Copyright is absurdly (way way) too long

decoyplatypus said:

These are all arguments for a perpetual copyright. Some of them condition the copyright on continued use, but that rule (a) provides no guarantee the work would ever enter the public domain, violating the "for limited times" principle, and in any case these posters don't propose any standard for a copyright being "in use." Does Disney just have to ship a single copy of Steamboat Willy on Blu-ray every ten years in order to keep it forever? A second proposed qualification, "as long as the business is still alive" is even more toothless. Businesses don't die the way humans do. They are (potentially) immortal, but the big ones generally get bought up by other businesses, along with their IP.

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I didn't realize we had to propose an actual working bill on copyright protections to voice an opinion that creators should be able to maintain ownership of their property. I really don't care for public domain if it means people lose the right to their hard work. If you want to use someone's character or story then pay for tge rights to license it, if they don't want you to use it then too bad, you will need to look elsewhere.

Imitation Of Life said:

Spoken like someone that has never created anything worthwhile or valuable.

Because family comes before general society...

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As a full time professional creator, I'm happy to contradict. I don't see why any one person, who's creative inspiration draws on a lifetime of exposure of to society's accumulated ideas - a treasury of creative artefacts considered the common inheritance of the entire species - should be able to create single derivative work from the atop this mass of contribution, claim sole creative responsibility, and wall it off for the exclusive benefit of themselves and their progeny for whole generations.

Say you write a novel which contains hundreds, likely thousands, of unique words, phases, expressions and language conventions accumulated from centuries of creative work by playwrights, poets, essayists, scriptwriters, novelists, public speakers, marketing directors or more; a remix of ideas and principles gifted by the ingenuity of others to wider society over the course of countless generations. Is that book the exclusive product of your ingenuity? No. But does society confer on your a right to take that single remix and reap exclusive benefit for a reasonable period of time? Sure. Should you e able to selfishly wall that off for generations. No, you don't have that right even in a rational sense.

To argue that you should have a legal right to wall off something in this manner is a form of entitlement far more absurd to me than the desire of a person to rip and share video games long out of circulation. The former is interested in selfish personal preservation, the latter in selfless cultural preservation - I know who gets my vote.

Dr Wily said:

"It should exist as long as they or their business is alive" is not perpetual, nor is "beyond authors death to their immediate descendants".

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I personally think that's too long too, if only because I dislike intergenerational wealth.

Remove the 'lifetime of creator' part altogether I say. 50 years from creation, irrespective of when the author dies. Covers all cases (companies owning something instead of people so the owner never 'dies') and allows immediate benefactors to get some value even if the creator dies soon-ish after creation.

Stuff like Mario/Harry Potter? They can be trademarked. Nobody should be able to make any Mario games except Nintendo. But Donkey Kong hits PD in 2031. Sounds pretty fair to me.

15 years plus one renewable term of 15 years. That's it. One generation at max.

D.Lo said:

I personally think that's too long too, if only because I dislike intergenerational wealth.

Remove the 'lifetime of creator' part altogether I say. 50 years from creation, irrespective of when the author dies. Covers all cases (companies owning something instead of people so the owner never 'dies') and allows immediate benefactors to get some value even if the creator dies soon-ish after creation.

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Which is fair enough - a fixed time limit for the creation from the first publication / distribution of the creation is fair.
If you die the week after something you've created hits it big, it is fair that the rights to that creation should go to your descendants, as with any other item of value.
Likewise if you want to sell the rights to something you've created to someone else to make business use of, that is also fair.

Its this idea that only the person who made a thing should earn anything from it "because corporations" or "because families doing nothing" that rings false.

Branduil said:

Current copyright law nearly universally benefits big corporations.

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Copyright is the only protection an individual creator has from big corporations. Every author who has had a book optioned or sold a screenplay, every musician who has licensed a track has benefited from copyright protection.

Moosichu said:

An interesting question not being discussed in this thread:
https://www.resetera.com/threads/ni...roms-threatens-gaming-history-pc-world.61552/

It's worth pointing out that there aren't any strong economic or artistic reasons for any NES games not to be in the public domain by now.

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Uh, please explain how? I mean other than your own subjective perception of the thing where you wish you could legally play all of those games for free?

Clearly there's still a strong economic reason: See how much money Nintendo is making from the NES Classic. NES games with online play is being seen as a massive plus-value of the Switch online subscription. They're still worth something and as long as Nintendo can monetize them, they should have the right to retain rights to them as they see fit. It's their creation.

Dr Wily said:

"It should exist as long as they or their business is alive" is not perpetual, nor is "beyond authors death to their immediate descendants".

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I just explained why "as long as the business is alive" is, in effect, perpetual. And you're inserting the words "immediate" before descendants. JealousKenny did not say "immediate" descendants. Hollywood Pescado said "forever." SCB360 said "belonging to a family." But if what they all really meant is that the copyright should extend until the author and all her immediate children are dead, whether or not they have sold/assigned the copyright to a corporation, then sure, that's not perpetual.

Dr Wily said:

The fact that the NES classic literally just outsold the PS4 in the US suggests that yes, there is a pretty fucking strong economic reason that NES games are not in the public domain

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Just because people are willing to pay for a product 30 years after its introduction doesn't mean this is for the greater good.

What if copyrights were still 28 years and NES games were public domain, encouraging Nintendo to develop new 8-bit games?

Zing said:

Just because people are willing to pay for a product 30 years after its introduction doesn't mean this is for the greater good.

What if copyrights were still 28 years and NES games were public domain, encouraging Nintendo to develop new 8-bit games?

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Do you honestly believe Nintendo would spend resources on developing new 8-bit games? What kind of lucid dreamland did you emerge from? It sounds nice. I wanna go there.

Do you honestly believe that economic decisions regarding intellectual property should be based on what your subjective perception of what "the greater good" is? That's like expecting pharmaceutical corporations to give their all their vaccines and cures away for free "because it's for the greater good". These things wouldn't happen in the first place if there wasn't a significant profit to be made from them. Come off your cloud man. We don't live in a eutopic communist society. This is capitalism and that's how it works.

Goddamn, someone is looking for a fight. Take a break from the Internet for a day or two, my friend. Think about things from a different perspective.

In case you weren't aware, pharmaceutical companies do have their products go into public domain, allowing "generic" medicine.

Zing said:

What if copyrights were still 28 years and NES games were public domain, encouraging Nintendo to develop new 8-bit games?

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If all NES games were public domain:
+ good for hardware manufacturers who just preload their hardware with a bunch of free games they don't have to pay any royalties for.
- bad for the people who originally made those games in the first place and want to resell them, which off the top of my head this generation includes Rare, Nintendo, Atari, Namco and Capcom.

So big business wins bigger.

Zing said:

In case you weren't aware, pharmaceutical companies do have their products go into public domain, allowing "generic" medicine.

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Remarkably quickly, at 20 years from patent filing in the US. I wonder if this means the mouse is more influential in congress, or if society places greater value on social benefit of patents expiring. Cure for malaria, vs Harry Potter?

inpHilltr8r said:

Remarkably quickly, at 20 years from patent filing in the US. I wonder if this means the mouse is more influential in congress, or if society places greater value on social benefit of patents expiring. Cure for malaria, vs Harry Potter?

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I mean... its a lot easier to argue actual harm done if people are dieing from curable and treatable diseases than it is that people didn't get to play Devil World

lol if you guys think the NES Classic wouldn't have sold as much as it did if the games were on public domain.
95% of the reason it sold well was because of its aesthetics.

If it was a black rectangle with generic controllers and the menu was a black screen with a list of the names of the games, it wouldn't have sold nearly as well.

If the games were on the public domain they could still do it, and probably better and cheaper, since they wouldn't have to deal with licensing the 3rd parties titles, so they would be able to add more games.

You could argue that someone would be able to make their own NES Classic (like they could do right now with RaspberryPi + custom casing + emulator frontends for the menu, but legally instead), but it's much more work, and people will obviously go to the more convenient offering.

And you could also argue that they could just go and play the games included in the emulator, and that's true, but aesthetics matter, and like I said it's 95% of the reason for the success of NES Classic. People buy collectors editions, figures, decorations, and a bunch of stuff that have no functional purpose just because people like to have nice things. I'm sure NES Classic would still have an enormous appeal in a "post-copyright" world.

I think people forget that copyrights can be bought. If you were allowed to perpetually maintain a copyright for generations in your family, that means the rich could just literally buy up most of the creative works and basically have a creative fiefdom in perpetuity.

Also, the math doesn't work out for generational copyright anyway. The amount of descendants you'll have will keep multiplying, and each descendant of yours will be entitled to fractions of a cent. You will have more owners to the copyright than people that ever bought the work, given enough time.

https://kotaku.com/in-defense-of-roms-a-solution-to-dying-games-and-broke-1828340811

Lots of good points in this article from someone with a lifetime of experience documenting and collecting rare games.

I think this question is only going to become more important as we move into an era where more games are being distributed only through digital channels as well. Scott Pilgrim comes to mind here. There is currently no legal way to obtain just a copy of Scott Pilgrim vs the World, as it has been removed from PSN & XBLA and it was never released at retail. You would have to buy an entire used PS3 or Xbox 360 to acquire the game, which is only going to become more of an absurd ask as time goes on.

This is something I've been pissed off about for a long time, I wholly agree that copyright is way too long and only serves corporate interests.

HotHamBoy said:

This is what people mean when they talk about the current culture of entitlement.

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Sure, not putting the interests of the 1% and companies that are near monopolies ahead of society's is entitlement.

Wait, it's the opposite.

SCB360 said:

I honestly do not see why Companies are not able to keep a copyright indefinitely whilst it's being used or even belonging to a family, I don't want to see Mickey Mouse out of Disney's hands, Mario out of Nintendos or even Superman out of DC's the whole issue is just weird and no one seems to be able to create a convincing argument other than "So others can use these characters/stories however they see fit, for free or profit"

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You say this like it isn't a good thing in and of itself.

Dr Wily said:

If all NES games were public domain:
+ good for hardware manufacturers who just preload their hardware with a bunch of free games they don't have to pay any royalties for.
- bad for the people who originally made those games in the first place and want to resell them, which off the top of my head this generation includes Rare, Nintendo, Atari, Namco and Capcom.

So big business wins bigger.

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Just in the context of this specific example, are you implying Nintendo is NOT big business? Nintendo, Namco and Capcom are all big business and Atari was once one of the biggest businesses in America.

eot said:

This is something I've been pissed off about for a long time, I wholly agree that copyright is way too long and only serves corporate interests.


Sure, not putting the interests of the 1% and companies that are near monopolies ahead of society's is entitlement.

Wait, it's the opposite.

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Those arguments aren't really worth engaging, they're not interested in going any deeper than 'you just want free stuff!!!' and keeping the discussion entirely within the bounds of exactly what the law says at this exact moment.

MattWilsonCSS said:

Just in the context of this specific example, are you implying Nintendo is NOT big business? Nintendo, Namco and Capcom are all big business and Atari was once one of the biggest businesses in America.

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They're small fry compared to hardware manufacturers like Apple or Samsung.
But lets pretend that Nintendo, Capcom, Namco and Infogrames Atari are the "big corporate 1%" and the people who would benefit most from getting to swoop in and take their back catalogue royalty free as their own is little timmy 10 year old.

AdolRed said:

Those arguments aren't really worth engaging, they're not interested in going any deeper than 'you just want free stuff!!!' and keeping the discussion entirely within the bounds of exactly what the law says at this exact moment.

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Its not even worth debating with someone who thinks that copyright only benefits "teh corporate wun percsent!" when every fucking creative outlet from Deviantart through Bandcamp through Etsy through Open Game Art have copyright and licencing information to protect their users work front and center.

Are you okay

Dr Wily said:

They're small fry compared to hardware manufacturers like Apple or Samsung.

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They're big business dude. I'm not gonna let you slide on that. It's extremely disingenuous to claim otherwise.

MattWilsonCSS said:

They're big business dude. I'm not gonna let you slide on that. It's extremely disingenuous to claim otherwise.

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They're small fry compared to the big industrial corporations, like pretty much all creative companies that arent disney.
Thats why they get swallowed up by utility and manufacturing companies. Because what they create is valuable, but not valuable enough to become one of those megacorps off of their own products.
And in no small part is that because you can pirate a song, a film, a tv show and a videogame, but you cant pirate a car, a phone or your electricity or phone supply.

I literally don't see how people think getting rid of copyright 'sticks it to the man'. It doesn't at all. It lets giant corporations get a ton of content for free.

Nintendo hit $9.6 billion in revenue last year, they're big business. You are being so dishonest right now. Disney and Apple aren't the threshold for big business, they're like the 0.000001%. But you know that already. Maybe give up on this windmill and go back to fighting the others.

If I made a game that is hugely popular, what's stopping others to simply copy my entire design and make it theirs? What's keeping me here to keep creating new games or updating this game of the forever? Copyright protection.

It is because of copyright protection that my game is worth anything, without it, big businesses and everyone can just copy my design without paying me anything. And it is because that they have to pay me for my game, that I can continue to make games, because ... well, I like food on my table and having all my time dedicated to creating, but if my creation don't pay, I would have to work another job, cutting down my creative time and creativity as a whole as my energy is spent working another job.

The problem with this "get rid of the ultimate evil copyright" idea is that you're wanting a weird parallel world where creators are rewarded for their talent and effort while they live in a world where they need to pay the bills.

I can get behind updating the current copyright laws to protect the creators, and make it less abusable by big corps(if possible), but then one could argue that it is because they could buy the entire copyright away from the creator that some creators are able to make a decent living out of creating.

Ganransu said:

If I made a game that is hugely popular, what's stopping others to simply copy my entire design and make it theirs? What's keeping me here to keep creating new games or updating this game of the forever? Copyright protection.

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It's not, actually. Copyright doesn't protect game design or mechanics. Just the specific work itself.

From copyright.gov on games in general (this also includes board games):

Copyright does not protect the idea for a game, its name or title, or the method or methods for playing it. Nor does copyright protect any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in developing, merchandising, or playing a game. Once a game has been made public, nothing in the copyright law prevents others from developing another game based on similar principles. Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author's expression in literary, artistic, or musical form.

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In software, you can copyright source code I THINK. And the assets used in the game will be protected. But there's nothing stopping someone from making Splatamari Splamarcy. Games get knocked off all the time as a result, check the mobile space. Recently Donut County got knocked off on mobile before it even made it to release, and it's all above board because the actual art and code and trademark of Donut County are not violated.

Regardless, I'm only for shortening copyright, not abolishing it.

D.Lo said:

No, the company (those shareholders) PAID for the work to be created. The designers/programmers took a salary in return for signing over all rights to the work they did for the company, and individuals didn't produce it, it was the combined work made possible by the funding of the team that produced the work.

The owner was never the designers/programmers in those cases.

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Right, that's how capitalism works. I'm saying it isn't right, and that for us, it doesn't benefit us at all to not have the art/artist not be the first consideration, instead of the capitalist.

Imagine a day when corporations can forcibly purchase an individual artist's copyrights. With or without shorter copyright protection lengths. After all, the corporations are the ones with the deep pockets to do such things.

The sale of copyrights should just be flat out banned. It either stays with the creator until the term ends or it dissolves to the public domain in the event of a bankruptcy. That's just how I feel about it. But it doesn't matter because I am not a billionaire lobbyist :/

AlexiosAreimanios37 said:

Imagine a day when corporations can forcibly purchase an individual artist's copyrights. With or without shorter copyright protection lengths. After all, the corporations are the ones with the deep pockets to do such things.

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How could they forcibly purchase something unless the owner chose to sell it?

I mean if a company owned it you could buy out the company, but that's just the risk you took getting funding on the stock market.

Isn't copyright infringement and plagiarism intertwined?