Yes, please. I'd argue for all copyrights to expire at 20 years after publication. The idea that there's a perpetual right to intellectual "property" is a very dangerous one to a free society and to freedom of expression. There's no inherent right to own ideas. That's a legal construct created to encourage sharing of those ideas.
But the idea that a 20-year limit is too short to encourage authors and musicians and game developers to create new creative work is ludicrous. If anything, the essentially unlimited copyright of today encourages less creative output and less innovation. Why develop any new characters or stories if you've got multiple generations worth of copyright left to go? Keep pumping out the sequels.
Here's an additional idea to shorter copyright periods (not mutually exclusive). Weaken protection for a copyrighted item over its duration.
For example, when the subject is first copyrighted, it enjoys all the protections we have today, but say at different time periods (6 months, 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, etc.) more things become fair use or public domain.
As a simple example, take a copyrighted song. When first registered, it would have all the protections known today. But suppose that after awhile, the allowed cases of fair use are extended.
So at a certain point still within the copyright period, people may be able to use certain bars of the song. And eventually people might be able to do their own covers of the song, perhaps more/earlier fair use is granted for those not earning money on it, e.g. your YouTube fan videos. And at a certain point, people can start using parts of the song in other works that are not wholly dependent on the song, such as use in a background track to a small segment in in a YouTube video like the credits out-tro.
Covers are allowed because they are performed in venues with ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC licenses - http://www.ascap.com/licensing/licensingfaq.aspx. Covers performed in public in a venue without one of these licenses are not explicitly allowed.
No. You. Do. Not. It's called a mechanical license.
"Since the Copyright Act of 1909, United States musicians have had the right to record a version of someone else's previously recorded and released tune, whether it's music alone or music with lyrics.[7] A license can be negotiated between representatives of the interpreting artist and the copyright holder, or recording published tunes can fall under a mechanical license whereby the recording artist pays a standard royalty to the original author/copyright holder through an organization such as the Harry Fox Agency, and is safe under copyright law even if they do not have any permission from the original author. Other agents who can facilitate clearance include Limelight, the online mechanical licensing utility powered by RightsFlow. The U.S. Congress introduced the mechanical license to head off an attempt by the Aeolian Company to monopolize the piano roll market.[8]"
You just quoted something saying exactly what I said, while acting like you disagree. Once again, a license is special permission. That is precisely what it is, that is the whole point. Saying "you don't have to have special permission because you get special permission" is insane.
Sync licenses (eg to sync a song with video) require the songwriter's explicit consent in every case, but while a license fee is required to re-record a particular song, explicit consent is not required. That's why one-hit wonders' songs are often hard to find on places like iTunes or Amazon MP3 Store if you don't know the performing artist's name, because anyone can cover it, and there are entire operations who make a business out of producing terrible covers of popular songs to get some accidental purchases.
Any artists who haven't allowed their recordings to make it to electronic distribution are also drowned in poor covers online. AC/DC was a great example of this problem until they finally gave in and released their stuff digitally. There's still a ton of AC/DC cover recordings on iTunes.
I happened to know about the mechanical license, but didn't realize it had been extended to covers.
But this is really beside the original point. The point is that copyright was intended to promote the progress of science/arts/knowledge and there are a lot of things right now that don't fall into fair use and hinders progress.
Here are some other examples. Many years ago when the Internet was first going mainstream, fan websites of TVs and movies were getting cease and desist letters because they had pictures of the actors in their roles on their websites. Technically this is still a violation, but most companies now at least have the sense to turn a blind eye. You'll see even on Wikipedia, there are a lot of reservations of posting a screenshot of a tv show, movie, or video game because of this.
Another random example is fan fiction. This seems like it would be a good candidate for rules to relax over time. At first, fan fiction may more restricted because the original authors may in fact want to write their own sequels. But over the course of time the work enters the public stream of consciousness and progress via things like fan fiction should be allowed instead of hunted down and destroyed.
Another example comes from an actual case law I can't remember the details from, but a book essentially about 'The most important things you should know when dating a Trekkie'. It made references to episodes in Star Trek so they got sued. Because it didn't directly parody Star Trek, it didn't fall under fair use. If I recall, the book lost the case. Again, since Star Trek has been deeply absorbed into the culture, it makes sense that copyright protection needs to weaken over time to allow more ideas/expression instead of hinder them. (A related topic might be the subtle distinction between parody and satire which is also currently a problem in current copyright law.)
I wouldn't even mind a compromise where anyone who paid a small extension fee could keep copyright going. That way Disney, Bono, etc could keep their own copyrights without messing things up for every other copyrighted work.
This idea is floated quite often in reformist discussions of copyright, but I think it would be a huge headache.
I have worked with public domain material quite a bit. Currently, anything published in the United States prior to 1923 is in the public domain in the United States [1][2]. Some works published after 1923 are also in the public domain if they meet certain conditions (e.g. a work published in 1925 with a copyright notice where the copyright was never renewed), but it can be an extreme headache to work out which post-1923 works are in copyright and which are not.
Although I am in no way a fan of the current system, it at least has the advantage of clarity for pre-1923 works.
In a proposed system of copyright extension, renewal or terms that are in other ways modifiable on a per-work basis, establishing whether or not works are still in copyright would become an absolute nightmare. Consider that, in the US, copyright applies to any eligible creative work at the moment it is "created and fixed in a tangible form" [3]. In the internet age, millions or billions or works are created each day that are protected by copyright. Most of these works do not have a title and will never be registered anywhere, but copyright applies none the less. A central registry of copyrighted works is impossible, much less a registry that records the specific extensions or renewal term on a per-work basis.
In my opinion, the only possible system that can work is one based on fixed lengths of time. If copyright is extendable, the large majority of works will fall into a legal grey area where it is unclear whether or not the copyright has been extended and almost impossible to find out. Under such a system, the only safe approach to handling copyrighted works would be to assume each work had had its copyright extended to the maximum term possible under law, unless it was provable that was not the case (which, as I have argued, would be extremely difficult).
Under a fixed-term system, it is simple to work out whether or not most works are still copyrighted, even in cases where the title, author of record or copyright holder are not identifiable.
[1] There may be some obscure exceptions to this rule, but it holds broadly enough that I have never encountered any in practice.
A central registry of extended copyrights is not impossible; there's plenty of institutional inertia in government offices to assure continuity (USPTO has been around since 1871, Library of Congress since 1800), and the extension fees could easily pay for a database of works. Heck, we already do that with registered copyright.
It won't even be a large corpus; the works that anyone would care about after 30 years (or, in better concert with the current system, 70 years) would be rather manageable.
To eliminate "grey area", make the USPTO (or LoC or whatever) the final word on whether something is still registered. Ask 'em, they say "yes" or "no", and you're done. Instruct the registry to provide wide latitude in considering slightly different versions the same work to cut down on combinatorics.
It actually puts more of a book-keeping burden on the copyright owners than the government, but if you have 30 year+ still-producing assets, presumably you can manage such a slow-motion system.
It's not a perfect system, granted, but it's better than the alternative: eternal or eternally-extending copyright, with the original horizon being "Steamboat Willie". With a registered-renewal system, Disney can keep their crap and we can get the rest of the corpus.
(For bonus points, the registration fee increases with each renewal, to make sure you really think it's valuable. Powers of two would be nice.)
Why is it impossible? If they're paying for a copyright extension, shouldn't it be clear which works they are paying for? Anything not in the registry would fall under the shorter term.
It's not impossible, but it can be extremely difficult.
Consider a short story published in a literary journal last week. Allow a copyright system to exist that covers each eligible work for 30 years by default, and allows multiple extensions of 5 years at a cost of $1000 per extension per work, up to a total copyright term of 100 years.
Someone in 2047 discovers a copy of this particular journal issue, which has now become obscure. They identify that this short story, though never being given acclaim, has had a subtle yet profound cultural influence. They decide to republish the story in their own commercial magazine, but want to check if the copyright has been extended. If it has not, the story is in the public domain. If is has been extended, the story is still covered by copyright.
They can search the central registry for the title of the short story and the name of the author. But they also have to search for the names of the editors of the journal, because it isn't clear whether or not the copyright stayed with the author or was transferred to the journal as part of the submission process. In fact, the copyright might have been granted to the owner of the journal, which may be an individual or may be an institution. The entry for the copyright might be under the title of the short story, or under the title for the journal, or under the title of that particular issue of the journal.
Furthermore, the author of the story, if they retained the copyright, may have submitted the story under a pen name, and/or may have registered the copyright of the short story under a different title than the title they used to submit to the journal, or the title might have been changed by the editors.
Or, the author, after having the short story accepted by the journal, may have sold it to a publisher who published it in a short fiction anthology, the copyright for which is registered completely separately and is essentially invisible to our hypothetical future researcher.
Any of these agents might have extended the copyright. It would be extremely difficult to prove to a high degree of certainty that the story was or was not covered by copyright.
Violation of a registered copyright only carries punishment if "the" UUID of the work is registered and is contained in the work (byline, front page, whatever as appropriate). Doesn't actually matter if the UUID has any relationship to the work, although it would be nice if it did.
Example, This HN post from 2014 is registered copyright UUID 12345-23-242342 by VLM.
In 2097 simply check https://copyright.example/12345-23-242342 for current status. Instead of copyright.example, I hope they can think of a more intelligent international (interplanetary?) domain name, but the general idea holds.
Don't want copyright enforced on a work created in 2015, simply neglect to list the UUID you got at registration. I see no reason a registration should be expensive other than the usual crooks trying to eliminate competition. No technological reason.
False claim (intentional random numbers instead of valid registration) equals instant public domain.
Essentially this large integer is the title - registration ID - type of concept for this copyrighted media.
Personally I think it would be awesome if the title generator also stored licensing info. My panoramic landscape photo is not only registered to me, but is CC:NC. If you messed with the system you could force all UUID beginning with 0 to be all rights reserved, all UUID beginning with 9 to be CC:SA. Just keep on generating UUIDs until you get ASCII codes for C, C, S, and A as the first 4 bytes for a CC:SA UUID. Or the first 3 bytes being ASCII G, P, and L. Better be a long/wide UUID system.
UUID "contained in the work" would be troublesome in many mediums (music recordings, film, paintings, for instance). Perhaps "travels with the work" would be manageable though.
And it's worth considering that every tweet, every photo on Flickr, every video on YouTube, every status update on FB, and so on, constitutes a new copyrightable work. Not everyone will care about the copyrights of their tweets, but some will. How do you copyright something for which you have no control of the identifiers? I assume you don't intend for people to hit up the service for a new UUID before tweeting and embed the token in their tweet?
(Obviously this problem would go away if e.g. Twitter itself signed onto this scheme, automatically registering and UUIDing your tweets on your behalf.)
"Violation of a registered copyright only carries punishment"
Or if thats a non-starter just reduce all the penalties by 1e6 or perhaps 1e3 for violation of an untagged work.
Retweeting being a copyright violation, but if a REGEX doesn't find a UUID in there, the legal cost would be a micropayment transaction, so probably ignored.
I would have to re-read Berne to determine if this sneaks by on a technicality, or if Berne is simply culturally and technologically obsolete. Its a copyright treaty, not an economic suicide pact... can be worked around.
Since the digits in a UUID are independent, just overwrite the first characters to whatever you want. You don't have to keep generating random numbers.
Why can't you just type in a section (say, a paragraph) of the work and have a fuzzy search locate it, instead of relying on just the title and author? I think your situation is only difficult due to poor technology. Youtube can now identify even distorted sections of videos and audio against an huge catalog of works, why can't the copyright registry?
But then you would have to put a number on every work just in case you extend the copyright later. Otherwise you might have a 35-year-old work and have no idea if its copyright has been extended because it was not originally printed with a number.
>> Just give it a number and make protection contingent upon publication of same with the work.
> you might have a 35-year-old work and have no idea if its copyright has been extended because it was not originally printed with a number
No... if protection is contingent on publication of the number along with the work, then a work printed without a number is unprotected. There is no concept of "extending copyright" on a work that isn't even copyrighted.
Yes! Are you an EU citizen? If so, it would be great if you could voice your opinion in the ongoing consultation on the review of the EU copyright rules, currently held by the European Commision. Here's the link:
Even non-complete surveys will be considered and you can be sure your contribution will be read since the number of contributions is always relatively low.
The same goes for any other EU citizens on HN. Now is the time to make yourself heared!
Every one in "the public" has skin in the game, cuz, you know, it's their "domain" we are talking about. The very fact that people think that pushing stuff into the public domain is some sort of gift, or that the public has no say in the matter, is kind of the point of the post.
20 years EVERYTHING. Even for something like Photoshop, imagine the amount of choice a consumer would have if there were a thousand Photoshops out there by different companies. Microsoft could even make a Photoshop. It would be ridiculous but kind of awesome.
The same is true if we had maybe 10,000 Zelda games on the market. Imagining that is kind of weird. But the result is just awesome.
> Even for something like Photoshop, imagine the amount of choice a consumer would have if there were a thousand Photoshops out there by different companies. Microsoft could even make a Photoshop
First of all even if copyright was expired it doesn't mean access to source code.
Secondly, do you really think that having access to 20 year old version of Photoshop (source code or not) would be significant factor for anybody to enter the market? Making it work on modern systems would mean essentially a complete rewrite, at which point the original copyright would be irrelevant. Making it competitive would be probably more difficult with the original codebase than with a new clean design.
>First of all even if copyright was expired it doesn't mean access to source code.
Maybe it should. Registering a copyright already requires the submission of several copies of the work. Why shouldn't the source code necessary to produce that work be a required part of the submission? If the public is to be expected to take advantage of public domain works, they must have access to high quality versions in useful formats.
When is my work protected?
Your work is under copyright protection the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible form that it is perceptible either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.
Do I have to register with your office to be protected?
No. In general, registration is voluntary. Copyright exists from the moment the work is created. You will have to register, however, if you wish to bring a lawsuit for infringement of a U.S. work. See Circular 1, Copyright Basics, section “Copyright Registration.”
If I create a story it is automatically copyrighted (unless I specifically license it differently) however if I wanna sue, my copyright must be registered.
There is 1000 photoshops out there - they just don't use the name "photoshop". For a product like that the copyright doesn't really make a difference, except it might confuse customers.
One thing his linked article misses is the fact that if these things entered the public domain, a lot of games that are currently tied in ownership hell would be free for GoG to remaster/rework to work on modern computers, and sell.
And recall, a LOT of these games are only now available, even to the original owners, because of GoG. The original owners just sat on the IP, because the profits weren't enough to justify porting them to a modern OS.
They can easily have an INSANE game store that comes with all windows 8 machines. They also have an advantage in porting old windows games to newer operating systems. Without development costs for game design, they just have to port, and will be able to profit massively. They can easily make it difficult to get a game working that is not from the Microsoft Classic Game Store.
But, at the same time, this would still be GREAT for consumers, because games would be cheap. They could just have a set of old Mario games or Final Fantasy games even for FREE if you create a store account and add your credit card information.
Companies with consoles or distribution (like Amazon) would have a great advantage. Amazon could even provide every game for free if you sign up for Amazon Prime.
I cannot wait for Mario on Xbox. haha. That's going to be weird but seriously awesome.
Anyone who argues about needing lifetime + 20 years for video games is isn't paying attention. The half-life of a video game is perhaps 2-6 (depending on a bunch of factors) so a 20 year gives you between 3 and 10 halvings. More than enough time for you to capture the bulk of the sales that you're entitled to, but also a reasonable amount of time to return the ideas you borrowed from society & culture back to the public domain.
When do we start the clock?
You're right that most games are pushed out the door and get most of their sales within the first few months and are basically abandoned after that.
However there is the trend of "early access" games as well as games that continue to receive updates over time, minecraft or Wow would be examples of these, so there is a more gradual flow of sales.
It's not inconceivable that a game like minecraft could go on for 20 years , even if it's future form bares little resemblance to it's original release.
From a copyright perspective, when a work is published, the clock starts on that work. Even if the work is software and subsequently gets modified, if you retain an older copy, it will expire on schedule. You won't get rights to the new stuff, but you could still, say, extract textures and use them elsewhere. Merely endlessly permuting a work does not give you exclusive rights in perpetuity. You keep building rights to the new stuff, but not the unmodified bits.
Of course this point is entirely theoretical at the moment since it will be many many decades before any video game ever created enters the public domain.
Well, I assume this is true of video games the same way it is true of other art, but because people keep extending copyright terms faster than they expire, it's not clear if anything will every make it to the public domain again. We are scheduled to have some books (presumably published in 1923) enter the public domain in 2019 but you never know what some lobbyists can pull off in the next 5 years.
However there is the trend of "early access" games as well as games that continue to receive updates over time, minecraft or Wow would be examples of these, so there is a more gradual flow of sales.
This trend, I believe, is partly in response to piracy. One might even argue that some derivative of this model (perhaps in conjunction with crowd-funding à la Kickstarter) could succeed even in the absence of copyright law altogether!
They don't reduce piracy (or if they do, it's not relevant). What they do is mitigate the effects of piracy by lowering the risk of development. If your Kickstarter or early access game is successful enough, you may end up paying for the entire development of the game long before you finish developing it. And if it's not successful then you stop development and move on to something else.
That makes sense, crowd sourcing etc can be used to take risk out of development. I'm not sure I'd go as far as to say you don't need copyright though. Most crowd-funded games are still under proprietary licenses. Part of the appeal is getting a game earlier / cheaper than you would at release.
If you allow unlimited redistribution you remove much of that incentive.
If you allow unlimited redistribution you remove much of that incentive.
I disagree. The vast majority of games developed today do not have a hope of paying for their own development, copyrighted or otherwise. It's only a very small proportion of games (so-called AAA) that are developed with the expectation of profit.
I'm not sure what you mean, surely all games are produced with an expectation of profit otherwise they would not be made. Discounting small games that people make for gamejams etc.
Take a look at the IndieGaming subreddit (over on Reddit). Every single day I see half a dozen new games pop up. People are making thousands and thousands of new games all the time. Do you honestly believe they all do so with an explicit expectation of profit? No, the basic premise that people do not create without an expectation of profit is false and frankly deeply insulting to humanity.
Most indie games are built with a profit motive to some degree, at the very least they need to cover their costs but I am guessing that most aspire to more than that, so that they can fund their next game.
Maybe lots of them but certainly not all. Lots of games are made for fun and if they are later sold or made free depends on how well they turn out to be and what the devs want to do.
It doesn't really have to be just small games, you can take Dwarf Fortress and Cave Story as examples of "big" games which are both free.
Calling Dwarf Fortres "free" is mostly accurate but it doesn't really help your argument. Tarn Adams keeps ahold of Dwarf Fortress pretty tightly so that his donation stream doesn't dry up so he can continue working on it.
Copyright law already does address the "when does the clock start" issue in great detail (in order to determine when the copyright period expires). We could keep using all that case law, and just adjust the duration of the copyright down.
In particular, making a significant change to a work creates a new copyright for the changed work. If you boot up windows it will say something like "Copyright (C) Microsoft 1983-2013", meaning that the earliest code was written in 1983 and the last significant change was in 2013. That means that this version of Windows will enter the public domain in the year 2014+95. But you can start making copies of the original 1983 version of DOS already in 1983+95.
That sounds like a pretty easy problem: A given release should enter the public domain however many years after it was released. So after 20 years the first release of minecraft would be in the public domain and other people could base new games off that if they wanted, but newer releases would of course remain under copyright (assuming they contained any nontrivial changes).
Then you would not get rights to the new version number, but you could get it to everything else... excepting that that is a bad example as version numbers would not be copyrightable as a brute fact, but more realistically, if you merely add one creative paragraph of flavor text the clock would start anew on that paragraph, but the protection would not magically flow backwards back in time to the entire rest of the content.
Personally, I think the main problem with copyright is not the things were the owners care about them, but where they do not.
Personally, I would be mostly happy with current copyright, with an extension that items must be reregistered every 5 years, and available for sale. That would deal with the huge amount of items (games are a good example) where the original owners don't care enough to release the game as public domain, or often can't even be traced.
I'm not sure the trapdoor is necessary. If the changes are in fact trivial (whatever courts decide), people will just copy/use the public domain version.
It doesn't really matter - as long as someone keeps hold of what was actually released 20 years ago, they can use that, and it won't matter that the release from 19 years ago remains under copyright.
AFAIK, the EVE Online server was never released, and being an MMO, that's where the game actually happens. At that point, it might actually be perpetual. Even if it all was public domain, the creators (CCP Games) would still be in the best position to profit.
I guess the explanation to why someone deserves to be paid for something as long as they live is: if somebody is creating something to be sold to other people, and that is their job, why should it matter when that thing is sold to someone? A policeman isn't being paid for keeping someone in Jail, they are being paid to put them there. Content creators don't get paid for creating a work, they get paid for selling it to somebody- so why an arbitrary restriction saying once X years are up, you can't sell it anymore (or can't effectively since anyone can have it for free).
The answer is, it is in the common interests to have these rights expire at some point, since after a certain period of time the utility of having everyone be able to do what they want with the work is greater than the expected value the content creator would be able to extract. But if you believe that copyright should be valid for any period of time at all, don't act like it is a given that it should expire after some arbitrary period of time. You are taking away a right from somebody in the interests of the public good, and there is always going to be discussion when that happens because you are taking away from one group of people specifically to benefit society as a whole.
Copyright isn't a right to sell a work, granted to the creator. It's a restriction on copying works that others have created. You can still sell something to somebody, even if it's in the public domain.
>so why an arbitrary restriction saying once X years are up, you can't sell it anymore (or can't effectively since anyone can have it for free).
That is backwards. We set up an arbitrary restriction saying people can't reproduce it, and that is the only reason this artificially created business exists. There is no reason for this arbitrary restriction to extend indefinitely. The business would exist just fine with 20 year copyright, so we should do that.
Every year, Microsoft could come out with a very cheap console. The first could be called something like
THE 1993 COLLECTION
It would just be a simple box with a 1993-strength processor on it. And it would have a controller and a huge hard disk on it that has every game created from 1993. I think that would be a great idea for gamers. Something else Microsoft could do is release an XBOX ONE disc with the top games from 1993. That could be a huge hit and I bet a lot of the classic games would make a big comeback and get popular again.
Ideally it would be great if a bunch of different companies did it. I personally wouldn't want everything from 1993, but an exquisitely curated set would be worth paying for.
I'd just like to comment, because this comment hasn't attracted any replies yet, and it is:
a) moronic
b) completely tangental to the point under discussion
The list of "things that people could do" is quite long. You, for example, could go live in a hole far, far away where there is no internet. To qualify for this list, things do not have to be: profitable, rational or feasible. However, when a company like Microsoft creates a product, they consider all of those things, likely in that order. Thus when you propose that "a thing Microsoft could do" is to find every game created within every calendar year, then, at great expense, replicate the antiquated equipment on which that software ran, then market and sell it very cheaply despite the costs of research, licensing and quality assurance, I think that is a thing which Microsoft is very unlikely to do. I don't think it would be a very clever thing for Microsoft to do, nor would it be good for gamers, because after the inaugural release of a million games from 1993 nobody cares about Microsoft would cease to exist as a commercial entity, having wasted all of it's resources on this terrible, terrible idea.
On the other hand, why were you even compelled to write this? The most imaginative, creative scenario you could imagine was that if software copyrights expired very quickly, you would like to pay someone for that software? Which is totally already a thing you can do, and the proceeds (in reality) would go to the creator of the software?
In conclusion, the internet has broken me. I have no more will to live, and I can only hope in the distant future a giant, faceless corporation will populate different planets with clones of all the people born in each year, so that my clone can go and live happily on the planet 1991 forever. Hopefully your clone will not be present.
Ignoring the venom in your comment, maybe the parent commenter is younger and unfamiliar with the infamous and evil Microsoft of the 1990s, and thus could be educated rather than belittled. See https://xkcd.com/1053/
Not entirely the same, but I really wish the concept of compulsory mechanical licensing that exists for music would cover more creative endeavors. I'm kind of OK with creator of the original Duke Nukem character getting royalties for uses of his character, I'm less OK with him being able to forbid anybody else from ever making a 'cover' of his game.
I'm not sure if dagw was referring to this or not, but last year some musicians put a Duke Nukem cover album together, and the original composer refused to accept royalties and got it taken down shortly after its release in the "Game Music Bundle." My memory is a little hazy, but I guess he was able to do so because they released the album before they had the rights to do the covers (I seem to remember someone saying he had not responded in months after they attempted making contact). Unfortunately it seems most information of the fiasco has been wiped from the face of the internet; the vgmdb entry[1] is about the only thing left.
It's just another example of pirates being more interested and/or capable of preserving history than the creators of history itself are: If fans weren't circulating this in the usual channels, we'd have lost such masterpieces as "BRO IT OUT YOUR ASS" to time forever.
What would a 'cover' of a game be?
You can make a game which is very very similar to Duke Nukem as long as you don't reuse characters , assets or code from the original.
Do you have any examples? There are a ton of platformers which are very mario-like and I don't think got into any trouble. Of course if you reproduce a mario game with a mario character even if you redrew him you would be in trouble.
That latter sentence of yours is entirely the point! Wouldn't it be cool to get a "mechanical license" to allow you to recreate (I'm your own way) Super Mario Bros with the original characters (even if you make the graphics yourself)? Quite literally a "cover", in a way that's more recognisable than just sheer mechanics? You can argue that you almost can now, and in some cases yes, but I'd love to pay royalties to someone to "cover" my favourite RPG from the Megadrive, beyond just making a "spiritual successor"!
I wonder if this could work for games in the same way it does for music. With music there is a significant "brand" around the artist to the point where the success of some artists seems to be more down to their image and persona than their actual music.
This means that a cover version of a song performed by some tribute band is not really a substitute in any way for a performance by the real artist even if the cover band can reproduce the original with very high accuracy.
Game developers don't really have the same halo and fame surrounding them, so perhaps customers would be happy with a cheaper clone of a game provided that the assets etc were of at least a similar quality to the original even if not identical.
Worth noting: Game mechanics aren't copyrightable. They're patentable. And the "mechanical license" you talk about is exactly what licensing a patent is.
The graphics, the text, etc. are copyrightable/trademarkable.
> I'm kind of OK with creator of the original Duke Nukem character getting royalties for uses of his character, I'm less OK with him being able to forbid anybody else from ever making a 'cover' of his game.
Duke Nukem is about as original as beans on toast. I don't see the point in making a cover of a caricature whose cultural origins could be traced back to the Second World War.
20 years is more than enough to monetize a game, and even most franchises out there (I very much doubt anyone will care about buying an "Angry Birds" game 15 years from now, or even a "Mass Effect" one). But franchises don't even need to be included in this rule. You can just take every game on its own. So Mass Effect 10 would still benefit from 20 years of copyright, while Mass Effect 1 will be in the public domain by then.
I certainly agree with "most", but there are definitely franchises that have spanned more than 20 years. The first Final Fantasy was released in 1987, the first Zelda a year before.
And I think both Square and Nintendo have more than made their money back on those franchises. A 20 year limit on copyright would not have prevented Nintendo from making The Legend of Zelda.
Once a developer makes their money back, the game should go public domain.
Nintendo would still be able to make tons of Zelda games, it's just that there would be good competition with several hundred other studios making Zelda games. They would probably even do a better job than Nintendo and make the top-selling Zelda games.
"Once a developer makes their money back, the game should go public domain."
This is reasonable as a design goal, if you're taking into account risk (I make 10 games, only one meets any success - is the cost of development the money invested only in the one game or also in the other attempts that - for whatever reason - didn't catch on?). I'm leery of it as a hard and fast rule, because it is way to hard to say what costs actually are (/ should be).
Yes, I wasn't arguing for a stronger copyright - I'm very much on the other side of things. I'm just trying to be sure our discussion is informed by all the relevant facts (in this case, that overwhelmingly franchises do not endure but some do).
We could already have maybe 10,000 Zelda games out by all kinds of creative publishers. Think about the amount of choice you could have if we had this rule in place. Zelda games could be a buck each.
Yes, I would like to play the original Final Fantasy. I would download that probably right away.
Someone could easily take Myst, (maybe Microsoft or Sony?) and put a good, updated version for ps4 or xbox one or even wii u and sell it for maybe $9.99.
Do you know how cheap classic books are at the bookstore? You can get books by Charles Dickens for like 5.99. If prices go down for video games, an Xbox one compatible set of classic games like Myst from that era would be insanely cheap. I'd buy instantly. I wouldn't have to buy another game for like 10 years, I'd be so busy.
Have you heard of Nintendo's Virtual Console service? They've been doing pretty much exactly this since the Wii launched in 2006: old games for the NES, SNES, Genesis, and more for $5-15~. You can't get the Final Fantasy games, because Square Enix probably thinks having the original games would hurt demand for their expensive remakes, but otherwise their selection is pretty good. For PC games, you have Good Old Games, which sells DRM-free versions of classic PC games tweaked for modern hardware (or ran in an emulator, for the really old ones) with no need for CD serials. The future you wanted is already here! What do you know, they even have Myst:
Does it matter? There is a free clone of the first Zelda and I don't see how you could argue that it is in any way limiting the monitization of the franchise. If anything, it seems like it would be an excellent marketing move for franchises to release older games for free (even before 20 years).
I actually like the idea of franchises becoming public domain. In many cases it seems that the holder either doesn't care about the IP (Sega properties like Skies of Arcadia, Landstalker or the Oasis series come to mind. Cap com has a bunch too) or they seem least competent in furthering the franchise (George Lucas, Square and now EA with Dungeon Keeper).
That's not much of a defense at all, the cultural impact of Duke Nukem 3D is in the assets, not the code, though the BUILD engine was itself remarkable in its era.
Good on George for GPLing the engine, but his "openness to giving to the community" seems to stop short of anything that the mainstream public would benefit from.
And on a snarkier and less philosophical note: maybe Duke Nukem should be given over to the public domain. After DNF maybe someone else should have a shot. It, after all, would not stop Broussard from pursuing his own new Duke Nukem game, and might allow someone else to salvage a pretty influential part of 90s culture.
[edit] Thought about this some more. The return of a work into the public domain is less about the ability to redistribute it verbatim and more about the ability to extend and derive from it.
The cultural impact of public domain for Shakespeare are the million spinoffs, reimaginings, and new productions. The freedom to redistribute the original text is only a tiny part of the intent of public domain. This is the public good that comes from the work being in the public domain.
So GPLing the engine, or even opening up the assets, does not even begin to address the intent of public domain. Until someone (anyone!) can make a new Duke Nukem game, or a Duke Nukem movie, or a Duke Nukem novel (Prohibition-era Duke?), or incorporate Duke into some other work, the core intent of the public domain isn't being met.
> That doesn't sound like the grounds of creative control. That sounds like indefinite copyright absolutism.
Hm. Reading over the source (Facebook, not Twitter, but it's not substantially different as sentiments go), I agree. Perhaps I was being too generous with my interpretation.
This idea, that ideas come from society and should be returned to society, resonates with me profoundly. (And 20 years seems generous.) It almost seems selfish to keep ideas from the public so that the "creator" can continue to profit. As developers, we have seen over and over again the exponential multiplier that the community can be. Release the source and open the doors to infinite possibilities.
Expressing a desire for a game to enter the public domain, let’s say twenty years after publication, does not in any sense whatsoever suggest a desire for developers to not get paid. I resent having to type this. It’s a bit like finding yourself having to say that you’re not in favour of gruesomely starving children to death because you expressed a thought that they probably shouldn’t get to exclusively eat at McDonald’s.
“But the prisoner is still in prison!” he’d cry, as he left the police station, his pockets out-turned, not having done any other work in the thirty-five years since and bemused as to why he wasn’t living in a castle.
Dude complains about people exaggerating his opinion and then proceeds to completely exaggerate the opposing opinion (a policeman deserves to live in a castle for arresting one criminal 35 years ago).
OK, someone who is a lawyer...what are the implications for reusage of non-technical assets? That is, if Super Mario enters the public domain, would I have the right the appropriate its theme music and characters for my own profit-making venture?
IANAL, but in that case can I make an animated film about Cinderella? The story is in the public domain, but Disney have recent films.
By making a Cinderella film did Disney gained the right to block subsequent works based on it?
Nope, you can still make a Cinderella film. The tricky bit is to make sure that all your visual and story inspirations for the movie comes only from the 'original' sources (Grim, Lang etc.) and nothing the Disney movie.
See the regular launching of "Sherlock" shows, and the multiple on-air concurrently.
Edit: Though Sherlock does have some limitations. Elements of the Sherlock stories introduced after 1922 are still copyrighted, but things from the vast majority of Doyle's stories are public domain and usable by anyone.
Yes you can, no they didn't. But you probably could not afford the onslaught on legal action Disney would hit you with. For them the cost is well worth scaring off competition and quashing belief that culture is free or producible by anyone other than big media company.
Yes, as long as you don't copy anything that Disney added to it, or infringe on any of Disney's trademarks.
There's actually companies who create "Mockbusters" - movies with similar titles to the latest hits, to con people into buying them. They tend to walk a fine line, but they do OK (although they piss off a lot of customers).
I seem to recall there being an R-rated movie called "Pirates" at the same time as and with a cover that looked remarkably similar to that of "Pirates of the Caribbean." I never watched it, but IIRC the cover was confusing enough that Blockbuster had to put "Contains content not suitable for children" stickers on it.
I consider this practice just as unethical as hosting adult content on squatted domain misspellings of common sites.
There was a porn version called "Pirates", but porn versions are satire, not mockbusters. And yes, there were a few confused purchases, but it was much higher budget than most mockbuster. I think there actually mockbuster versions of Pirates (cheap porn, posing as expensive porn, which was itself a "satire" of a Disney movie).
Most mockbusters are made by 1-5 young animators, and they do the scripts and voice acting themselves. Pirates was notable for being one of the most expensive pieces of porn ever made (since it a real boat).
I am not a lawyer, but I am fairly confident that trademark law would apply even where copyright did not. That is, because Mario's likeness is a trademark of Nintendo, you might not be able to use that likeness in a video game, even if the underlying assets themselves are not protected by copyright.
This also means that franchises can protect the franchise name even if they lost copyright on individual works. But it is much more limited than copyright and it might have a little but I would guess not that much impact on the stuff that GOG does, for example. Most game companies are not using 20 year old graphics to promote their new games.
Isn't trademark more limited? I couldn't call my game super mario brothers or use the art on the box where it might cause confusion in the marketplace, but inside the box could be all of their uncopyrighted content.
Yes, and it would be a good thing for everyone. Nintendo would be encouraged to create new characters and new ideas, and young creative people would have far more cultural material to work with to express their own new and innovative ideas.
I'm amazed at some of the complaints about the original article, I wonder if they know that their copyrights will end eventually?
But to put it into perspective, here are a few of the games released in 1994: Doom II, Mortal Kombat II, Marathon, Daytona USA, Super Metroid on SNES, Earthworm Jim.
If it weren't for all the idiots in the world that don't care about Mutually Assured Destruction, that might not be a bad idea. MAD keeps countries at peace, or, at least there is something to say for it.
I'm not sure MAD is really the way to world peace, but the idea that owning nuclear weapons is inherently bad for any government in the world... I'm not sure how right that is, either. If you are sure that you will be destroyed as soon as you attack, no matter whether you attack first, there is suddenly a lot less incentive to attack.
This is very long and I made it only a third of the way. Does it say anything more substantial than. "I would like to play old games for free?" I did enjoy the pictures.
I don't think its about playing old games for free. I think its about releasing the source of old games so that the craftsmanship, ideas, technology etc can be used and reused by the developers of today and tomorrow.
Uh, tech's not really a great reason. The tech behind 20 year old games is hardly an arcane mystery. The Games industry in general is pretty good at sharing techniques, perhaps because by the time they're shared, they're already old.
You don't need a game to enter the public domain to deconstruct ideas and craftsmanship either. You DO need it to legally play the majority of games for free, or to resell without paying royalties.
But the idea that a 20-year limit is too short to encourage authors and musicians and game developers to create new creative work is ludicrous. If anything, the essentially unlimited copyright of today encourages less creative output and less innovation. Why develop any new characters or stories if you've got multiple generations worth of copyright left to go? Keep pumping out the sequels.