed against the server hosting company and Nostalrius development team. It also happens to be a particularly strong defense against this kind of thing, especially in this particular case where they've gone outside of U.S. Borders.
Here is an excerpt from an impartial observer Angus Morrison at PC Gamer:
"Nostalrius is a time capsule: a beautifully nostalgic record of what a living world used to look like. It's a museum piece created by passionate fans with no official alternative."
This review, to me, sounds very much like Mr. Morrison at PC Gamer acknowledged that the server was meant as an educational device to show the community what the game was like over a decade ago, when many of our players were too young to experience it in to its fullest. What other purpose does a time capsule, or a museum piece serve?
Furthermore, Nostalrius was a nonprofit organization, and while nonprofits require at least one person to be certified and for the organization to be registered as a nonprofit in the United States, I'm not entirely certain the same applies in France. Either way, a nonprofit organization is viewed in the eyes of United States copyright law as an educational institution.
In addition to this, it can be argued that the Nostalrius server had a transformative quality, in that much of the original code had to be re-written by a development team, making it so that the heart of the game was still gotten across, but many work hours had to go into making this a reality. All of these work hours were done for free and for noncommercial purposes.