I'll let the museum folks on the list speak to there own holdings, but in my estimation the key figure in the American history of software piracy, from the industry perspective, is Kenneth Wasch, who founded and administrated the Software Publishers Association beginning in the early-mid 80s. One of their founding agendas was to deal with software piracy and they were responsible for the Open Letter to Sysops printed in Compute and a couple other computer enthusiast magazines in the mid 80s. As far as I know, no one has done an oral history with Wasch and the SPA's papers haven't been collected.
I was first turned onto the SPA from materials in Doug Carlston's papers at the Strong (Doug held an executive role in the organization). The stuff in his papers is amazing--details of correspondence with the FBI, accounts of undercover stings Wasch did on computer retail shops, info on legal threats made to kids running local piracy operations. Chances are if there was any cooperation btw US and European organizations with regard to piracy, it would have gone through the SPA (especially since the SPA's audit was all consumer software, not just games).
If you want to try and get ahold of Wasch, or chat about any of this further, drop me an email off last.
Best,
Laine
Dear colleagues and list members,
This is a question that has kept me busy for quite some time, yet I am
afraid I might have missed some crucial bit of information, and this is
why I would like to address it to you.
Are there any preservation institutions (archives, museums etc., apart
from The Strong Museum / National Museum of Play in Rochester/NY) that
host either company archives of computer game companies or personal
papers of people involved in the production and marketing of home
computer games in the 1980s and early 1990s?
As I already mentioned on this list back in February, I am doing a
post-doc research project on the transnational history of
(non-commercial, low scale) home computer games piracy before the mass
availability of the Internet, and, of course, the perspective of the
back-then games industry is crucial in this question. Of course, the
industry back then was extremely volatile - when companies went
bankrupt, the last thing they thought about was preserving their
archives (in the case of Psygnosis, for example, as far as I know
everything was simply dumped). And those very few 1980s companies which
are still active are very seclusive about their archives (which is
sort-of understandable, given the retromania of today and their possible
hopes of reviving/porting old titles).
Nevertheless, the papers of Broderbund, Sierra On-Line, and a couple of
other companies luckily ended up at The Strong - and to my knowledge,
this is the only public institution that hosts materials like these. But
maybe I missed some essential info? Are there any other holdings I am
not aware of, particularly concerning the European games industry?
I would be very thankful for any hints (as well as for contacts to
former game studio and/or publisher/distributor folks who still might
have kept their business papers).
Best wishes,
Gleb
--
Dr. Gleb J. Albert
Historisches Seminar, Universität Zürich
Forschergruppe "Medien und Mimesis"
Universität Zürich
Historisches Seminar
Culmannstr. 1
CH-8006 Zürich
Switzerland
Tel. +41-446346187
<http://uzh.academia.edu/GlebJAlbert>
<http://www.fg-mimesis.de>
Review editor: H-Soz-Kult, review team "History of Knowledge" -
<http://www.hsozkult.de>
_______________________________________________
This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
-Probably typed by voice recognition, so please cherish typos