I don't think "bad faith" and "slimy" should really apply to 24 year old game assets.
I value useful creation much higher than dated intellectual property. Or in other words, I do not support long-tail profit and control of any creative work.
I suspect virtually all of us here agree that copyright terms are too long, but this still looks like wilful copyright infringement.
Not that it would make any difference if EA stopped selling it on GOG. The idea of 'abandonware' has absolutely zero legal standing, as far as I'm aware.
I agree with you in sentiment, but this is not a form of protest -- just laziness. Even if it were some sort of protest against copyright laws, it would be a pretty terrible one.
I don't think anyone here is claiming that the author is legally in the right. This is a moral question and labels like "slimy" and "bad faith" are moral labels, not legal ones.
> If powerful corporations or special interests want to influence legislation, make them convince the people that something is a good idea and have the people contact their representatives.
(1) A "special interest" is any strict subset of the population. There is no necessity that it be nefarious, as you imply.
(2) A republic, by definition, doesn't require the constant approval of the population for each action. That would be a democracy, which we in the USA don't have and never did. In fact, our founding fathers explicitly ruled out the idea of governance by "the mob".
(3) The problem with "powerful corporations and special interests" is that they have receive concentrated benefits with diffuse costs. The solution is for every elected representative to always vote "no" to every change to the status quo unless it meets a very high bar for diffuse benefits. That kind of government would get even less accomplished than the "Do Nothing Congress".
(4) It's simply unwieldily for elected representatives to talk to their entire constituency on any regular basis. The only time this does happen is when we have some sort of panic. Those with means figured this out and hired people that specialized in getting the attention of legislators, executives, and regulators.
(5) I'm all for rooting out corruption and eliminating it. I'm not for hanging people for doing something that is perfectly legal under current US law.
Doesn’t it seem ridiculous to anyone else that the copyright on most software will outlast the existence of any computer the software was designed to run on? Part of the intellectual property “bargain” is that the right will one day return to the public, who can finally benefit. The extreme length of time appears to circumvent that end of the bargain.
It's lazy, maybe just the "easy way" to do it in the beginning, but when the game is being actively sold, it's also slimy.