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Why Games Should Be In the Public Domain
Robotron23 writes "Rock, Paper, Shotgun writer John Walker shook a hornet's nest by suggesting old videogames should enter the public domain during GOG's Time Machine sale. George Broussard of Duke Nukem fame took to Twitter, saying the author should be fired. In response to these comments RPS commissioned an editorial arguing why games and other media should enter the public domain much more rapidly than at present. 'I would no more steal a car than I would tolerate a company telling me that they had the exclusive rights to the idea of cars themselves.' says Walker, paraphrasing a notorious anti-piracy ad (video). 'However, there are things I'm very happy to "steal," like knowledge, inspiration, or good ideas...It was until incredibly recently that amongst such things as knowledge, inspiration and good ideas were the likes of literature and music.'"
"Good artists borrow. Great artists steal."
Pablo Picasso
I suggest using a time unit of one "dukeNukeEm", which is approximately 15 years.
And a rebuttal by Steve Gaynor.
Sorry, but the copyright lobby has more or less assured that the Public Domain is essentially dead.
They've managed to get laws passed which more or less say "if any commercial entity has ever made money off it, the exclusive right to do so is theirs in perpetuity".
They can afford to throw far more money into the pockets of politicians, and the US has more or less staked its future on IP. There's just no way in hell you'll see things going into the public domain ever faster, because I fear the way things are, things will never again go into the public domain -- unless it means a company can claim your stuff was in the public domain and then assert ownership of it.
Simply not going to happen.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
There is some value in porting it to modern platforms, I don't mind paying for that. GOG does a decent job of it. Eventually they will be released into the public domain, same as movies and books. I personally think they all should be a shorter time (20 years), but I don't think that video games should not be shorter than books or movies.
Old arcade games as well and if we don't save them the code may die with them as some are on real old hardware / old pc's.
some people with the old games from places that are long out of business have the nerve to say the copyright BS for an old game that is no long made when asked about dumping the roms / HDD.
Brand protection? Who cares? This is simply not an area where "how does this impact profits" should even come into the discussion. That it's even being brought up just shows how much the law has been corrupted by corporate lobbying.
If you are Nolan Bushnell, you shouldn't be in a position to care about what is being done with 20 or 30 year old works.
It's rather amazing that anyone on a tech site would be defending the idea of stagnation imposed in terms of DECADES.
A 20 year copyright is not the idea of "freeloaders". It's simply how things used to work.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Lets face it, games will get old and out of date, game makers will not make much if any more money off the games, and should just release them to the public to enjoy.
Holding on to them figuring that at some point you will release a set of old games on your next version of media, means you are just allowing your product brand to deteriorate over this time and when you do release the customers will go what was that?
Lets say Activation who somehow now seems to own the Old Sierra Adventure games, releases these games for free as in beer. So people will play them/replay them again and share them with some friends... Then the brand image will improve King Gram with the feather in his cap, Roger Wilco in his inept adventures threw space and time, Our mighty hero in Quest for glory, in his world of Glorania. (Leasuresuit Larry is the exception as his brand seem to stay popular.)
That means there will be a defined actor and an world that will recognizable for future games, where they can make a ton of money off of.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
This article is so right! He has found a way to express something that's been bugging me for a long time. I love his comparison of a policeman to a song writer.
The other thing about copyright is that it's not the creative people who make money forever off of their own work, it's the corporations that manufacture the plastic discs who make the money forever off of the songwriters' work.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
It seems absurd to me that a work be protected for 95 years when the medium it was produced for will last less than a decade.
Paying GoG for their work in *adapting* the game - spending the time to troubleshoot or repack the installer, repack the system updates, correctly create the auto-configuration for Dosbox or other compatibility software, and so on - I'm perfectly fine with.
But the point is valid. We LOSE more than we gain from the public domain these days. Almost no software, except that specifically gifted to the public domain, is available like that. The media they are stored on dies, and those whose goal is preserving our digital history against the simple ravages of compatibility and bitrot must be willing to skirt the law in order to do so, which is frankly asinine.
The expansion of knowledge requires that it be brought to the public domain. I propose we limit copyright to a term no greater than that of patent, and require that the source code of any software be provided in the copyright filings so that it cannot be lost.
I understand Geroge Broussard being againt this; If games would fall in public domain after X time passed, Duke Nukem Forever would have actually entered public domain before ever being published.
The "free executable" is what can get people jailed over something that really should have no consequences. It's also what actually has the theoretically limited copyright protection.
Requiring source code for a software copyright is a wonderfully subversive idea and one that I suspect that you aren't really willing to advocate.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The problem George Broussard has with the issue is that companies like 3D Realms (while they were actually still a game development studio, and now during it's quasi-half-existence as a publisher) cling desperately to old properties as their their only source of revenue. They've failed miserably at actually releasing any updates to their own works or creating new properties, and so their revenue streams has devolved to porting Duke Nukem 3D to the Xbox, PlayStation, Steam and any other platform that comes to mind, and licensing everything else out to separate studios (such as the Duke Nukem Forever, and last year's Shadow Warrior update).
The later, I assume, is the only thing that is holding them together as a corporate entity, along with anything that might of come out of the settlement with Gearbox (if they got anything).
Take away their copyright to those IPs, and companies like 3D Realms would not last another year.
As a result, his reaction to these kinds of comments is totally unsurprising.
I have at least some sympathy with Disney's argument that the symbol of their company shouldn't enter the public domain. It's a very actively used, highly visible symbol of a major corporation. This is where copyright and trademark law overlap (Mickey as character vs. Mickey as symbol).
What I don't have sympathy for is that principle extending to something that's decades old and is not currently being used by anyone commercially. For example, the characters and designs of the sprites in the old videogame Galaga aren't (to my knowledge) in active use. There's no confusion to be created in the marketplace. It's not IP that has any significant current sales. It's not something that IF it became public domain would allow someone to misleadingly imply something was backed by a major trusted corporation when they were not (the Disney argument).
To my knowledge, there's a doctrine around IP being "abandoned" that has at least some legal clout (IANAL). Why isn't that the test here?
One objection I can see to putting games in the public domain is that they are starting to reach a level of sophistication and maturity where age (tied to hardware performance) is getting to be less of an issue in relation to quality gameplay. In other words, the hardware started to catch up to what people were trying to design, and has passed it in many cases (if you look at many mobile apps). thief, for example, might have dated visuals, but there's nothing lacking in terms of gameplay or experience, and if given some fresh visuals, could stand against some other things I've played lately. In other words, it's like suggesting that Monopoly is out of date because it used relatively simple artwork. Sure, the weed and CoD crowd might want CoD 15, but there is a lot of good gaming out there when the "sell by" date is a decade or more ago. The one compelling argument that could be made is that since publishers feel the older catalogues compete with the newer stuff, they sometimes take it off the market (try to find some of EA's older titles), which could be a real concern in the digital distribution model.
First, I would like to say that Masters of Orion 2 should be entered into the public domain. It is silly that it is not. It came out in like 1995, like 19 years ago.
The ethics and idealistic rhetoric aside, there are some practical considerations. Namely that of technology changing much faster than the current copyright scheme. I am not talking even about music or outdated business models or anything like that.
So I would ask that Duke Nukem idiot, to go connect to TEN, and I challenge him to a game of Duke Nukem 3D, or if he can connect to my computer VIA his 2400 baud modem and beat me in a game we will all accept what he says as Gospel. Hell, I will even allow him to set up a Null Modem serial connection for some LAN play... Not to mention I have loaded Duke Nukem 3D onto a modern computer with modern resolution, nostalgia aside, it looks horrible! Keep your memories, they are much nicer.
In conclusion, he is an idiot, and his odd ramblings and gesticulating, should be avoided akin to looking directly into Cthulhu's eye holes, you will go mad trying to comprehend thoughts so alien to humankind.
P.S. Someone jokingly mentioned a unit of time for Public Domain being a DukeNukem which would translate to 15 orbits of our sun, which really isn't all that a bad idea. Duke Nukem 3D and Masters of Orion, Warcraft, would all have been in the public domain 4 years ago.
I mean honestly law makers need to look and say, OK what is the rational here? How much value did any of these games make their owners? I am going to guess so close to zero that it matters not.
So how does it get copyright AND trade secret (and in some cases, Patent)?
And how does it get to the public domain if the source code isn't there?
The owners of the copyrights aren't holding up to their part of the bargain. So why should they get ANY of the benefits?
...and as far as I'm concerned, it is.
No you don't have the right to make money indefinitely from work you, or in most cases others, did once.
No you don't have the right to hold our culture hostage.
I don't even think IP should be transferable, or if necessary, only very temporarily.
If you want to make it a fair test, only 20 year old content should be included. Unfortunately, despite their "PC Gaming since 1873" slogan, they haven't been around for that long.
It is mostly trademarks, yes, but if you are a publisher, you obviously need both.
thief, for example, might have dated visuals, but there's nothing lacking in terms of gameplay or experience, and if given some fresh visuals, could stand against some other things I've played lately.
Totally agree with you with respect to Thief. I've actually been playing Thief II recently. The gameplay is so good, and the concept and missions so interesting that I still enjoy playing it 14 years later.
The graphics are of course abysmal by today's standards. But, I think it's worth noting that if Thief or Thief II was "given some fresh visuals" as you say, it would qualify for a new copyright. Besides, if someone went through the trouble of updating visuals, they'd probably release new missions as well, at which point you simply have a sequel.
BTW, there is a multiplayer mod for Thief II floating around, and it does work... it can be great fun if you have another Thief lover!
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Can't tell what Gaynor's defending here; he correctly pins down the idea-expression divide, but seem unaware that copyright restricts people from creating derivative works.
I'm of the opinion that a good beginning to copyright reform would be immediate (or 2-year delayed) permission for anyone to create derivative works that are reasonably distinct from the original.
I welcome Gaynor to the fight for more reasonable copyright as soon as he figures out that's the side he's on.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
The Slashdot freeloaders are probably quickly to approve the idea, but let's think it from the opposite perspective. You are now Nolan Bushnell or Trip Hawkins, and have the responsibility of running a successful business. Would games being moved PD just like that be bad for the business and brand protection of a video game company? I challenge you try to convince me wrong with a calm and well-reasoned opinion.
You beg the question: If the question were 'what is good for the business and brand protection of a video game company', the answer would be 'the right to do whatever it wants forever and ever and also a big fat subsidy.'
The question is 'what is a good implementation of what copyright law is supposed to do?'
Well, let's see... "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries". There we go. That is the sole criterion governing congress's power to establish copyright laws.
Yeah, Mickey Mouse will potentially enter the public domain in (I think) 2018.
No, he doesn't.
It is the silent-era shorts and the early talkies that enter the public domain.
That does not give you access to primary sources. Prints on nitrate stock. Sheet music or sound tracks that can be read outside the laboratory.
The expiration of the copyright on "Steamboat Willie" only gives you the right to create derivatives based on the story and characters of "Steamboat Willie." You do not get the Mouse or his world in any other of their many incarnations. No Pluto. No "Phantom Blot."
You do not get the rights to Disney's trademarked character designs.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/D...
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
The original framers of the constitution recognized this at the founding of the republic.
"The Congress shall have Power To...promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries...."
Nobody objects to people having the protection of a limited copyright so that they can profit from their ideas. Everyone - including, I'd argue, most copyright holders but excepting apparently their very successful lobbyists and tame congresspeople - agrees that "copyright" != "rights to exclusivity in perpetuity so that person and their heirs never have to work again".
-Styopa
If you are not actively selling or supporting a version of publicly available software, then there is no reason for you to have any protections for said software. If someone cannot acquire or purchase the license from you, how can you claim "theft" if someone copies it or acquires it from third parties? There really should be allowances fro abandonware in IP law. There are some provisions dealing with abandonware, but they don't nearly go far enough. If you want to make some new version of Pac Man for the X-Box One, you can keep the protections for the character and such, but unless you actively support and sell the Commodore 64 version, you shouldn't get any special protections for that.
I did RTFA and he had some public domain paintings in the article. Can anyone identify this painting? http://www.rockpapershotgun.co...
-Xoltri
When books are out of print, or videogames not available for purchase for a certain length of time, then third parties should be able to "do something with them" without being labeled pirates. Original creators should still collect royalties, and I think there should be clearly established legal guidelines for each industry for royalties to be paid to the original copyright holder so people know what to expect. No negotiation is required, standard rates will apply if you let your stuff "expire" like that.
If the concern is that works are just being lost from our culture, a compromise move like this would address it, and provide people with incentive to keep their stuff available for sale.
The confusion in the public eye, intentionally created by some, is between the actual authors/creators and the copyright holders.
They are often not the same.
I've also written a much longer reply to John's Editorial on my own forum.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
And coincidentally, 15 years is the maximum duration that copyrights should last, according to the only proper study of economic incentives surrounding copyright of which I am aware.
We could use some more research on this, but it sounds okay to me.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I propose we limit copyright to a term no greater than that of patent, and require that the source code of any software be provided in the copyright filings so that it cannot be lost.
I feel your second point is terribly important, and often lost in the discussion. When an author writes a book, and it enters the public domain even after 100 years, we don't have problems then reproducing the work 100 years later. If one copy survives, we can reproduce it with a little work. If you have a copy of a piece of software from 100 years ago, who knows what your options will be? The operating system that your software ran on will no longer be in use. The hardware that the operating system ran on will no longer exist. Even if there are emulators, there's the issue of copy protection-- Will keys be made available? Will the authentication/activation server be running?
The only way to hope to make these things available for posterity is to provide source code. Then, even if you have to rewrite it a bit to make it work on current platforms, you'll be able to do that.
Therefore, I believe we should change copyright law for software, to say that for a piece of software to be protected by copyright, a copy of the source code must be provided to the Library of Congress. It can sit in a vault for however long the copyright holds, at which point it's republished under the public domain.
Don't you understand? Disney's ability to take now-important cultural artifacts and lock them in their "vault" until they develop enough value to sell briefly again is for the artists who got their cut when it was made and won't see a dime of the new profits, so they keep making things, well past retirement.
I challenge you try to convince me wrong with a calm and well-reasoned opinion.
Instead they mod you Troll. Good to see people still understand what the word "Discussion" means.
Nobody objects to people having the protection of a limited copyright so that they can profit from their ideas.
I guess I do, technically.
First, copyright protects expressions of ideas, but not the underlying ideas themselves. E.g. anyone can make a game about a woman who hunts for treasure by raiding tombs and shooting endangered wildlife. But you can't just outright copy Tomb Raider's code, art assets, and so forth.
Second, the reason for granting copyrights isn't so that people can profit from their works, but so that the public profits from having more works created and published than otherwise would've been, and in the public domain as much as possible, as soon as possible. That copyrights may have economic value which can provide a profit for authors is a side effect, a means to an end. It's not the actual point, though.
I don't have an objection to copyright generally, however, provided that it produces a better outcome for the public than if we didn't have copyright.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
If you want a game like [your favorite game here]? Just write it; that's what the author did in the first place. Oh wait, you don't want to make the same investment they did? Boo hoo.
Homeopathy may not be medicine, but plenty of vaccines work on the same principles.
The fact that GOG.com is a viable business kills his point that old games have no economic value.
Actually, it does not. GOG.com does value-added work on old games. There is no evidence that the games themselves maintain any significant economic benefit without that work. As I understand it, GOG.com fixes the game and those fixes should be entitled to copyright protection for a suitable length of time, however, the underlying games should no longer have any protection. Do you really think it's reasonable that the source code for Pacman, for example, will be protected by copyright until 2055 at the earliest?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Set up a site that republishes all of John Walker's 20 year old writings. See if he complains, I dare you.
Of course, to show integrity you'll have to share any advertising revenue from your site with John. I bet he thanks you for it.
Well, 10 years is fine, maybe a bit longer, but more importantly, 'supporting works' should be submitted with the government to maintain the copyright... in other words, software source code would have to be submitted to the government and kept in the Library of Congress, made available when the copyright expires.
Let's call this a measure to protect the heritage of technology.
The side issue is trademarks. I don't have a problem with trademarks not expiring (i.e., nobody could make a Mickey Mouse movie, though the copyright might have expired on Steamboat Willie, for example).
In that light, you'd be able to, say, use Duke Nukem code to make a new game after the copyright expires, but you wouldn't be able to make money on the Duke Nukem character. The repository would give open source a boost, though there would be problems with the tools themselves.
I think the copyright period should be extended if the work is receiving "active and significant" support - i.e. the application or game is receiving regular enhancements and not abandoned.
I propose we limit copyright to a term no greater than that of patent, and require that the source code of any software be provided in the copyright filings so that it cannot be lost.
Copyright protection is automatic. You don't have to file for it. Anything you write that is an original work is protected automatically, even one-off comments on a technology news site.
Patents are where I see a potential for saving public domain. Many, perhaps most, Slashdot users here will disagree with me, but I don't think code should automatically qualify as speech, nor should most code enjoy copyright protection. Most code is more analogous to a machine than to literary text or visual art. Machines, when broken down to their lowest components, machines are devises that use energy to transform matter into different forms. Code is a construct that uses energy to transform data into other forms of data. Code can be art, like a painting or a sculpture, and it can be used to convey information and ideas, like a book or a play. But by and large, most code is written to do a job, like cellphone firmware, or to be a tool, like a web browser or a word processor. Code like this should not be copyrighted, but it should be patentable, just like the machines they are.
Here is where patent law has failed us. Software patent applications should, by law, include full source code or at least psudo-code. If you look up the patent information for any physical machine, you could follow those designs to reproduce that machine. Not so with software patents, which are notoriously vague.
Moreover, if a piece of software is protected under patent, it should not get the benefit of copyright protection, or vice-verse.
I agree. Software should be in the same realm as patents. You have to disclose how they work (source code) and then the government grants you exclusive rights to sell that for the next XX years.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Everything should enter the public domain quicker than it does now.
This did happen. A lot.
A consortium held the patent on the idea of a car, and would grant or deny the right to build one at the dawn of the 20th century. This patent was eventually fought by Henry Ford after the consortium refused to grant him a license.
Maganox held a patent on the idea of a home video game system. Atari, Mattel, Activision, and Nintendo all paid royalties to build a home video game
Thomas Edison held a patent on movies. Hollywood arose, in part, due to filmmakers running as far away from Edison as possible to avoid his patent enforcement.
I'm not defending infinite copyright, just pointing out that his example isn't as absurd as it seems. History is full of examples. And yes, I do understand the difference between a patent and copyright. The original author lumped the two types of IP together in his analogy.
Core reason why? Their limited shelf life. I happen to own the original Doom series, and in a fit of nostalgia, I decided to reload it on my new computer. After a hell of a lot of tinkering, as well as using an open-source engine mod, I was able to get it running again. More often than not, I've ended up chucking my old games simply because it's not worth the effort to get them working again. Yes, I have DOSBox on my system, but seriously, what's the point?
Manufacturers aren't going to be marketing them, and to be honest, few people are going to go through the effort of trying to make it work on new systems. So complaining that they shouldn't move into the public domain long after their day in sun is done feels more like "my precioussss..." than any economic argument.
I think content publishers and creators are significantly more threatened by the value of old IP compared to new ones. Trying to compete with a massive back catalogue must appear daunting, despite intervening advances in technology and fashion. If anything, it seems like the prevailing strategy in software is to promote consumption of new content by forcing the unavailability of older content through IP enforcement. Aside from projects like GOG, I rarely see feature-sufficient older works maintained or sold even though the incremental cost to do so seems low after limiting support.
While attribution and copyright are lumped together they should not be. You should have the right for your work to carry your name indefinitely, others shouldn't be allowed to claim your work as theirs.
In many non-US countries attribution and copyright are not in fact lumped together. The concept of moral rights allows for perpetual claims to attribution, while copyright's economic aspects are dealt with separately.
The U.S. does not really have moral rights (except, technically, a bastardized form in the VARA), which unfortunately forces us to rely more on copyright for issues of attribution, thereby confusing the issue.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
No. They don't. At all. Homeopathy "works" on the principle that after dilution of a solution dozens of times, until such point as there is statistically no solute left, the water has somehow retained some magical behavior from that solute, and behaves as medicine. That's right, all homeopathic remedies are nothing more than water. They're a complete scam, and there's no counter to that fact, at all, ever.
They may also have various inert chemicals such as thickeners or coloring for purposes of packaging.
They may also have various active chemicals that actually behave as medicine, or at least cause some physiological effect to make you think the product is doing something worthwhile, but they are claimed to be inactive, because the "active" content is nothing more than water.
Yah I have to put homeworld in a category of its own. I haven't played a game since that holds up so well 15 years after its release. That feeling when you're trying to save the cryo-tubes, Adagio for Strings is playing, and that overwhelming sense of hopelessness. One of those few games that is truly a work of art. I've played and replayed lots of games from that era (spent a lot of time in descent on KALI) but overall I think that is the one game that is quintessentially unique.
It's not fair to say, "Only one game deserves such a protection" though. You can't fairly say one game is excepted, so you have to accept that all games should be allowed to keep their copyrights/trademarks. Even the crappy ones.
But if copyright only lasts 15 years, then anyone could make a terrible Robocop reboot instead of the one official terrible reboot.
When an AC calls everyone freeloaders, they're a troll. Discussion actually involves... a discussion. An AC firing off an inflammatory comment and then leaving, never to return, is not a discussion.
OK, see here's the deal.
The RPS author mentions 20 years. I'm assuming it's because 20 years is an arbitrary-ish figure he settled on.
It's 2014, so 20 years ago is 1994.
Really what he was getting at originally was that it was somewhat bizarre that computer games from the 1980's are still considered copyrighted and illegal to distribute, even if the original developers, publishers, etc. have long since gone defunct.
So I really think the author should have said 25 years or something like that but just for the sake of discussion let's stick with 20.
The game Super Mario Bros. from Nintendo was released in 1985. That's almost thirty years ago. So, by a blanket application of his proposition, SMB would have gone PD back in 2005. Anyone could do anything they wanted with the game and there would be nothing Nintendo could do about it.
But this smacks of unfair for one reason - Nintendo is still around. And they're still selling SMB. You can get it on Virtual Console on Wii, Wii U and 3DS.
The author isn't necessarily proposing that a developer should only get to make money off of his or her creation for 20 years, or at least that's not how I'm interpreting it.
Let's take another example - there's a critically acclaimed game called No One Lives Forever, a somewhat wacky spy caper with a female protagonist that has a parody of James Bond in the 60's thing happening. The game was developed by Monolith and published by Fox Interactive. Fox got bought by Activision, Activision merged with Blizzard, and Monolith got bought by Warner Bros. Long story short, no one can release the game on GOG because no one knows who owns it. But someone does, in theory. However it will be a long time before anyone sorts it out because there is, in theory, not enough money for anyone to care.
By the way copyright works today, NOLF will be illegal to distribute until 2090. Who knows what will happen by then? If we lived in a perfect world where piracy and copyright infringement didn't exist, then the only places NOLF would exist are on the hard drives of Monolith and the discs of whoever bought the game - what are the odds either would be functional in 2090?
But a dirty little secret is you can go download NOLF right now on torrent sites. Anyone can download it. Thanks to copyright infringement it will never truly go away.
This happens in other sectors, too. There's about a hundred of the original Dr. Who episodes from the 1960's or so which are lost because the BBC taped over them. I'm not kidding, they seriously never thought that anyone would want to watch them in the future. But every so often a few turn up - they put nine episodes on iTunes a few months ago - all because someone somewhere found some tape they were either supposed to return to the BBC, or someone taped them and didn't realize they still had them.
So going back to SMB, Nintendo is actually sort of doing the right thing here. Sure, they're basically selling a ROM image and an emulator, and the only people who get to play SMB are the ones who paid for it, but the point is they can get it, play it, and pay for it. It's available.
But if Nintendo had closed up shop in 1995 or something would it really benefit anyone to have to wait until 2075 to be able to play SMB again in our piracy-does-not-exist fantasy land?
GeorgeB3DR is getting upset about this because he is still selling those old games and still making a living off of it. The hard-and-fast 20 year proposal would fuck him over. But the point is he's still selling them.
Let's say that we had a different rule - if your game hasn't been available for ten years for sale it goes PD. GeorgeB3DR would be fine. Nintendo would be fine. And we could distribute NOLF all we want.
Of course, under this rule it's possible that ActiVendiFoxoLith would get their shit together and hash out who owns what and release it for sale on GOG or something. Sure, we wouldn't be able to just distribute NOLF for free that way, but isn't it better that we ha
Schnapple
Well as to the first Disney has sued other for creating stories about 'Cinderella' that were animated, even though the Cinderella story predates any animated work by them. The animation was not the same and no copying was done. Simba the White Lion is another example which predates The Lion King (and is most likely the primary inspiration for it), yet they went to court over it. Disney realistically will sue over works that bare any similarity based on underlying story or plot.
As for the second... The hope is that a limited time of exclusive rights to their work gives a monetary incentive to create more works. However this is hit or miss as our system has long since made things nearly impossible to ever became public domain and create the core of the next generation of works. It has become the way for corporations and surviving relations to artists, writers, and anyone else owning a copyright on something to make money without any effort or additions on their part.
I'd argue that maybe copyright has some place, but what we have now is simply ugly and hugely disruptive. It may make more sense to discard it for a time.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
"It seems absurd to me that a work be protected for 95 years when the medium it was produced for will last less than a decade."
Which actually makes be think that at this point in time, 20 years is far far too long. 4 years, in my opinion, is a lot closer to some theoretical ideal timeframe (possibly with extensions for when the owners are using, updating, and expanding on the work). I think with something like that, content creators would invariably have far more freedom, and invariably make more money.
I think the biggest issue is the fan scene is greatly helped, which will bring more attention and money to the original creators.
And freeing up the licences from the publishers, so that the original creators cannot be shut out of their work in perpetuity.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Consider Spiderman.
The character was created in 1962, which puts it just over 50 years of existence. But the character is still being used in new and ongoing works. I expect that 100 years from now, the character will continue to exist in some form.
I think copyright laws need to recognize that characters used in ongoing works need different protection then something like a song (which is written once).
END COMMUNICATION
What we definitely don't want is special laws for video games. That's a Very Bad Thing.
Why?
It's patently obvious that some classes of work have longer copyright-related economic lifespans than others.
A daily newspaper loses most of its copyright related economic value by the evening of the day it is published, at best. The next day it's fit for nothing better than to line birdcages or wrap fish. Weekly magazines don't last long either, nor do certain TV programs. OTOH, a math textbook can easily sell well for decades, and a movie can be released and rereleased in various different media and venues for years.
Video games and computer software are on the shorter end of the continuum. Five years is plenty.
And there's nothing wrong with wanting free shit. If we didn't want free shit, we wouldn't have copyrights to begin with; the whole point is to cause there to be greater amounts of free shit in the end than there otherwise would be.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Well, dead or alive, you don't have to watch them.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
As long as the game is actively for sale, I don't see anything wrong with the copyright holder continuing to make money from it. The problem is when games and other works can no longer be found for sale. For other works the copyright ownership might be unknowable. For these works, they should be in the public domain. To me this strikes the right balance. If someone cares enough to keep the game working on current hardware, they can keep the copyright. If they no longer care about the game, then the public can have it.
The original framers of the constitution recognized this at the founding of the republic.
"The Congress shall have Power To...promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries...."
Nobody objects to people having the protection of a limited copyright so that they can profit from their ideas. Everyone - including, I'd argue, most copyright holders but excepting apparently their very successful lobbyists and tame congresspeople - agrees that "copyright" != "rights to exclusivity in perpetuity so that person and their heirs never have to work again".
You do realize that SCOTUS has ruled that limited times is subject to the "I'll know it when I see it" rule of being out of bounds. They have yet to see a number that they've declared limited. Of course, it's all about perspective. In a geologic time scale, then 100 years is very "limited".
What I would like to see is a "short-circut" timer based on dates of publication. If a work is not published at all (made available to the public in some form), then it gets a shorter protection time. Once a work is published, the date it is no longer available (ie, the book goes out of print, the software is no longer sold), then another timer starts - you have X amount of time to re-publish it (say 10 years) or it passes into the public domain.
As I understand it, GOG.com fixes the game and those fixes should be entitled to copyright protection for a suitable length of time
As I understand it, GOG applies patches that the community has already implemented and freely given away.
If that's the case, then it looks like GOG isn't actually doing any work that's worthy of protection.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Don't you understand? Disney's ability to take now-important cultural artifacts and lock them in their "vault" until they develop enough value to sell briefly again is for the artists who got their cut when it was made and won't see a dime of the new profits, so they keep making things, well past their decomposition.
FTFY
Time to offend someone
Please elaborate? I'm not following that train of logic.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
Source code for games aren't very useful - games are some of the worst-programmed pieces of software out there. They were written to get it working quick, not to be maintainable - once it's shipped, that's it, onto the next game. Very few games actually survive longer than release - like say, StarCraft and such which still get patches years later. But those are the exception and not the rule.
If there's any reuse at all, it's probably in the code that's meant to be reused - i.e., the engine. The scaffolding that integrates the engine into the game will probably be thrown away because it's not useful. Heck, the engine might be thrown out and the next game uses a fresh copy.
As for IP protection - software is really special. It doesn't fit in the copyright regime well, nor does it fit in the patent regime. Yet obviously it needs protection. Instead of trying to fit square pegs in round holes (like we do with software), it's time to realize that software IS special and can easily fit in multiple categories.
After all, copyright was traditionally used to protect creative works - works that humans use to communicate with other humans. Patents protect things - works that humans use to produce something. But software can be both - it can be used to create, or assist the creation of creative works, or it can be used to help create things.
And anyone complaining that software shouldn't be patented is missing the point completely - because the line is extremely fine. If I make a machine using gears and other bits (or electronic logic circuits and opamps and such) and it's novel, it's obvious it can be patented. But if I decide to do all the processing in software while using a generic hardware interfaces, then the entire system can't be patented?
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it's time to realize that software IS different, it cannot fit neatly in any existing IP protection category, and it really deserves a different set of rules in order to protect it.
And anyone complaining that software shouldn't be patented is missing the point completely - because the line is extremely fine. If I make a machine using gears and other bits (or electronic logic circuits and opamps and such) and it's novel, it's obvious it can be patented. But if I decide to do all the processing in software while using a generic hardware interfaces, then the entire system can't be patented?
Well, the reason why I'm opposed to software patents is because I don't think they're necessary. There are such significant incentives to invent and bring to market inventions in the field of software that a patent monopoly really has no meaningful incentivizing effect. And software does a pretty good job of disclosing itself; it's very open to being reverse engineered, so disclosure isn't a good reason to grant software patents either.
We could probably stop granting software patents and see the pace of invention in that field increase. Sounds like a good reason to me. If it slows down, we could revisit the matter. Same thing with business methods.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
When dealing with woo, there is no train of logic. What the OP said is correct. Some people believe if you add something to water, then dilute that water to the point where there might be a single part per billion (or even trillion) of that substance in the water, that somehow, magically, the water will "remember" what was put in it and act as a conduit for a "cure" of what ails you.
In fact, when you read homeopathic literature they will tell you the more dilute a substance is, the stronger its potency.
What these scam artists fail to explain is how water can retain this memory of a substance while completely forgetting about all the piss, feces, rotting vegetable matter and dead carcasses that have been run through it over the eons. By their own logic, these substances, by being so dilute, should be exponentially more powerful than whatever they put in the water.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Eat moar chikin" Pablo Picasso
Really? Cause I don't see it.
What I see most brands being sold to China then run into the ground. See MTD mowers for a prime example. Would you ever consider buying a mower from one of their brands? Not long ago 'Troy built' was worth something, not anymore.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Source code for games aren't very useful - games are some of the worst-programmed pieces of software out there.
None the less, if you were trying to get a Windows 3.1 game to run on Windows 8.1, and it kept crashing, I would bet that having access to the source code would increase your chances of solving that problem.
The original framers of the constitution recognized this at the founding of the republic.
"The Congress shall have Power To...promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries...."
Nobody objects to people having the protection of a limited copyright so that they can profit from their ideas. Everyone - including, I'd argue, most copyright holders but excepting apparently their very successful lobbyists and tame congresspeople - agrees that "copyright" != "rights to exclusivity in perpetuity so that person and their heirs never have to work again".
You do realize that SCOTUS has ruled that limited times is subject to the "I'll know it when I see it" rule of being out of bounds. They have yet to see a number that they've declared limited. Of course, it's all about perspective. In a geologic time scale, then 100 years is very "limited".
What I would like to see is a "short-circut" timer based on dates of publication. If a work is not published at all (made available to the public in some form), then it gets a shorter protection time. Once a work is published, the date it is no longer available (ie, the book goes out of print, the software is no longer sold), then another timer starts - you have X amount of time to re-publish it (say 10 years) or it passes into the public domain.
I'd go further. The fact is, no one can make anything without the help of other people. It could be as simple as the fact that someone else grows your food, someone works in factories to package that food. Same with clothes. How about TV? No one comes up with ideas without input from other things around them. You can't write a book with out education, without experience stuff. Which requires other people.
The truth is, no one can make anything without the help of other people, and this is why stuff should go into the public domain after 14 years.
Be seeing you...
... Do you really think it's reasonable that the source code for Pacman, for example, will be protected by copyright until 2055 at the earliest?
I'm going to venture that the source code for Pacman and most of those era video games are long lost.
Be seeing you...
But this smacks of unfair for one reason - Nintendo is still around. And they're still selling SMB. You can get it on Virtual Console on Wii, Wii U and 3DS.
But why it that unfair? Why should Nintendo receive a monopoly on making copied of SMB for more than 25 years?
Remember the whole point of modern copyright is that a temporary monopoly (14 years, originally) on creative works (books, originally) would provide incentive to have more books written and published. The alternative was one where every book immediately entered the public domain, and nothing (save the collusion to prevent flooding the market and destroying their own profit) prevented every publisher from printing every book, and copyright was chosen because it was believed that it would enrich the public domain in total by more than the books that, at any one time, were locked up by copyright.
Of course we've extended copyright to other classes of works (whether because the music, movie, software etc. industries got big enough to hire lobbyists, or because we also thought society would benefit from more works of each class just as it did from more books -- or probably a mix of the two), and we've stretched the term of copyright as well*. But the only way in which 20 years is obviously "unfair" is that, at the time Nintendo created SMB, they were promised a longer term by then-current copyright law. Would a 20-year term for new works, starting today, be unfair? No -- if Nintendo thinks they can't make their money back with a reasonable ROI in 20 years, they can just not make a game under a 20-year copyright law. If this were the case in enough instances (not with Nintendo specifically, but the software industry as a whole), the change to copyright law could be ineffective, as our meager incentive isn't enough to yield the same creative output we hoped for, but it's not really unfair.
Now if we try to determine effectiveness rather than fairness, it should become obvious that our current copyright law, with one term for all covered works, isn't -- cannot be -- very effective. Works of different types require different typical levels of investment (e.g. millions of dollars and tens of thousands of man-hours for movies, while some novels are churned out in less than a thousand man-hours), offer different value to society (not that it's clear how to measure it, but at least for entertainment works, could be argued as proportional to the length of a movie, hours to read a book, or hours to play through a game, multiplied by the level of enjoyment in those hours?), and exhibit different typical turnover periods, and all those parameters have to be incorporated in an optimization to maximize the public-domain return on society's temporary monopoly investment. It's insanely improbable that these factors happen to balance each other out so that one term suits all forms of creative work.
*The term extensions are obviously not entirely, if at all, about incentivizing new works, since any extension for that purpose would only apply to newly created works, rather than to older works that were already created with a shorter term. Since many if not all copyright term extensions from the last century have retroactively lengthened terms on extant works, which is just as unfair to society as retroactively shortening the term on SMB would be to Nintendo, we can be sure it's at least partly about plain old rent-seeking.
Nobody objects to people having the protection of a limited copyright so that they can profit from their ideas.
I do. No one deserves government-enforced monopolies over ideas or procedures that, in their enforcement, infringe upon privacy property rights and free speech rights. Find your own business model; don't beg the government to enforce a monopoly for you.
No, it most certainly does not. You need to go read the Constitution. It does not establish copyright. It gives Congress the power, if it so chooses, to establish a LIMITED system whereby creators are given TEMPORARY monopolies on their ideas, EXPRESSLY for the purpose of encouraging the creation of new works. Copyright exists to enrich the public domain, as per the Constitution.
So, essentially exactly what the grandparent poster said...
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Right, I understand the quack perspectives behind homeopathic medicine. What I fail to understand is how the Kremmy is equating the principles of homeopathy and the principles of vaccinations, unless I'm fundamentally misunderstanding how vaccinations work. Or I'm fundamentally mis-reading what Kremmy is trying to communicate, which is always a possibility.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
Brand protection MATTERS. It's worth hundreds of billions in the US alone. And that's a lot of jobs and a lot of livelihoods, which the government would be idiotic to ignore, especially if the only real opposition is flocking to torrents regardless the legal outcome.
Ignoring the idea that protecting brands are more important than advancing culture and the arts.
Brands aren't really protected by copyrights, they're protected by trade marks. The most valuable brands like Coca-cola or McDonalds don't really have that much copyrighted (in fact they benefit from a lack of copyright, locking up the use of McWhatever only harms the brand because to remain relevant and valuable, the brand has to remain on people's minds).
99 out of the top 100 most valuable brands sell products or services, only one was entertainment (Disney at #26). Copyrights don't really help brands.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
If that's the case, then it looks like GOG isn't actually doing any work that's worthy of protection.
If my mechanic were to rebuild an engine for me, should I have to pay the mechanic once for his time and materials or every time I use the engine in the next 25 years?
So GOG's work is not worthy of protection, but it is worthy of payment as they are providing a service which has value (not everyone wants to buggerise around with DOSBOX settings).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
But this smacks of unfair for one reason - Nintendo is still around. And they're still selling SMB. You can get it on Virtual Console on Wii, Wii U and 3DS.
...and even if it was public domain, they would still do this. The only thing that would be available for free are ROMs online -- and guess what, those have been available for years. Sure those almost certainly aren't legal, but nobody cares to prosecute.
They're not still selling the original. They're selling ports. So, first, those ports are derivative works and should get all the same protections...meaning new copyright terms. You can do your own port (from the raw machine code; nothing says they have to release source), but you can't freely distribute Nintendo's. But...you also CAN'T actually do your own port, because Nintendo retains exclusive control over distribution for Nintendo consoles.
So your best option there would be to try to sell an emulator and give away the ROMs as that's gonna be far less work than trying to reverse-engineer and port the ROMs...which it turns out is *exactly* what's going on today. Except nobody really sells emulators because there's not enough of a market and because the console makers probably won't let them.
When an AC calls everyone freeloaders, they're a troll. Discussion actually involves... a discussion. An AC firing off an inflammatory comment and then leaving, never to return, is not a discussion.
What proof do you have whether an AC returns or not? If you have any proof, they are not an AC.
There can be no discussion without continuity. Without continuity, you merely have a series of one-off rebuttals. Without some form of identifying symbol, there is no way for an AC to be actively involved in any discussion. It matters not if they are written by the same entity or not, because as you say, there is no proof one way or another.
http://www.unvanquished.net/ You can thank me later.
Liberty.
The core reasoning for the troll is that homeopathy works by using substances that are known to cause ills, which is something core to vaccinations - many of them rely on deactivated or "dead" cells from the original ailment to train the body to fight against it. The dilution stuff is pretty silly, but the basic idea is important. My comments on the subject, however, are all about trolling.
From: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy...
"The copyright system developed along with the printing press. In the age of the printing press, it was unfeasible for an ordinary reader to copy a book. Copying a book required a printing press, and ordinary readers did not have one. What's more, copying in this way was absurdly expensive unless many copies were made--which means, in effect, that only a publisher could copy a book economically.
So when the public traded to publishers the freedom to copy books, they were selling something which they could not use. Trading something you cannot use for something useful and helpful is always good deal. Therefore, copyright was uncontroversial in the age of the printing press, precisely because it did not restrict anything the reading public might commonly do.
But the age of the printing press is gradually ending. The xerox machine and the audio and video tape began the change; digital information technology brings it to fruition. These advances make it possible for ordinary people, not just publishers with specialized equipment, to copy. And they do!
Once copying is a useful and practical activity for ordinary people, they are no longer so willing to give up the freedom to do it. They want to keep this freedom and exercise it instead of trading it away. The copyright bargain that we have is no longer a good deal for the public, and it is time to revise it--time for the law to recognize the public benefit that comes from making and sharing copies.
With this analysis, we see why rejection of the old copyright bargain is not based on supposing that the Internet is ineffably unique. The Internet is relevant because it facilitates copying and sharing of writings by ordinary readers. The easier it is to copy and share, the more useful it becomes, and the more copyright as it stands now becomes a bad deal."
See also: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/... ... ...
"Something strange and dangerous is happening in copyright law. Under the US Constitution, copyright exists to benefit users--those who read books, listen to music, watch movies, or run software--not for the sake of publishers or authors. Yet even as people tend increasingly to reject and disobey the copyright restrictions imposed on them "for their own benefit," the US government is adding more restrictions, and trying to frighten the public into obedience with harsh new penalties.
How did copyright policies come to be diametrically opposed to their stated purpose? And how can we bring them back into alignment with that purpose? To understand, we should start by looking at the root of United States copyright law: the US Constitution.
The copyright bargain places the public first: benefit for the reading public is an end in itself; benefits (if any) for publishers are just a means toward that end. Readers' interests and publishers' interests are thus qualitatively unequal in priority. The first step in misinterpreting the purpose of copyright is the elevation of the publishers to the same level of importance as the readers.
The second mistake in copyright policy consists of adopting the goal of maximizing--not just increasing--the number of published works. The erroneous concept of "striking a balance" elevated the publishers to parity with the readers; this second error places them far above the readers.
Diminishing returns applies to copyright just as to any other purchase. The first freedoms we should trade away are those we miss the least, and whose sacrifice gives the largest encouragement to publication. As we trade additional freedoms that cut closer to home, we find that each trade is a bigger sacrifice than the last, while bringing a smaller increment in literary activity. Well before the increment becomes zero,
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.