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... of trying to apply copyright and property like rights when applied to non-scarce information.

The reality is as long as human beings are greedy/territorial/assholes they will push their authoritarian agenda of trying to control what other people do for their own gain on others. As copyright and "intellectual property" stand now it acts as a back door dictatorship and is a subversive way to take away peoples freedoms. The whole idea of needing permission to use a product you've bought is nonsense, the whole idea of needing permission to REPAIR a product you've bought is nonsense. The whole idea of kids not being allowed to recreate older works and updating them is nonsense. Reality is the law is absurd and politicians cave to whoever throws the most money at them and forget everybody else, the thing they are most worried about is THEIR CUT and not much else.

We've seen the beginning of insane property laws in Europe when applied to steam games as "steam products", where you can resell steam games but steam gets a cut of the sold copy you sold. It's fucking ridiculous especially when you consider the cost of replication - in practice essentially zero. The whole end game of DRM was to prevent gamers from owning their games and being able to resell them. Europe is trying to half-hazardly come up with a solution but in practice it's still a god damn comedic clusterfuck when compared to the fact that you can get a "used copy" for free off the net. Piracy is a natural outcome of insane laws which were predicted at the beginning of copyright. Companies have too many rights and privileged and much of the public is too uninformed / unconcerned.

The following should be allowed under SANE laws fan remakes and ability to get source-code for games to fix and update them as well as games going into libraries as cultural works, as the laws currently stand a cubic ass tonne of abandonware/old stuff is just junked and it is done on purpose to control the market so companies 'don't have to compete' with their older works. Being able to shut down game servers/etc/take game code hostage on the other side of the internet is just bullshit.

Fan remake of chrono trigger discontinued
http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/

Freespace 2 open - exists because authors were benevolent enough to release it but it should be required by law that all game assets/source go into library an opened up after a fixed number of years so works can be fixed/updated to run on new platforms.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhAR8rWPluQ

As it is corporations have it good with the ability to milk a finite amount of work for much more then it cost to make it which is a dead-weight loss for everyone elses creativity and energy.

"I've read a lot of your comments on intellectual property reform and I can't help but feel that it just isn't compatible with capitalism."

This is a lot of nonsense, public domain has been effectively destroyed by intellectual property. If you don't believe it look here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act

and here:

http://homepages.law.asu.edu/~dkarjala/opposingcopyrightextension/commentary/MacaulaySpeeches.html

Take all the abandonware games and all the "IP's" that didn't sell, corporations still sit on them an hoard them leading to deadweight loss (inefficiency). Whole entire tracts of culture and industry are cut off by monopolistic IP laws.

FS2 open trailer
http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/

Things like the below only occur at the rare benevolence/luck of when a dev is allowed to release source-code.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhAR8rWPluQ

Freespace 2 has been modified and fixed up over the last 10 years, a thing which is impossible under current IP law. To say not being able to repair and update your software is "not compatible with capitalism" is just a lot of garbage. No one would accept being told what to do with their car they purchased. The fact that it is accepted in domains of software is just because the public is not informed and/or too stupid to understand the implications because it doesn't directly effect their lives and annoy them like say having to get permission from a corporation to use your car (insanity).

But somehow this insanity is allowed in software (DRM - steam).

"Making the copyright term shorter would do nothing for this group, except reduce the number of times it would be brought up as an argument that does not actually speak against or in favor of their actual sentiment."

Not correct, many industries live of remakes of older works and the copyright allows them to lock up and send lawyers after fan made works. You see this especially in videogames where a videogame company has practically abandoned a property for decades and fans attempt to remake it and then get shut down. Having a 'use it or lose it' system would encourage companies to have to generate new ideas instead of relying on old ones.

http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/

"I don't think this is a very popular opinion, but maybe someone can post a few reasons as to why they see my position as wrong."

I can give you a fuck tonne of reasons why gamers should get political. The tradition of open sourcing commercial PC games has dwindled to a crawl with multi-platform games. This can only be a bad thing from an innovation and modding standpoint. Many modern games started off as mods: League of legends, heroes of newerth and others are derived from the DOTA user created mod for warcraft 3. Counterstrike was originally a mod for half-life that went commercial. Game modding is a hotbed of innovation that has been severely curtailed by publishers trying to monetize everything. Notice the stupid legal rumblings around DOTA trademark.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2012/02/10/blizzard-opposing-valve-39-s-dota-trademark.aspx

Many modern games have had modding nerfed out-right because of publishers realizing they can just withhold modding tools and monetize content via DLC instead. Supreme commander 2 is a case in point. In the demo modding was enabled, in the retail release you have to do all sorts of convoluted stuff to mod the game.

Companies are now trying to extend "IP" property rights to anything made with their tools and that's bullshit, the people who came up with counterstrike using half-lifes engine, which was derived from the quake engine is a case in point. We build new games on top of code from old ones so we don't have to reinvent the wheel. Modern game publishers want to create artificial barriers to entry by extending IP to choke off innovation that modding creates and/or use it to hinder competitors by locking up code.

I was there during the 'golden era' of PC gaming during the mid to late 90's where mods and map-making was a great and wonderful thing. One of the things that separates console gaming from PC gaming is mods - the ability to actually change and make the game better then what the developers put out.

Gamers rights are a great way to attempt to reform copyright. I'm one of those gamers that is ticked off by DRM and how companies are playing loosey-goosey with an out-dated and totally corrupt copyright regime, that was always corrupt from the get-go because it took advantage of an technologically ignorant public. Software licensing (where you are never allowed to own anything) is bullshit and against the public interest when it comes to games. There are no term limits on copyrights for software, software makers can just sit on source-code or bury it. So owners of games can't get source when a company has gone defunct or the game is over 10 years old and that should never happen.

There's no logical reason for any game to stop working on any modern computer at all but stupid copyright laws give way too much power to business and "creators" and the source code never enters the public domain and many game owners, fans, gamedevs and hobbyist devs get fucked in the ass.

Imagine if someone could sit on and/or bury a process to create life saving drugs or some world changing tools because they have patents/copyrights that never expire. I use an extreme example because the things we can learn from how things are made or badly made allow us to make better tools and products and lead to unexpected innovations.

The software industry is one of those industries that desperately needs more innovation in how software is made and created.

Things like this should be possible remaking an old game a big corproation has lost interest in (because it is no longer profitable)

Chrono resurrection
http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/

Things like freespace SCP will be imposible in the future if no one does anything about the corrupt copyright laws and reigns in the game industries abuses.

Freespace scp

"So what is the solution?"

Abolishing them. A new model to make these things will be found, what we really need is innovation in business models. Therefore it's best just to get rid of the system as it is today and let the market sort it out. Things like this should be impossible.

http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/

If kids want to remake an old game they love from scratch why should we allow this kind of cult of property sillyness where you have to get permission to do what you want even though it is all your own work just because it copies an IDEA?

Right now the legal system is clogged up with bullshit we have a massive legal bureaucracy that is a huge drag on society.

Are you a moron or something? The fact that the public domain has been downright destroyed by ignorant people like yourself is tragic.

Tell me do you really want to live in a world where fan remakes, spinoffs, and updating game-code and assets are not possible? And that's just a tip of a giant iceberg due to games being an area I know a lot about. I don't think you understand the BS that is copyright because the stupidity hasn't effected you yet.

http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/

I doubt game companies were involved in the copyright term extension act. By in large, game companies don't give a crap about extending copyright because games and software in general have a bad shelf-life. After about ten years, old games are often given away for free or sold for $5 or less. I'm certain that game companies aren't making any money on ten-year old games, much less twenty year old games. So, why would game companies spend money lobbying to increase copyright to 100+ years?

http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/ [opcoder.com]
There is more then enough evidence to indict the whole industry.

Assuming that the US' original 28-year copyright was still in effect, that project would still be inside the copyright term because Chrono Trigger was published in 1995. Heck, the project was shut down in 2004, which means it was 9 years after release (which is also inside the 14-year copyright term). I also can't figure out why you think "Chrono Trigger" is "public domain", or why the "Chrono Trigger" situation is evidence to indict the whole industry. "Gang Garrison" didn't run into any problems with Valve (who made Team Fortress), does that count as enough evidence to justify the whole industry?

" It's not like World Of Warcraft has a patent on MMOs."

You're missing the whole point, games before the net were sold as finished products (stuff you owned) it's only through publics lack of intelligence and ignorance that stuff like software licensing for certain kinds of software got off the ground and so we have a blanket model in favor of corporations, and if you don't think that corporations have stolen the public domain then you clearly are one of the ignorant.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act

The whole point of IP, copyright, is to lock up works so that corporations can perpetually control/resell profitable ideas. So things like this become impossible.

http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/

There is more then enough evidence to indict the whole industry.

... it's not that you want the game to play as it was when you were a kid. When you were a KID you were at the beginning of game design, as game design advances in a genre or area your expectation bar moves higher. The real issue is that developers don't know or are too afraid of revamping old games. They are afraid of updating the design by what has been learned since the old games release. And quite frankly I think too many developers are out of touch and don't have it in them anymore and thats why we end up with graphics refreshes with the exact same old game template.

There's tonnes many fans would love to add to old games if they had the skills/got the chance. I often wonder what Chrono resurrection aand possible other fan remakes/spin offs would look like if it wasn't for the copyright nazi's.

http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/

"The obvious question is why should they? Just because we're geeks and we care about such things doesn't mean that they're actually important."

Because they ARE IMPORTANT. It's like saying 'just because we think morality is important, doesn't mean it is!'

Ultimately stallman despite his flaws is getting at the MORALITY of software ownership, right to modify, right to fix, etc. Games especially could benefit from what stallman is preaching. It's really about taking back the public domain, which is important whether or not the masses don't realize it.

Things like this occur because of our insane IP laws.

http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/

That is the kind of society we live in where fan's cannot take stuff they invested their own money in and create their own works based off it or fix up / refurbish old games.

There are a tonne of old games that could be kept updated with the various changes in operating systems and direct x updates, a game like Mech warrior 2 could run natively on modern hardware without resorting to more cumbersome fixes if we had the source code.

Just because the people who care and are smart enough to modify their own software does not mean these people do not benefit society as a whole by being able to spread derivative works or fixing up old software for others. That is the kind of society we should want to create.

Or for that matter, anything at all to do with Chrono Trigger.

They have done something with it. They used it as a legal weapon to kick their fans in the balls when the fans tried to make their own high-def rerelease.

Add Square Enix for their treatment of Chrono Trigger Resurrection and Crimson Echoes.

http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/
http://crimsonechoes.com/

"Maybe "would turn the people who yesterday had no choice other than to be pirates into tomorrow's partners" would have been clearer, but
less snappy"

Examples of such:

http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/

"That's why publishers want to control the stuff forever. If copyrights expire, there could come a time where there's more good public domain music and novels than any one person could consume in a lifetime. Why buy the new stuff then?"

You have to be kidding me. If this were true libraries should have killed the publishing industry. Same could have been said about Beta vs VHS.

It's not an argument for extending copyright either. Just because old works exist doesn't mean they would compete with new works, most old works will never be read by people because there is NO advertising whatsoever for older works, especially unknown works that were not heavily advertised.

You could apply the same argument to anything, but IMHO copyright extension should be illegal in the first place, it allows a person to take advantage of monopoly and economies beyond ones lifetime, it should illegal. I don't buy the corporate bullshit, I don't believe in protecting elite money'd classes just so they can suck most of humanity dry.

Imagine if someone did that with all the mathematical advanced in knowledge we'd or language, or privatized the air we breath. I'm really sick of this aggressive american bent to own shit and exploit people for money, how about doing something for nothing and giving back, you know SHARING? When you profit off a work you necessariy distribute risk onto people that pay for your work and reduce what that money could have been spent on instead.

I think for frivilous things like entertainment, etc, copyright needs to be eliminated.

Us buyers need to be co-owners of the works we buy since we INVESTED in these people, there should be a mutual relationship, not a one way authoritarian relationship.

I'm tired that our children can't do stuff like this:

http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/

Take their favorite works and expand on them and remake them, just so some corporate asshat can make a buck.

The downside of copyright is we stifle the joy and creativity of our children who couldn't give less of a shit and quite frankly I hope you see the agreeablness of just being easy going and "letting it go".

There's a point beyond where you become an inhuman capitalist who doesn't want to give anything back to the community who enabled his success, doesn't matter how smart or how good you are if you're the only person on teh planet, people participate in you success and enable you to live the lifestyle you have because everyone contributes.

... I'd really like it of gamers/customers had the ability to take back rights of abandonware or games and
properties that are just being sat on, and also have their rights expanded as investors/co-owners in some capacity because right now the indivduals rights are being abused willy nilly.

I would have loved to see what would have happened to the fan made chrono trigger resurrection if Square had not threatened them:

http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/

When a team tried to unlicensed port Chrono Trigger to the PC, they didn't last very long. Given Blizzard's history, I don't see it lasting very long.

Metroid Zero Mission was the original Metroid remade for the GBA. Graphics were greatly enhancedm, maps changed a bit as did the game play, but the story stayed the same. This is a great example of a classic game remade for the next generation consoles (granted GBA is old news now). I'd like to see a remake of Chrono Trigger. There was once a fan made remake in progress, but Square shut them down (see Chrono Trigger Resurection http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/). -Dom

"Backwards compatibility is important, but mainly in the first six months to a year after a console launches"

Backwards compatability is more important then you think. As time moves forward the ability to play old games when one gets the nostalgic feeling 10 years down the line, really matters. The truth is the whole Console and arcade emulation community is built on saving and playing old games. I think sony is writing off backwards compatability pre-maturely because OLD GAMES will get discovered by NEW GAMERS (i.e. new people) new kids are constantly being born who have not played all the "oldbies" and there were a lot of old games from the PS2 generation I have never played myself as I didn't have the time. So when a person finally gets thetime (Retirement, vacation, whenever), backwards compatability comes into effect. Just because it's not used 100% of the time or often enough, doesn't mean it will NEVER be used.

Not to mention Nintendo did a lot right with the Wii and downloadable SNES and other games. If enough interest (sales) is generated, wouldn't it be awesome to have sequels to old 2D games and continue old franchises? I think so. It's too bad Nintendo only equipped the Wii with 512MB of flash, but in the future I think downloadables will be a lot bigger then they are currently.

Sony is getting the reason for backwards compatability all wrong in the first place, for library of games that you don't have access to that will eventually be emulated on PC's as time goes on. Don't do it now and someone will find a way later. I think what companies need to do is find a way to update and release old games... this is one of the problems unfortunately with making commercial games - you can't tape community creativity like say
these guys:

http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/

It's a damn shame they had to get shut down, a remake of chrono updated for 3D with those kinds of skills would have been awesome.

"If you're determined to get a free copy of the game, you will wait until a crack is available, and no amount of cajoling, marketing, or DRM will make you buy a copy."

The problem with came copy protection is that it's an ARTIFICIALLY created system. Games are not treated like products when they should be.

You would NEVER buy a car that would stop working or disappear of the company went out of business.

There are three main problems with software as a "service" or "liscense" and some ideas that should be implemented in law (Hey I can dream):

-- Any game who's functionality breaks due to operating system changes or technological progress MUST have it's source code released. (Gamers are investors and therefore have an OWNERSHIP stake in the games they buy).

--Fan remakes of old games must be allowed. It was a fucking tagedy chrono resurrection got shut down. Link -- http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/

--Gamers need to have some legal way to force game source into the public domain when their games break, or some sort of legal action taken against the company.

--It would be REALLY NICE of games could be worked on by fans and upgraded over the years as technology progresses and kept "Fresh", instead of making emulators.

I thoroughly agree on that point. I sincerely doubt that Square has approved this in any shape or manner, especially after what they did to Chrono Resurrection.

I don't know about the Final Fantasy properties, but they have brought the smack down on at least two Chrono Trigger fan projects: Chrono Trigger Resurrection and Chrono Trigger Remake

I definitely understand wanting to protect your copyrights and all, but it would seem to me that if you have a product or characters or whatever with such a great following, that it would be beneficial to allow the fans some room to play. I would think a community keeping a game alive like this would only make their property more popular.

Now all I'd like to see is Chrono Resurrection allowed to be released.

http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/

Sadly, the big companies and their lawyers are often quite unhappy about these community efforts to 'restore' games that the fans love/loved.

Remeber the cease and desist order to the Chrono Resurrection project?

Remove all trademarks, and you are golden. Perhaps do a rockstar, and rename all the car names in a quirky way.

The screenshots look awesome, keep the engine and just remove trademarks.

beautiful screenshot

Good luck to 'em

Some crazy fans are doing a 3D remake of the game.

RTFA back at you! In this link 1 of the developers puts the topic to rest. The demo of ten memorable scenes is all that there will be. As mentioned previously there are no plans to show this to any suit type people. http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/forum/Defau lt.asp?sub=show&action=posts&fid=1&tid=301&pid=303

Their goal is to recreate ten of the most memorable Chrono Trigger scenes for a Christmas 2004.