Piracy is not preservation, but what is the point of preservation? The article makes fair points to separate both concepts, but in practicality there is no alternative way to preserve electronic games. The example of the films is different because they required physical maintenance. Paintings are physical objects preserved in museums or by careful collectors, but their preservation in the "spirit" (I mean, in minds and hearts) happens when they are printed to decorate rooms everywhere, or seen in a publication, or presented as part of a history course — if they are "seen", they are preserved for practical purposes. Back to movies, I don't know where Metropolis was preserved, but I know it keeps being an impactful object of the human world because we can see it in YouTube. Now, the videogame experience only occurs in the act of playing it. A print of it in a history book means nothing, seeing a video of it in a website means nothing. There is no physical care needed besides the same servers that keep all our online information stored. Ok, someone could try to found an institution, or a department of an existing one, to keep games and make them legally available. Why it was not attempted yet? We can think about the mess of cross-borders IP rights. Anyway, if someone manages to pull this off, I do not think the sharers (by the way, I do not agree this is piracy, piracy means selling the loot) would hesitate for one minute to turn to the legalized institution instead of torrents. And they would not even need to send the material, as it is already being shared. Anyway, you are right: one day laws may change and legal, undisputed preservation will be possible. But there will be some more decades, it seems, of users sharing media between themselves so that games can be actually preserved (physically and spiritually — the most important, be cared about) for, one day, be handed to a museum.
Piracy is not preservation, but what is the point of preservation? The article makes fair points to separate both concepts, but in practicality there is no alternative way to preserve electronic games. The example of the films is different because they required physical maintenance. Paintings are physical objects preserved in museums or by careful collectors, but their preservation in the "spirit" (I mean, in minds and hearts) happens when they are printed to decorate rooms everywhere, or seen in a publication, or presented as part of a history course — if they are "seen", they are preserved for practical purposes. Back to movies, I don't know where Metropolis was preserved, but I know it keeps being an impactful object of the human world because we can see it in YouTube. Now, the videogame experience only occurs in the act of playing it. A print of it in a history book means nothing, seeing a video of it in a website means nothing. There is no physical care needed besides the same servers that keep all our online information stored. Ok, someone could try to found an institution, or a department of an existing one, to keep games and make them legally available. Why it was not attempted yet? We can think about the mess of cross-borders IP rights. Anyway, if someone manages to pull this off, I do not think the sharers (by the way, I do not agree this is piracy, piracy means selling the loot) would hesitate for one minute to turn to the legalized institution instead of torrents. And they would not even need to send the material, as it is already being shared. Anyway, you are right: one day laws may change and legal, undisputed preservation will be possible. But there will be some more decades, it seems, of users sharing media between themselves so that games can be actually preserved (physically and spiritually — the most important, be cared about) for, one day, be handed to a museum.
Piracy is not preservation, but, ironically, preservation can be piracy. Google "British archaeology theft"