[HN Gopher] The US copyright office has struck down a major effo...
___________________________________________________________________
The US copyright office has struck down a major effort for game
preservation
Author : bobthepanda
Score : 118 points
Date : 2024-11-27 19:54 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.gamesradar.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.gamesradar.com)
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Sometimes it really does become apparent that politicians and
| their appointees don't represent citizens.
| atemerev wrote:
| This is why we have direct democracy in Switzerland, and I
| wonder why it is not used anywhere else.
| wombatpm wrote:
| You also have a strict process of granting citizenship, and
| service requirements for citizens. Plus you are small.
| jf22 wrote:
| Yeah the US is about 33 Switzerland's in population and
| probably double that in size.
| Keyframe wrote:
| more like 38x population and 233x area!
| abecedarius wrote:
| From the other end, Switzerland has roughly 30 times the
| pop of classical Athens which I guess was then the
| largest democracy. It's not super obvious their
| governance could not evolve to scale to U.S. size.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Switzerland is about 16,000 sq miles.
|
| That makes it bigger than Maryland, but smaller than West
| Virginia. It's about half the size of South Carolina.
|
| You could fit Switzerland in Texas 16 times and still
| have enough room to squeeze in a Belgium.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Does that size difference matter? I see the wisdom in
| having a Senate to give different geographical locations
| some independence and control. But maybe it is possible
| to have more direct democracy while also balancing that
| concern?
| bayindirh wrote:
| Plus, all neighbors of Switzerland are NATO members, so
| they can neither attack each other, nor Switzerland.
| Moreover, Switzerland is recognized as a NATO "partner".
|
| This allows them to handle internal matters with more
| concentration.
|
| Heh, they even had the luxury to "close" their air force on
| weekends until very recently.
| exe34 wrote:
| it would be fine if they had to provide those games and platforms
| at a reasonable price, unless they allow the libraries to do it.
| markx2 wrote:
| > That ruling cites the belief of the Entertainment Software
| Association and other industry lobby groups that "there would be
| a significant risk that preserved video games would be used for
| recreational purposes."
|
| I have an RPi which has over 10k games from my youth. I play
| those games, some arcade, some from early consoles when I want to
| play those games. Just like sometimes you want to listen to music
| from when you were a teen.
|
| I also have many consoles and games which I will hook up to my TV
| when I want to play those games - SSX Tricky anyone?
|
| I have a PC and a Steamdeck with almost 9k licenses to play
| games.
|
| So what do the ESA want?
|
| Kill off music older than x years? KIll off games older than x
| years? (MAME would like a word there)
|
| The ESA argument - as quoted above - is bullshit.
| deafpolygon wrote:
| Did you buy all 10k of the games from your youth?
| gopher_space wrote:
| In installments of $.25
|
| More to the point, everyone involved with the creation of the
| game is retired or dead.
| doubled112 wrote:
| But what about the publishing company?! Think of the
| publishing company!
|
| /s in case.
| jasonjayr wrote:
| Probably not, but are all 10k still available for sale? and
| if not, why not? And why should people be denied the ability
| to archive them?
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I just recently had a mini obsession with SSX Tricky after ~20
| years away.
|
| I got it running using PCX2 with a few graphical tweaks
| including upscaling and widescreen, running it over
| sunshine/moonlight so I could play it via an Android box on the
| TV. It looked and felt like a modern game. Great work by the
| community to keep it up to date like that.
|
| I'm not sure if I could have gotten it working with the actual
| PS2 and disc, whether those devices are still working and
| whether the TV could accept RCA cables as input.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > The specific quote is that "there would be a significant risk
| that preserved video games would be used for recreational
| purposes."
|
| > This explains why people like Jim Ryan hate retro games. They
| think these older games would cannibalize sales from newer
| releases.
|
| I play retro games. Mostly on Retroarch.
|
| I play those games because I genuinely think they are better and
| more enjoyable than the vast majority of crap released nowadays.
|
| If they managed (they can't) to wrestle my retro game collection
| from me, they wouldn't get me to play whatever crap EA, Ubisoft
| or Blizzard puts out nowadays. They would just get me to stop
| playing videogames.
| zeta0134 wrote:
| The amazing part is that my cartridges still work perfectly
| well in my original consoles, decades later. There's no server,
| no login, no account, no downloading, no ads, no
| microtransactions... I just turn the console on, grab the
| controller, and I'm in game in seconds.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| How do you handle the NTSC video output? Or are your consoles
| new enough to output composite video or VGA?
| jdmoreira wrote:
| framemeister, ossc and rgb mods
| bitzun wrote:
| Do TVs not have composite input anymore? I haven't bought a
| new one in forever.
| tazjin wrote:
| Composite - no. But an adapter costs less than a good
| beer in most countries on AliExpress (well, shipping
| excluded).
| sevensor wrote:
| Indeed; I'm still enjoying games from 1994. They haven't
| stopped being fun simply because they're old. They also
| represent a significant learning effort over the years. One of
| the things that makes a game enjoyable is having learned how to
| play it well. I'm not likely to make that kind of investment in
| too many more games in my life. I haven't got that kind of free
| time. So for me as well, it's not old games versus new, it's
| old games or nothing.
| mcronce wrote:
| The learning effort thing is a solid point. I think what I
| play most these days is Super Mario World romhacks. Obviously
| the level design and whatnot aren't the same as the original,
| but the controls and physics are and I learned those as a
| fairly young child in the 90s.
|
| The reason I don't like most other platformers almost
| definitely isn't because they're actually inferior, it's just
| because I'm "calibrated" to SMW
| okasaki wrote:
| That and a gaming pc costs like $2000 now and burns 500W.
| yapyap wrote:
| mkwii is so much better than most modern games it's criminal
| (literally in this case I guess, badum tss)
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| I guess they would be okay with preservation if no one played
| retro games?
|
| That was a rhetoric question, because I think they would only
| be happy if retro games became unavailable, so their profit
| grew a bit next quarter.
|
| I don't even think retro games eat much of their profits,
| otherwise they would see it as a business opportunity, but
| their posture only makes sense if there's not much profit to be
| had in that niche.
| litenboll wrote:
| I hope that if they manage to wrestle your retro games from you
| that you would explore some indie games instead. There are many
| small companies that make high quality games, usually in the
| spirit of popular retro games.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| I do play some of those
| jumpoddly wrote:
| Check out Ufo50. Based on your comment I think you will
| thoroughly enjoy it.
|
| It's a fake compilation of 50 games made by an imagined video
| game studio from the 80s.
|
| They take retro sensibilities and incorporate contemporary game
| mechanics.
|
| It is an absolute joy.
|
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/1147860/UFO_50/
| jbverschoor wrote:
| > The specific quote is that "there would be a significant risk
| that preserved video games would be used for recreational
| purposes."
|
| Wow that's the whole purpose of why they were storm in the
| first place!
| rolph wrote:
| the entirety of all roms and emulators are probably in the hands
| of those who actually want to play them, this only prevents
| research archives from being operated.
|
| i find it interesting that OG retro games actually are considered
| threatening to modern AAA games.
| prophesi wrote:
| Yep. The games are already being archived. It's kind of silly
| to strike down an official archival at this point, and only
| brings risk to consumers that seek out illegally distributed
| ROMs on malware-infested sites.
|
| And shout out to Red Viper on the 3DS for letting me experience
| the Virtual Boy without needing to deal with a second hand
| market that gets more expensive as the years go by.
| zb3 wrote:
| The web platform can help mitigate this risk - while native
| emulators might be malicious or attacked by malicious roms,
| emulators written to run on the web platform are practically
| safe.
|
| Plus you get the bonus ability to run on iOS :)
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| Why would it be anything other than expected that the top 10 or
| so percent of the whole history of games would compete
| favorably against any other subset of games, like whatever
| happens to be releasing this week?
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| ESA game companies are worried consumers are having too much fun
| playing old games instead of buying new slop skinner boxes.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| Yep. That's the primary reason they don't still sell their old
| games.
| jmiskovic wrote:
| IMO the primary reason is the difficulty of supporting older
| titles across various modern systems, for a too small of an
| audience. If older games were so popular GOG would dominate
| the market by now.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| Yeah you're probably right. Nevermind.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Stand alone executable are very easy to support for ~20
| years on the windows platform. It's only dos games that
| need to be packaged in VMs for modern platforms. Support
| only becomes a problem when there's invasive drm tied to a
| specific os or hardware platform or required online
| services that require ongoing maintenance.
| jmward01 wrote:
| Patent, trademark, copyright, etc are all supposed to benefit
| society as a whole. The point isn't that corporations get to lock
| things away forever. The goal is to incentivize innovation, both
| technological and cultural. The more companies make the argument
| that 'thing x from a long time ago is crucial to us now' the more
| I think that our current IP laws are actually slowing down
| innovation instead of incentivizing it. Maybe we need a new
| system that starts costing money after a point to maintain IP
| rights. That system would recognize the value taken by private
| companies holding on to old IP to the detriment of society and
| force them to come up with new things to justify their existence
| instead of living off of that one thing they did right 100 years
| ago.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| Ip rights should just end after a relatively quick slice of
| time. You made your money off it, now it's time to pass it on
| to the public. A payment model just ensures the only entities
| who can hold ip long term are corporations.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| That's how it was originally but over time the terms have
| been extended (largely due to advocacy from organizations
| that own large catalogs of copyrighted material). It's now
| tied to the life of the creator rather than the time since
| creation or publication.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| Yep. It needs to be restored or even shortened beyond the
| original window.
| RajT88 wrote:
| IIRC, early copyright (say, during Mozart's time) required
| royalties to only be paid out for the first performance of
| a work.
|
| And that is why some of these composers were so prolific -
| to keep up their payday, they had to crank out music
| instead of collecting on royalties of performances they
| were directly involved with.
|
| Unthinkable today, really.
| theptip wrote:
| This is the simple solution. 10 years seems fine to me, 20
| years at a stretch.
|
| The current regime is a clear case of regulatory capture.
| mmcgaha wrote:
| So musicians should not be compensated when their old songs
| play on the radio? You made your money in 1974 now move along
| while my company exploits your work for free.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| Nope, guess not
| cess11 wrote:
| Why do you think that? Can you point to some early philosopher
| of law that made such utilitarian arguments?
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| https://www.copyright.gov/timeline/
| mrighele wrote:
| For Americans, the utilitarian argument is made in the
| Constitution:
|
| _"The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes,
| Duties, Imposts and Excises [...] 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"_ [1]
|
| [1] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Because that's the stated purpose of patents in the US
| constitution.
| jmward01 wrote:
| The actual text of the US constitution maybe?
|
| Article I Section 8 Enumerated Powers Clause 8 Intellectual
| Property 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;
|
| Seems like the idea is to promote innovation by making sure
| it is for a limited time only seems pretty ingrained in the
| idea.
| tmtvl wrote:
| If it says 'for a limited time', then wouldn't tying itmto
| the lifetime of the author be unconstitutional? Because
| strictly speaking it's impossible to predict whether an
| author's life will end.
| samatman wrote:
| It's in fact trivially easy to predict whether an
| author's life will end.
|
| Watch: I predict an author's life will end. I give it
| very high odds indeed.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Corporations can hold copyright and can be undying.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| If the author is a real person, it's life of the author
| plus. If it is a corporation it is a fixed amount of
| time.
| bitwize wrote:
| Decided in _Eldred v. Ashcroft_. As long as Congress
| stipulates a non-infinite copyright term, it 's
| constitutional. Given that the chance of a human being
| eventually ceasing to live has been 100% so far, it's
| legitimate to assume that life + n years is still a
| finite period of time.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| I see this sentiment frequently, but I think it is missing some
| of the crucial details:
|
| - patents last for 20 years in the us
|
| - trademarks do not have value to the rest of the world. Eg,
| the name "Kleenex" is (was?) a granted trademark, to help
| customers identify products from that specific company.
| "Kleenex" has somewhat become generic, but I don't think this
| is really better or worse for humanity in general -- it just
| removes some branding strength from Kleenex.
|
| - copyright lasts life of author +70 years. This is problematic
| imo.
|
| I think the concern about copyright is justified, but I think
| the others are honestly pretty decent. But of course different
| people will have different opinions.
| paxys wrote:
| The big problem is that none of these laws have been updated
| to deal with digital property. We simply get new
| interpretations based on the whims of random judges who may
| not even be familiar with how the technology works. Software
| patents are the perfect example of this. Digital
| piracy/lending is another. And let's not even get into
| AI/LLMs.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| 20 years is an eternity in terms of innovation. This has an
| extreme effect compared to the natural state (no IP
| restrictions). I argue that the effects of patents is
| actually poorly understood, and most arguments for how they
| work fail to explain how and why open source works, revealing
| serious flaws in the foundational theories of IP
| restrictions.
|
| The sole function of a patent is to restrict innovation.
| That's the only direct result of patents. All other claims
| about encouraging innovation rely on beliefs about secondary
| and tertiary effects which I believe are incomplete, out of
| date, and often simply incorrect.
|
| Edit: Even the pure capitalists don't like it:
| https://youtu.be/hoSWC_6mDCk
| bobthepanda wrote:
| trademark is also supposed to protect against misleading
| copies of reputable goods.
|
| it's hard to say how enforcing against counterfeiting would
| work without something that looked like trademark law.
| eikenberry wrote:
| The problem with patents is not the length, it is that they
| are being applied to a general ideas and not implementations
| of those ideas. You patent your mouse trap, not all mouse
| traps.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| Patents last too long, given the current speed of
| technological advancement. 20 years ago, we looked at CRTs,
| we carried dinky Nokias, and data came on shiny disks. Giving
| somebody a monopoly on an idea for that amount of time is a
| huge impediment on the free market.
|
| The other issue with patents is that the whole underlying
| idea is questionable. You're supposed to give people access
| to your idea in return for protection. But what is the value
| of that access? In a lot of areas, the value is zero, since
| reverse-engineering (or just looking at something) will give
| you all the information contained in the patent.
|
| I suspect that most patents are giving companies a long-term
| monopoly on an idea, and providing absolutely no, or close to
| no value in return.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I think it's the other way around. Patents are hard work,
| often you make a physical product and you get a measly 20
| years. Meanwhile, copyrighted material flows out of my ass
| and gets 70+ years. Ridiculous. Why bother making anything?
| adrian_b wrote:
| I think that you have not read many patents.
|
| There have been patents that are the result of hard work,
| but there is a deluge of patents that contain only ideas
| that are so obvious that nobody was shameless enough to
| attempt to patent them before.
|
| Moreover the majority of patents contain extraordinarily
| broad claims, which cover many things that the authors of
| the patent have never succeeded to make, but they include
| the claims in the patent with the hope that someone else
| will find a way to make those things and then they will
| reveal the patent and blackmail those who have actually
| made a real device.
|
| In the old times, for a patent to be granted there was a
| condition to present a working prototype embodying the
| claims of the patent.
|
| Unfortunately this condition has gone a long time ago,
| otherwise it would have filtered most ridiculous patent
| claims.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> copyright lasts life of author +70 years. This is
| problematic imo._
|
| Personally, I think copyright isn't so bad simply because of
| what it covers.
|
| A patent can stop me making stainless steel razor blades. At
| all.
|
| But copyright? I can write a story about a boy wizard going
| to wizard school and learning from a man with a long white
| beard and a robe with huge sleeves. The law just says I can't
| call him Harry Potter.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| half of your sp500-based-retirement is munching off ancient
| standards patents in media/tech/health. the rest is split
| between selling you disposable devices and sugar water.
|
| ... so in a way it does benefit society. but it's the society
| that likes to steal from social security and then call it a
| scam.
| kiba wrote:
| Assumption 1: Commercialization and incentivization(beyond what
| is already achievable in our market system) of the production
| of media goods are a good thing and we would be poorer
| culturally-wise.
|
| Assumption 2: Without IP laws, people would not produce
| works(aside from credits and attribution). Engineers will stop
| engineering. Lawyers will stop writing opinions. Scientists
| won't write research papers.
|
| Assumption 3: IP laws did work to incentivize production and
| technological advancement, and they are only or the primary
| means to do so. We just need to reign in the excess.
|
| Assumption 4: People who created useful works for its own sake
| are not valuable(open source software/hardware, inventors
| inventing things and freely publishing information, etc).
| Patents and copyright laws should favors the people who use
| copyright and patents over them, and the profit motive should
| reign supreme.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| Is this meant to be a rewording of the parent comment as a
| critique, or is it meant to be an expression of your views?
| I'd probably contest assumptions 3 and 4, but I'm not sure if
| you yourself even support them.
| kiba wrote:
| How about both? You are welcome to critique my opinion.
|
| As for assumption 3, there's SpaceX. They don't open their
| design of their rockets to the public where their
| competitors, such as the Chinese can copy them. Neither the
| US government nor SpaceX wants that. So there's a large
| amount of innovations, probably countless designs that went
| into these rockets. Maybe in a better geopolitical
| situation, patents would be respected, but why would SpaceX
| gives everyone the blueprint to catch up? Patents make more
| sense if designs are easily reverse engineered and you
| still want a monopoly to make back your investment. That is
| clearly false as people have made innovation in 3D printing
| where new designs are standardized for the benefit of the
| whole market.
|
| Assumption 4 is the defacto state of things even if it were
| not the intention. People who invent useful things for the
| sake of useful things are clearly at a disadvantage against
| corporations or entities who have more money to hire
| lawyers.
|
| There's already at least one case of a trivial patent for
| 3D printing stronger layers that expired being repatented
| again by another company, increasing legal uncertainty from
| implementing the technique in slicers and other software.
| Most slicer these days are open source, generally don't
| make money for its developers(at least not directly), but
| they do grow the 3D printing market through its active
| development. The slicers also happen to share code,
| unsurprising given that they are forks of one another.
| Clearly, this model is incompatible with the patent system
| as it stands.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| On the SpaceX example, they couldn't release their
| designs even if they wanted to. ITAR prohibits it.
|
| If they weren't prohibited from sharing rocket technology
| SpaceX might share. Tesla patents are open. I don't see
| why Musk wouldn't do the same for SpaceX if the
| government allowed it.
| kiba wrote:
| I don't see Musk doing that as he directly stated it
| himself.
|
| As for Tesla patents, I would speculate that it's more
| about companies not willing copy Tesla which is why Telsa
| doesn't really care if they open source the information.
| Copying isn't always so easy especially if there are
| structural issues involved. Recall the superchargers that
| became standard. Other companies were using a different
| connector, but the supercharger connector was obviously
| superior and they relented after many years.
|
| Patents are more useful in situation in which your
| designs are easily reverse engineered and there's little
| barrier in copying. In any case, there are firms in the
| automative industry that specialized in doing the
| teardown of cars and doing cost estimation. Such a firm
| would tell their competitors how Tesla actually make
| their cars, so there's not much value in publishing their
| patents anyway, other than PR stunts.
|
| Patents are not as useful in scenarios in which trade
| secrets provide a strong and durable barrier to entry.
| They also require lawsuits to enforce, which is rather
| costly and imposes cost on our economy, so there's
| inefficiency to consider as well. Theoretically, a
| monopoly in this instance would incentivize R&D effort
| but we know that monopolies has various nasty side
| effects and not everybody have money to hire lawyers and
| enforce them.
| heysammy wrote:
| How could we have gotten great works like Canterbury Tales or
| Beowulf without rent-seeking copyright protectionism?
| nickff wrote:
| I am not a die-hard supporter of IP protection laws, but
| your examples are classic survivorship bias, as well as
| falling victim to the broken windows fallacy.
| kiba wrote:
| It is not a given that we should incentivize the
| production of cultural good beyond of what is already
| achievable.
|
| I should note that there is already strong intrinsic
| motivation to create and there are already too many works
| to read, watch, or listen, and a lot of slops created
| clearly to make money.
|
| People are willing to accept deplorable working
| conditions to pursue their dreams, such as developing
| video games.
|
| Since I do improv, most of the value I created are on the
| spot and ephemeral anyway and I basically perform for
| free anyway. I would stand to gain if people go out to
| theaters and other avenue as opposed to consuming content
| on netflix.
| jmward01 wrote:
| I mostly agree that there are assumptions built into IP law
| that may not be true. Are there good examples of history
| where a society that didn't have some similar system out-
| innovated one that did? Are there good parallels today?
| zjuventus14 wrote:
| Highly recommend the book "Against Intellectual Monopoly"
| which argues against IP law with a lot of historical
| references.
|
| One such example is paint & coloring in the late 19th and
| early 20th centuries. From the book - "In 1862, British
| firms controlled about 50 percent of the world market and
| French firms another 40 percent, with Swiss and German
| companies as marginal players. By 1873, German companies
| had 50 percent of the market, while French, Swiss, and
| British firms controlled between 13 percent and 17 percent
| each. In 1913, German firms had a market share of more than
| 80 percent, the Swiss had about 8 percent, and the rest of
| the world had disappeared." Switzerland at the time had no
| patent protection, and Germany allowed processes to be
| patented in 1877 but not products themselves.
|
| Parallels are harder to find today due to the expansion of
| IP law as a condition of trade with many developed nations,
| but the book does have some more recent examples.
| nox101 wrote:
| There's lots mixed up with IP laws. Are talking inventions
| (patents) or works of art (books, movies, music, games)
|
| I certainly know that most games and movies wouldn't exist
| without a monetary incentive. They take too much work to
| make. There are exceptions. You can make pong in a few hours
| and you can shoot a movie of yourself talking. You can also
| do both as a hobby a few hours a night. But, most movies
| require sets, costumes, props, and lots of other equipment
| and labor. Most games also require many person years of work.
| It's unlikely people would put in that much work if they
| couldn't make a living from it as it allows them to do it
| full time so they actually have the time needed.
|
| OTOH, music "can" take a few hours and so could be done more
| easily as a hobby so while not all forms of music would
| continue I suspect we'd still get tons of it with without
| monetary incentives.. Books, it depends on the type of book.
| People write blogs for free and compile them into a book.
| nine_k wrote:
| (Repeating for n-th time:) I like the idea of exponential cost
| of IP protection.
|
| First 10 or so years the protection is free. Then, on the first
| year of paid protection, you pay $10. On the second, $20. On
| the tenth, $10,240. On the sixteenth, $655,360. The year you
| miss a payment the protection ceases.
|
| If your IP is immensely valuable and is bringing you gobs of
| money, you can continue paying and keep your monopoly. But the
| case of keeping reams of stuff under the lock "just in case"
| would be largely eliminated. Anything that's not a cash cow
| currently being milked and paid for would get released to the
| public domain.
|
| On top of that, the federal budget would receive some extra
| money, but only from those who is making money, and not the
| small guy who just has published an indie game on Steam.
| pixelpoet wrote:
| That sounds like a really good idea, one problem though: this
| doesn't benefit the lawmaking and law-exploiting classes, so
| why would it happen?
|
| It's pretty clear that the legal system mostly exists to
| preserve big financial interests. I spent much of my adult
| life watching SCO play the system...
| bluGill wrote:
| Voters need to make it clear that it does benefit the
| lawmaking class. Votes are more powerful than money in
| politics - but only if you use them. If you fall for one
| party is all good you have lost power.
|
| The hard part is getting enough other voters to care. If it
| is just you money is more important. If it is you and many
| others though you beat money.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| Whom would you side with?
|
| People whose livelihoods and retirement depend on their
| copyright.
|
| Or people who want to play old video-games for free.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Show me an actual person whose livelihood or retirement
| depends on _their copyright_ (and not, say, owning somebody
| else 's copyright). I'm not convinced that the current
| state of copyright law actually benefits authors and
| artists.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| Okay so say I write a book. And I go to a publisher and
| show them the book I wrote.
|
| What is the name of the law that prevents the publisher
| from kicking me out of the building, printing the book I
| wrote, and making money off it?
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| That would be copyright law. Is this a deliberate
| misinterpretation of my request, or do I need to make GP
| clearer?
| AlienRobot wrote:
| Your request is that I find you someone who has benefited
| from a law that makes entire professions viable?
|
| Does this help? https://www.nytimes.com/books/best-
| sellers/
|
| Or do you want a list of movie directors? Perhaps of
| authors of assets in asset stores for game development?
| Comic artists?
|
| Do you want a Spotify playlist?
| drewbeck wrote:
| Nobody is suggesting throwing out all copyright
| protections.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| But someone IS suggesting that people lose copyright
| protections over some of their works, and eventually all
| of them when they don't have 10 thousand dollars to pay
| to keep their rights per work after just 20 years.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| In your analogy with this context, the publishing company
| can't print the book for ten years after being approached
| by the author.
| ianburrell wrote:
| Nearly all fiction authors own the copyrights to their
| books. They have an agreement with publisher to publish
| it and they get the royalties. If that agreement ends,
| they can find a new publishers. The authors get an
| advance and if book is popular enough, they get
| royalties.
| fragmede wrote:
| Any semi-famous author would do, no? Famous authors
| everyone's heard of are probably rich enough that they
| have other investments via money they earned from their
| copyrights, but arguably that's still a living derived
| from their owning of copyright. So let's start with
| hearing why, say, Stephen King, Charlie Stross, and J. K.
| Rowling aren't actual people who's living (sizable as it
| may be) doesn't depend on their copyright on the books
| they wrote, before we look for any lesser known authors.
| Taylor Swift makes a living off her music, which is
| dependent on copyright. Or have I missed something
| somewhere?
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Taylor Swift makes a lot of her money from _being Taylor
| Swift_ (i.e., tours), per
| https://www.investopedia.com/taylor-swift-
| earnings-7373918:
|
| > The 12-time Grammy Award winner made more than $780
| million on the U.S. leg of the Eras Tour, according to an
| estimate by Forbes. The total ticket sales from Swift's
| 2023 Eras Tour could make her the highest-grossing female
| touring artist of all time, according to Billboard. The
| Eras Tour could gross over $1 billion, making concert
| history as the first billion-dollar tour, according to
| The Wall Street Journal.
|
| J.K. Rowling doesn't have exclusive rights to her books,
| past the first couple. Lots of copyright-related suits
| (most?) are made by Warner Bros. She's fully capable of
| mobilising her fanbase (or, _was_ , at least, before she
| went off on the deep end) to prevent or restrict what she
| considers misuse of the Harry Potter brand. (And, as you
| say, she doesn't need the money.)
|
| Copyright isn't why Toby Fox need never go hungry. His
| work is _trivial_ to pirate, he doesn 't even bother
| enforcing copyright on his music; and yet he's probably a
| millionaire, with more works on the way.
| wcarss wrote:
| the people who want to play old videogames for free
| winocm wrote:
| Reminds me about how many times I've ended up buying _the
| same game I already own_ , but on another platform
| because the original is on something I no longer have
| reasonable access to anymore. (I don't have a television
| with a RF modulator handy and getting a proper setup
| working takes more effort than I'm willing to put in at
| this age.)
| rob74 wrote:
| Unfortunately, the other people have more lobbying
| power...
| lxgr wrote:
| With the people that understand that reality isn't as black
| and white as you make it out to be and that will hopefully
| find better compromises going forward.
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| Being able to play old video games for free is not the
| point though, it's just a nice side effect of an
| intellectual property regime with a reasonable duration,
| say something less than 150 years.
| wormius wrote:
| There are no residuals for game devs. It's work for hire,
| so holding on to this idea that they will get paid money
| for every sale (even after it's no longer sold - but maybe
| somehow once these assholes "resurrect" a game they never
| bothered to bring back after 30 years, will somehow benefit
| the actual people who made it is a joke). This has nothing
| to do "their livelihood and retirement"It's about
| protecting corporate profits in the very slim case they may
| discover that bringing something back (ha sure) will
| benefit the corporation that OWNS the rights.
|
| IP isn't the same across the board it's not like game devs
| are singers who have ASCAP/BMI etc protections. Game devs
| are code jockeys who get shit on by the corporations with
| NO rights to the actual work THEY produced. Why do you act
| like this is the same as music with perpetual rights to the
| actual creators? It rarely if ever is.
|
| You can go ahead and "blame" the workers you claim to
| support for failing to "put that in their employment
| contract, it is a "free market" for labor, after all" or
| you can work on changing the system to at least let the
| past be free and open and history have a chance of being
| important or just let it all be locked in a vault, in
| disuse in the "hope" that maybe someday a corporation will
| "release" it again as a game. Or you can let people who ARE
| passionate about it work on it and let the public have the
| right to it.
|
| As the parent comments point out, the LITERAL REASON OF
| COPYRIGHT IN THE US CONSTITUTION is to benefit the public.
| It has nothing to do with giant corps getting rich as fuck
| off other people's labor. Contract law gets in the way and
| lets these pricks steal the work and wealth, deny people
| the rights and only THEY get the benefit, this is the
| precise opposite of the public benefit intended.
|
| Culture happens on faster and faster cycles than ever
| before, yet instead of admitting the speed of it, these
| behemoths who own IP, demand continual extensions (well
| until the most recent time when Disney finally relented and
| let Steamboat Willy enter the Public Domain recently).
|
| Instead of promoting "innovation" (as phrased in the US
| Constitution), it promotes lethargy slouch and continued
| re-use of the same things. It's the exact opposite of the
| intent. And no, this bullshit about "livelihoods and
| retirement" mean jackshit in game dev. You shit your game
| out, you got paid for that work, and that's it. All the
| excess profits go to the corp, not the actual devs. IP in
| this case is not about humans owning/making, and it's
| corporations through and through, and unless you held onto
| the same corporation for 40 years, as the creator, it's not
| going to be you getting the supposed benefit of this.
| causal wrote:
| My only issue with this approach is that some people need a
| lot of time to start monetizing something they invent. Say I
| write something cool and it takes me 20 years to find someone
| to buy it. This punishes anyone that can't move quickly.
|
| I like the current model of works becoming public domain
| after X years, but would prefer we shorten those timelines a
| bit given the speed of software.
| nwiswell wrote:
| This clearly benefits wealthy owners of IP (disney, movie
| studios, game publishers, etc) over small-time artists (self-
| published authors, small bands, etc) since the period of time
| that IP protection remains an economic choice is strongly
| tied to the value of the IP.
|
| E.g., if you write a book and realize $5,000 in sales per
| year, then 10 * 2^x=5000 where x is 8.97, so you only enjoy 8
| years of revenues ($40,000) and you've paid S(1->8) 10 * 2^x
| = $5,100 for the privilege, for a net $34,900 or 6.98x the
| yearly royalty value.
|
| If Dreamworks sees $500M a year in Minions merchandising,
| then 10 * 2^x=500,000,000 where x = 25.56 and so Dreamworks
| realizes 25 years of revenues ($12,500,000,000) and pays
| S(1->25) 10 * 2^x = $671,088,620 for the privilege, for a net
| $11,828,911,380 or 23.66x the yearly royalty value.
|
| This is backward, in my opinion.
| nayuki wrote:
| It's not backward. It means that wealthy IP owners pay more
| tax to society for the privilege of earning more!
| nwiswell wrote:
| Small owners of IP get to enjoy less value from their
| creations due to weaker IP protections. That's backward.
|
| Moreover the amount of tax paid as a fraction of total
| value realized is actually lower for the large owner of
| IP because the total tax payment is dominated by the
| final years, but the total revenue is determined by the
| number of years. In the example above, we had:
|
| $5,100 / $40,000 = 12.75% tax for the small author, and
|
| $671,088,620 / $12,500,000,000 = 5.37% tax for
| Dreamworks.
|
| The ratios would be even worse if the small author
| could've just barely justified the 9th year. Pretty much
| unconscionable.
|
| The fact that we're collecting tax from IP is not
| interesting. We have progressive income tax for this
| purpose.
| jmward01 wrote:
| So your argument is that something that takes in 500m in
| its useful lifetime shouldn't net the creator more than
| something that takes in only 100k in its useful lifetime?
| Yes, big content X that churns out mega movies that have
| more staying power than indy film y would make more
| money, but now instead of that mega company X holding
| onto everything for 10 lifetimes they are forced to
| releases it. If this is structured to kick in with normal
| lifespans accounted for then it shouldn't really hurt the
| indy side of things.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| In a free market of ideas, copyright would have perished long
| ago.
|
| As a teenager of the 90s I have, correctly or incorrectly, been
| indoctrinated with the notion that RIAA/MPAA have too much
| clout for their own good. Sweden (Pirate Bay) and New Zealand
| (Kim.Com) taught us that.
|
| But it's not just The US -- the bulk of my record collection is
| still digitised as Ogg/Vorbis in protest of Fraunhofer's hold
| on MP3 as a non-public format.
|
| Was I brainwashed? Did the kids of yesteryear lose in the long
| run? Aside from nostalgia, it's worth remembering the history
| of this battle to learn for the future.
| ghssds wrote:
| I like that your solution to corporations locking things away
| forever is a new system that would immediately excludes
| individual citizens and ties the capability to remove a
| cultural good from the public to wealth.
|
| The main problems with current copyright laws, I think, is the
| creators need to sell their right to one of a handful of
| powerful corporations to make money at all, then those
| corporations grip on their rights and monopolize it, even if it
| means something isn't available at all. A better idea would be
| author's rights that can't be sold, and licensing that can't be
| denied. That way there still is monetary incentives to create,
| but cultural goods remain available to the public.
| jf22 wrote:
| The quiet part out loud cliche is overused and not relevant in
| this case.
|
| It was never quiet the industry wanted to preserve profits and
| they said it out loud multiple times.
| Spivak wrote:
| I think it fits this case. It's an open secret that despite
| constant public statements from games publishers about their
| old IP still having value that it's actually a scheme to push
| consumers on the new content treadmill. Now we have someone
| confirming in court that it's exactly that.
|
| Which is a terrible misuse of copyright that goes against even
| its most publisher-friendly interpretation.
|
| Meta: I don't think the phrase is actually overused, I think
| it's used so much due to so many companies all discovering at
| once that they don't have to spend time crafting a plausible
| cover narrative, and that nothing will happen if they just say
| they're being shitty and there's nothing you can do about it.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Obviously there is something you can do about it though:
| casually ignore copyright law because the government is
| acting illegitimately, just like people do with drugs. If
| you're interested in, say, ROMs, it doesn't take much work to
| find a community (say, a subreddit) that's interested in that
| topic and will tell you where to find what you want. Or if
| you're too lazy for that, you can search for retro games on
| amazon and find consoles with 10s of thousands of them
| preloaded.
|
| The quiet part that citizens can say out loud is that for
| individuals, copyright basically runs on the honor system. If
| you don't think the situation is fair, you can just ignore
| those restrictions.
| dang wrote:
| (This was merged from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42259040 where that phrase
| was in the title)
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| I think this is the correct thing to do as far as copyright law
| goes, but it seems to me that copyright terms are far too long to
| fulfill their original purpose: incentivize the distribution of
| creative works. Originally copyright was for relatively short
| terms (20 years IIRC). It is now life of the author + 70 years or
| 95 years from publication if the copyright holder is a
| corporation. Some organizations advocate for perpetual copyright
| terms as well.
|
| Given the extremely long terms now available there is little
| incentive to quickly extract value from the copyrighted work.
| Patents exist for the same reason and have been similarly coopted
| by their holders.
|
| Edit: if copyright terms were shorter publishers would be
| incentivized to keep their games in print and to update them for
| newer media/platforms.
| wvenable wrote:
| There are so many ways that copyright duration could be
| adjusted to dramatically reduce the duration for out-of-print
| not-for-sale works while simultaneously allowing Disney to keep
| Mickey Mouse.
|
| The fact that it's a single fixed duration that continues to be
| extended for just a minuscule fraction of works is ultimately
| the issue.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| Mickey Mouse is in the public domain now (the original one at
| least), but I agree with your argument.
| wvenable wrote:
| I'm totally okay with Mickey Mouse being copyrighted again
| if we could find a system that allowed for abandoned works
| to be out of copyright. It would be a huge boon to human
| culture.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| Why do we want disney to keep mickey though? Just make it a
| flat 10-15 years and never extend it.
| vunderba wrote:
| Honestly, I'd like to see something more along the lines of the
| copyright lasts the lifetime of the author _unless it gets
| sold._
|
| Once it gets sold it immediately starts a shot clock of exactly
| 20 years.
|
| Though honestly anything would be better than what we have now.
| bitwize wrote:
| What exactly about "exclusive right to copy or distribute" do
| these people not understand?
|
| If you don't like the current state of copyright, write your
| Congressman.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Congress punted this issue to the librarian of congress like
| how they punt most issues these days.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| People worked to try and get an alteration made to the law;
| they "wrote to their congressmen" already. This was
| functionally the result of that process.
|
| As an aside, what game company do you work for?
| standardUser wrote:
| I suppose that begs the question, what part of "to promote the
| Progress of Science and useful Arts" do you and the US
| Copyright Office not understand?
| nemomarx wrote:
| what do I do when my congressman doesn't care, and I can't find
| q candidate to vote for who promises to change it?
|
| it's not like we have a lot of agency in elections
| bitwize wrote:
| Then you need to politically organize and get the votes
| together to vote in people who will effect the desired
| changes to the law. Till that happens, tough. The law is the
| law.
| samatman wrote:
| An existing research exemption for copying materials has
| existed for many decades. Libraries have copiers.
|
| That they ruled that this specific case is not covered by that
| exemption is unfortunate, and the argument is not the slam dunk
| you appear to think it is.
| bakje_cheonchi wrote:
| That's not what the 1201 process is about.
| deadbabe wrote:
| The next step will be to bombard indie game developers making
| modern "retro" style games with patent infringement for the most
| trivial and basic game concepts, so that no one could ever hope
| to truly make a game.
| delecti wrote:
| The context of the quote pretty significantly changes the meaning
| though. It's an argument for why the rules shouldn't be loosened
| for the preservation foundation.
|
| > Still, the US copyright office has said no. "The Register
| concludes that proponents did not show that removing the single-
| user limitation for preserved computer programs or permitting
| off-premises access to video games are likely to be
| noninfringing," according to the final ruling. "She also notes
| the greater risk of market harm with removing the video game
| exemption's premises limitation, given the market for legacy
| video games."
|
| That quote (from the GamesRadar article) to me, makes it clear
| that the "[...] preserved video games would be used for
| recreational purposes" quote is being used as a gotcha. It's not
| that they don't want you to play old games, it's that they don't
| want copyright restrictions to be loosened. It's a very similar
| situation to the recent Internet Archive book. Current copyright
| law doesn't let you loan out format-shifted works. Copyright
| length is too long, but within the copyright framework, the
| restrictions seem sensible to me.
| aithrowawaycomm wrote:
| Gamers are once again let down by the shameless ignorance and
| dishonesty of games journalists:
|
| > More importantly, this also ignores the fact that libraries
| already lend out digital versions of more traditional media like
| books and movies to everyday people for what can only be
| described as recreational purposes.
|
| What this ignores is that libraries are not allowed to digitize
| in-copyright print books (or physical films) and then distribute
| these digital copies. This is what the Internet Archive got in
| trouble for. Emulating old games is not that different.
|
| Maybe the laws should be changed. But pretending that there's one
| set of rules for books and then a higher scrutiny for games is
| utterly backwards. Game publishers want the protections afforded
| to books and movies; it is archivists and emulators who want a
| double standard because of the unique technical challenges around
| old games. I am sympathetic to this position[1]. But I am not
| sympathetic to what has felt like 20 years of smarmy, dishonest
| games journalism around copyright. Too many journalists are
| completely in the tank for emulation, and they intentionally
| mislead readers with useless articles like this. It drives me
| crazy.
|
| [1] Although note the dishonest conflation of "games publishers"
| and "game copyright holders." Game journalists simply ignore that
| small indie devs also want copyright protection, focusing on
| Nintendo and Playstation for naked political reasons.
| cma wrote:
| > Maybe the laws should be changed. But pretending that there's
| one set of rules for books and then a higher scrutiny for games
| is utterly backwards
|
| Is it pretending? There actually were different rules in this
| area for rentals, though it didn't necessarily translate to
| digital transmission:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_of_America,_Inc._v._B...
| .
|
| > Soon after the settlement, the United States Congress passed
| the Computer Software Rentals Amendment Act prohibiting
| software rentals, excluding Nintendo cartridges from similar
| protections. Although Nintendo criticized the game rental
| business, they came to accept it, even working with Blockbuster
| to offer exclusive rental versions of their games. The first-
| sale doctrine was eventually subverted by end-user license
| agreements, which describe that the consumer is purchasing a
| singular, non-transferable license to the software, thus
| limiting the sale of used software.
|
| Computer Software Rental Amendments Act of 1990
|
| https://www.congress.gov/bill/101st-congress/senate-bill/198
|
| > Excludes certain home video game software from the
| prohibition (including a computer program embodied in a machine
| or product which cannot be copied during the ordinary operation
| of such machine or product).
|
| Libraries had a specific carve out as well over software in
| general "Authorizes nonprofit libraries to lend computer
| programs if a copyright warning has been affixed to the
| computer program packaging" which probably wouldn't apply to
| digital. But, it is wrong to say there weren't different rules
| for software vs books vs specifically game console software.
|
| The DMCA had lots of flexibility for administrative law to make
| specific carve outs treating different media circumvention
| stuff differently for things like preservation:
|
| > Lawmakers opted to create a rulemaking mechanism through the
| United States Copyright Office to review the state of
| copyrights and fair use to make limited classes of allowance
| for fair use which would be considered lawful means of using
| circumvention technology.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_A...
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_A...
| dkuznetsov wrote:
| The problem is that the copyright period is too long, and it is
| not dependent on whether or not the copies are still being
| actively sold.
| ericra wrote:
| This is not surprising, and unfortunately, this situation is
| unlikely to get better any time soon given our increasingly
| conservative (corp friendly) federal courts. It's really a shame
| because these corps have shown they can't be trusted to properly
| archive their own games, and any change of ownership or economic
| fortune can mean they are lost forever.
|
| From a personal level, I'll just keep doing what I've always
| done. Help archive the things I can. Support and buy games from
| smaller devs or publishers who care about their games. And if you
| want to play something from a shitty AAA dev, nothing is stopping
| you from playing it anyway for free and just giving the money to
| your favorite charity instead. Consumers can have a lot of power
| if they choose to exercise it.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| It's funny how they keep actively pushing normal people towards,
| rather than away from, piracy (or copyright infringement).
|
| From a certain angle it could be seen that they're backing people
| into a corner from which the only escape is piracy, and once the
| convenience of that apple has been tasted, it's difficult to go
| back to the sub-standard service provision and heavy usage
| restrictions of the 'legitimate' world.
| vjulian wrote:
| Retro games are certainly fun for many. I hope that the ruling
| proves irrelevant to the sharing of these games.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| It's funny because you never hear authors complaining that people
| might read classic literature for entertainment as if it was some
| kind of threat to their new book and that says a lot about the
| gaming industry.
|
| Shame they care more about capturing my attention by any means
| necessary than they do about providing the world with a new fun
| game.
|
| Good thing nothing like that could ever happen with the
| pharmaceutical industry, then I might have to go to Mexico to get
| OTC drugs...
| bakje_cheonchi wrote:
| 1201 in general is a frustrating process.
|
| Even if the DRM-protected media is being used for purposes not
| protected by copyright (e.g., fair use), 1201 makes it illegal to
| crack to the DRM unless there's been a 1201 exemption.
|
| To make this explicit: If rightsholders believe you are
| infringing on their copyright, they can sue you for copyright
| infringement no matter what. 1201 acts as another layer
| preventing fair use and other non-infringing works.
| roastedpeacock wrote:
| Just a friendly reminder to everyone that a challenge of the DMCA
| has not reached the Supreme Court in over 25 years of its
| existence.
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