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Copyright, Creative Labor, and Generative AI

The Manufactured Piracy: Server Shutdowns, Revoked Purchases, and the Legal Case for Game Preservation

Publisher: Real Safety AI Foundation

Working draft. Not peer reviewed.

Written
July 2026
Version
v0.2
Pages
16
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Abstract

Publishers sell games and digital media with the vocabulary of ownership. Customers click a button labeled buy, pay a one time price, and receive a confirmation that speaks of their purchases and their library. Later, the vocabulary reverses. Servers are switched off and the product stops working. Licensing arrangements change and purchased titles are deleted from customer libraries without refund. And when customers or archivists act to keep what was sold to them running, the industry supplies the label for their conduct: piracy. This Article argues that the label inverts the law. Under the covenant and condition analysis of MDY Industries, LLC v. Blizzard Entertainment, Inc., a customer who breaches terms of use commits a contract violation, not copyright infringement, unless the term breached is a condition on one of the copyright owner’s exclusive rights. Under the logic of Davidson & Associates v. Jung, what makes a community server unlawful is circumvention of access controls combined with the enabling of unauthorized copies; a server that authenticates lawful copies and circumvents nothing commits neither wrong. The first sale doctrine and section 117 protect the owner of a copy, and the licensed rather than sold characterization that defeats those protections under Vernor v. Autodesk, Inc. is a drafting choice made by the seller, in an instrument the buyer never negotiates, contradicted by the seller’s own marketing vocabulary at the point of sale.

Keywords

  • game preservation
  • digital ownership
  • first sale
  • section 109
  • section 117
  • MDY v. Blizzard
  • Davidson v. Jung
  • Vernor v. Autodesk
  • section 1201
  • DMCA exemptions
  • abandoned games
  • Stop Killing Games
  • end of life obligations
  • consumer protection
  • buy button

Plain language slides

First slide of the plain language summary of The Manufactured Piracy: Server Shutdowns, Revoked Purchases, and the Legal Case for Game PreservationOpen the 21-slide summary (PDF)

Suggested citation

Gilly, Travis. "The Manufactured Piracy: Server Shutdowns, Revoked Purchases, and the Legal Case for Game Preservation." Real Safety AI Foundation Working Draft, July 2026. https://realsafetyai.org/research/manufactured-piracy/

Other versions

This paper is also posted on SSRN.

SSRN version

References (18)

This paper cites its sources in footnotes. Each authority is listed once, where it is first cited, with its footnote number.

  1. Footnote 1.Notice from Sony Interactive Entertainment to PlayStation Store customers regarding Discovery content (Dec. 2023).
  2. Footnote 2.Sony Interactive Entertainment, updated customer notice (Dec. 2023).
  3. Footnote 3.Louis Rossmann, video commentary documenting the StudioCanal removal notice (YouTube, June 2026) (transcript on file with author).
  4. Footnote 5.Aaron Perzanowski & Chris Jay Hoofnagle, What We Buy When We “Buy Now”, 165 U. Pa. L. Rev. 315 (2017)
  5. Footnote 5.Aaron Perzanowski & Jason Schultz, The End of Ownership: Personal Property in the Digital Economy (2016).
  6. Footnote 8.Vernor v. Autodesk, Inc., 621 F.3d 1102, 1111 (9th Cir. 2010).
  7. Footnote 10.17 U.S.C. § 109(a).
  8. Footnote 13.Cal. Assemb. B. 2426 (2023–2024 Reg. Sess.) (enacted 2024; effective Jan. 1, 2025).
  9. Footnote 15.MDY Indus., LLC v. Blizzard Entm’t, Inc., 629 F.3d 928 (9th Cir. 2010), as amended (Feb. 17, 2011).
  10. Footnote 16.Sun Microsystems, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., 188 F.3d 1115, 1121 (9th Cir. 1999) (a nonexclusive licensor ordinarily “may sue only for breach of contract” unless the licensee acts outside the scope of the license).
  11. Footnote 17.MDY Indus., 629 F.3d 928 (“WoW players do not commit copyright infringement by using Glider in violation of the ToU.”).
  12. Footnote 18.Davidson & Assocs. v. Jung, 422 F.3d 630, 641–42 (8th Cir. 2005).
  13. Footnote 22.17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1)(A).
  14. Footnote 24.37 C.F.R. § 201.40.
  15. Footnote 25.U.S. Copyright Office, Section 1201 Rulemaking, Ninth Triennial Proceeding, Recommendation of the Register of Copyrights (Oct. 2024).
  16. Footnote 28.17 U.S.C. § 1204(a)(1).
  17. Footnote 29.European Citizens’ Initiative, Stop Destroying Videogames (signature threshold reached 2025).
  18. Footnote 30.Cal. Assemb. B. 1921 (2025–2026 Reg. Sess.).

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