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.'"

Comments

Picasso

[PvtVoid]

"Good artists borrow. Great artists steal."

Pablo Picasso

Re:Picasso

[contrapunctus]

"Good artists borrow. Great artists steal."

me

Re:Picasso

[Anonymous Coward]

It's your right to keep it locked in a safe. If you share it then it is no longer yours. You can scream mine mine mine all you want, but you don't deserve to be perpetually paid for the limited time and effort you invested *once*. Want to keep getting paid? Then keep creating.

Re:Picasso

[jythie]

Well, the point of copyright law is to support the arts and increase common culture. So if short copyrights result in a richer culture of works, then it should be the case. There is no 'god given right' here, all we have are a set of laws intended to benefit everyone, helping the author enforce their will is just a side effect or implementation detail.

Re:Picasso

[meta-monkey]

But here's the thing. There is no natural right to a story or an idea. It's not like a physical object that if I take it from you, you no longer have it and no longer have use of it.

So you tell a story and you don't want anybody else to tell that same story, or to tell a similar story, or to tell a completely different story using characters in your story. What about my right to free speech? Why does your desire to maintain exclusivity of an idea you came up with trump my natural right to free speech? I'm not trying to force you to do anything. But you are trying to force me to shut up. So if you're going to employ the government's monopoly on force to make me shut up, there better be a damn good reason.

And there is a good reason why my right to free speech should, temporarily, be sacrificed in favor of your artificial, government-enforced monopoly on an idea. We collectively agree to curtail our free speech rights for a limited time to encourage people to come up with new ideas. It's a deal. It's an artificial social contract wherein we collectively agree to forgo our free speech rights for a time such that you may gain reasonable profits from your new idea, and then we all get the benefit of the creation of the new idea. The Founders recognized this in their establishment of the copyright and patent offices.

So you see the difference? You're acting like you have a fundamental, natural right to your idea/story/song/whatever, but you don't. You have a temporary, artificial, government-enforced privilege. I have the natural, unalienable free speech right to repeat your idea/story/song/whatever. So don't act like somebody copying your work is infringing upon your natural rights. Your desire to maintain exclusivity of your work is infringing upon my free speech rights, and I'll let you do that for a time, but not forever, and not if you're a dick about it. And the media companies in the US are hell-bent on maintaining their privilege forever, and are totally being dicks about it, too.

Re:Picasso

[Phernost]

You cannot create anything in a vacuum. Your time and resources may be of your own but, your effort is build upon the effort of those who came before you. Asking for repayment of your time and resources is reasonable. Asking for indefinite repayment on all similar creations, while holding to the naive idea that all effort was yours alone, is disingenuous if not fraudulent. If you have enhanced society with your contributed effort then, society should reward you.

The only debate is the terms of that reward, nothing more, nothing less. The false notion that effort entitles one to complete dominion over similar effort is new, relatively speaking, and not universally agreed upon as being reasonable. I would argue that, monetary rewards be the only reward, and that false dominion is for those who are selfish and lack awareness.

An honest man borrows and stands on the shoulders of others. A dishonest man claims he alone is the progenitor. See original quote.

From your previous statements, it would seem you are dishonest, if not selfish ... or I'm reading into this too much.

Re:Picasso

[meta-monkey]

So you see the difference? You're acting like you have a fundamental, natural right to your idea/story/song/whatever, but you don't.

It's called "property rights", and yes, he does.

No, he doesn't. Intellectual "property" is not property.

I have the natural, unalienable free speech right to repeat your idea/story/song/whatever.

No, you don't.

Yes, I do.

As a max time limit before entering public domain

[korbulon]

I suggest using a time unit of one "dukeNukeEm", which is approximately 15 years.

And A Rebuttal

[Anonymous Coward]

And a rebuttal by Steve Gaynor.

Re:And A Rebuttal

[jedidiah]

...and I don't really care about his excuses.

If it's been 20 or 30 years since you published something, then your time has passed already and it's time for you to step aside and allow the next generation a chance.

In the intervening period, a work has either become too important to hoard or too worthless to justify being a burden on anyone.

After 20 years, it's time for you to allow the next group of people to have the advantages that you were allowed.

Re:And A Rebuttal

[Jason Levine]

Exactly. Even if it comes down to earning money on works, long copyrights don't make sense. For example, here's a list of movies released 25 years ago in 1989 by US box office results: http://www.imdb.com/search/title?at=0&sort=boxoffice_gross_us&title_type=feature&year=1989,1989 Obviously, some of those (e.g. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) might still be making the companies some money while others (Fletch Lives) probably aren't. Even the movies making money are probably not making huge amounts.

Of the 3,166 titles that IMDB lists, how many are still actively making a decent amount of money for the companies that own them? If it is a small fraction, then why are we holding back Public Domain status on the vast majority just so a few movies can draw in a couple more bucks?

Re:And A Rebuttal

[vux984]

I mostly agree with you 100% with respect to the original work.

The main issue I see though is its short enough that derivative works become an issue.

Take books to movies. Runaway success like Hunger Games and Harry Potter will get made into movies within the 20 year copyright and the author will get some reward.

But any book that didn't get made into a movie in the first 3-5 years would probably languish for the next 15, and then get strip-mined by the film industry.

For some reason the idea of Hollywood sitting around strip mining books from the 90s without compensating the authors rubs me the wrong way. Especially knowing that they are literally waiting like vultures for them to roll over into the public domain precisely so they can deprive authors of any royalty or payment.

Likewise, I dislike the idea of musicians having their music co-opted without their consent into jingles to peddle stain removers and political parties in commercials.

So I propose that the copyright be broken up a bit.
a) The rights to basic broadcast and redistribution expire after 20 years. So you can make a copy of a movie, or a book or whatever after 20 years for free. You can show it in a theatre or school, etc.

b) However the rights over derivative works (book to movie, etc) and commercial re-purposing (e.g. advertising etc) are "75 years or life of the author + 5 years*, whichever is longer" or something, and requires active renewal for a nominal fee. (So that abandoned works automatically roll into the public domain quickly.)

(* + 5 years to prevent the inevitable strip mining of an authors estate right after they die, capitalizing on the news of their death as free marketing for whatever they produce by strip mining. So the estate can benefit a bit from that.)

Re:And A Rebuttal

[Baldorcete]

The answer is simple: Greed. They don't want their old (free) titles competing with the new.

Re:And A Rebuttal

[Jason Levine]

The problem with saying "Public Domain isn't the answer" is that Public Domain is the essential trade-off for copyright. The only reason people are given copyrights is that they are allowed a temporary monopoly on a work they created before it falls into the Public Domain. The Public Domain then helps feed the next round of creators who make works that copyright protects before they, in turn, fall into the Public Domain.

What we have today is works that essentially never leave copyright. If I released a book/movie/game/etc today, it would be covered by copyright until 2109 (assuming no law changes between now and then - a big assumption). The logic behind the copyright extension was that it would encourage the creator to make more books/movies/games/etc. The only problem is that I'd be 134 in the year 2109. If I'm even still alive then, I doubt I'll be in any shape to create many more works. If I'm not alive, then what is my copyright encouraging me to do? I doubt I'll rise zombie-like from the dead to pen a book about the after-life. ("It's Cold In The Ground" by Zombie Jason. But it before I eat your BRAAAIINNNSSS!!!!)

If the copyright expires on your work, you don't get any say in what people do with it. Were Shakespeare to come back to life today, he wouldn't have any say over some movie company making a modern musical version of Romeo and Juliet. Da Vinci wouldn't have a say in someone taking an image of the Mona Lisa and selling it on a postcard. If your work goes Public Domain and someone makes a "remix" version of it, that doesn't reflect poorly on you, but on the remix maker.

Copyrights NEED to expire at some point. It's hard enough trying to find out who owns the rights to Random Game From The 80s. Imagine trying to track down the rights holder for A Mid-Summer Night's Dream to make a movie based on it. It's not a question of SHOULD copyrights expire, but WHEN should they. I, and I'd wager most people here, think that copyright term length has been extended way past its usefulness and should be seriously trimmed back. (Personally, I'd go back to 14 years plus a one-time 14 year renewal, but at this point I'd take one 50 year copyright term as an improvement.)

Yeah, right ...

[gstoddart]

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.

Re:Yeah, right ...

[Kierthos]

Yeah, Mickey Mouse will potentially enter the public domain in (I think) 2018. Because the terrorists win if that happens, look for Disney to push for another copyright extension either right after midterm elections this year, or after the 2016 elections.

Re:Yeah, right ...

[CastrTroy]

Actually, it's 2023. And another important correction. Mickey Mouse cannot enter the public domain, because Disney has trademarked the character. Certain recordings can enter the public domain. but that doesn't mean people will be able to make new cartoons showing Mickey Mouse. Having century old recordings of Mickey go into the public domain will have zero effect on Disney's bottom line, since they do not sell these old cartoons anyway.

Re:As a max time limit before entering public doma

[Moryath]

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 Broussard

[Kinwolf]

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 problem George Broussard has

[PocketPick]

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.

Re:As a max time limit before entering public doma

[cpt kangarooski]

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.

Re:As a max time limit before entering public doma

[nine-times]

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.

Re:Article's arguments are weak.

[tbannist]

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?