Title: Referent Under Copyright: 'All your nostalgia are belong to us'

Abstract: U.S. copyright law extends protection for corporate works up
to 95 years after publication. Pong was released in 1972. The first
video gaming console, the Atari 2600, was released in 1978.

The math is straightforward; any genre dependant on the medium of video
games likely finds its entire body of work under corporate lock and key
-- with even the most venerable of subjects protected for another
sixty-plus years! Nostalgic homage must be corporately sanctioned
homage. Plots, character types, even signature behaviors are legally
guarded.

How is this copyright control wielded, and how does it influence
expression? One such pressure is found in the story of the Generations
modification for id software's Quake II, a well-reviewed, freely
downloadable, third party add-on conceived as a tribute to id's earlier
games, but killed by id at version 0.98. Another example is the wholly
unlicensed yet legal use of retro-pastiche, as in the Commodore 64 style
load screens of Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto 3:Vice City. The third views
the middle ground of 'fossilized Easter eggs', or games with
esoterically accessible but officially unsanctioned portions, as in
BattleZone 2000 (Atari Lynx), San Francisco Rush (N64), Tomb Raider: The
Last Revelation, even the Game Boy Dual Screen hardware. Finally, the
Atari 2600 'homebrew' scene is studied, where hobbyists operating
illegally later partner with Activision to provide resources the
copyright holder had long since lost.

Each mode of expression -- and the pressures producing each -- help
define the practical limitations of a genre closed by copyright.