Live data from Hacker News

25 years of video clips gone as Paramount axes Comedy Central wesbite

latenighter.com

161–170 of 356 posts

Re: 25 years of video clips gone as Paramount axes Comedy Central wesbite

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

StarCraft 2 is still competitive 14 years later. I’m not sure I’d personally have an issue with it becoming public domain but the game is still well-stewarded today. Even Brood War is still satisfactorily supported 26 years after its release. Though I think that’s definitely long enough to consider the option of public domain.

Is it the same StarCraft2 as 10 years ago, or regularly updated?

It’s had 2 subsequent major changes with massive differences in units, game balance, and pacing … to the point of almost being three different games. The most recent and current era is called “Legacy of the Void” and is about 9 years old. Since then changes have been fairly conservative, mainly just unit stats changes. Though some “units” like infested terrans have been removed in the past nine years, which could be considered semi-major/semi-minor.

Re: 25 years of video clips gone as Paramount axes Comedy Central wesbite

#162
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those of us not reading widely enough and/or not being raised in the American literary tradition, the quote is from John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" [1]. I have long been aware of the work, but reading this quote makes me regret not having read it yet. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grapes_of_Wrath

There was a (massive) excess of food during the depression, so that is likely made up.

Interesting, given that I remember from history lessons that it was more-less exactly as quoted.

Curiously, this also happens today. Grocery stores dump a lot of perfectly good food and other goods, and some of them figure that it can't be that someone dumpster-dives instead of buying, therefore they instruct employees to make the trash unusable. Example I've seen first-hand was when throwing away a perfectly good box of laundry detergent, they would open it and spill it into a container of perfectly good fruits and veggies, to make both unusable.

I'm not a freegan, but I knew a few at some point, and the stories I heard even in my local area, makes the quote feel 100% believable.

Re: 25 years of video clips gone as Paramount axes Comedy Central wesbite

#163

This is complete incompetence from their leadership who show no value to their own content. They could have easily auctioned off/sold very old content to someone else but that kind of thinking would be beyond their competency. It's no wonder they go in such huge losses despite of having loyal audience and monopoly over unparalleled content. To this day I cannot get over the fact that there are literally millions docu…

They could have easily auctioned off/sold very old content to someone else..

That assumes they own the exclusive rights to the content. A lot of media has many rights holders (writers, music, etc), and you need to get them all to agree a sale or waive their right in order to sell. That could be expensive because it's involve lots and lots of lawyers. For a bunch of old comedy clips it might not make any commercial sense.

Re: 25 years of video clips gone as Paramount axes Comedy Central wesbite

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

StarCraft 2 is still competitive 14 years later. I’m not sure I’d personally have an issue with it becoming public domain but the game is still well-stewarded today. Even Brood War is still satisfactorily supported 26 years after its release. Though I think that’s definitely long enough to consider the option of public domain.

The question is if that stewardship would be ruined by making it free to play the offline, single player version. More generally, would Starcraft2 and similar titles still would have been made if Blizzard knew it only had 10 years to recoup the costs? The copyright lobby frames that question in a profoundly toxic way: are there any marginal profits that can still be milked for our IP portfolio ? Of course there are,…

FWIW starcraft 2 is free to play, just not “offline”. And only one single player campaign is free, the other 2.5 costs money. Continuing revenue is primarily generated via cosmetic sales.

Re: 25 years of video clips gone as Paramount axes Comedy Central wesbite

#165
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reminded of how trademarks work: If you don't bother to defend them, then you lose them. Maybe copyright should be the same way: If you're not distributing copies any longer, you lose the copyright protection.

The copyright cartel would fight that with their lives. They would rather destroy content forever than let it out for free, even if neither option costs them a cent. “The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming…

Oh boy, this book was very popular in the USSR, depicting a complete failure of a capitalist society.

The irony is that the soviet socialist society failed way, way harder and that average soviet family was far more impoverished than the evicted farmers from the book: those gringos had a car!

Re: 25 years of video clips gone as Paramount axes Comedy Central wesbite

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It all boils down to excessive copyright durations. For something like software, even 10 years is excessive. The copyright terms are set by lobbyist and corporations in a political process where the public interest has no representation.

Most software you can buy is older than ten years. Do you want to lose copyright to every part of your product that has been stable? Imagine the useless churn as every company needs to make sure every library they use is substantially altered every couple of years to renew the copyright.

Public domain does not mean public. The source code could remain a trade secret.

More of an obstacle is competition from free past versions - a lot of people would be happy with a 10 year old version of Photoshop or MS Office. That's why I think it should be extendable to 20 years with a hefty fee (but not further, or only with a much heftier fee).

Re: 25 years of video clips gone as Paramount axes Comedy Central wesbite

#167

This is complete incompetence from their leadership who show no value to their own content. They could have easily auctioned off/sold very old content to someone else but that kind of thinking would be beyond their competency. It's no wonder they go in such huge losses despite of having loyal audience and monopoly over unparalleled content. To this day I cannot get over the fact that there are literally millions docu…

[flagged]

Re: 25 years of video clips gone as Paramount axes Comedy Central wesbite

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a (massive) excess of food during the depression, so that is likely made up.

That particular passage, perhaps; however one can certainly believe growers destroying an abundance to control prices. It certainly doesn't sound like the purported overabundance of food was evenly distributed: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/feb/02/johnsteinbeck....

That piece was written literally by the same person.

Farmers were going bankrupt because there was so much food that they couldn't sell. It was the time when people developed the habit of eating meat daily, as people were buying out the food, and fed it to animals. There wasn't at any point a famine.

It's a tall tale.

Re: 25 years of video clips gone as Paramount axes Comedy Central wesbite

#170
When a work of art becomes known by the general public for some very short period, like 10 years, it should enter the public domain. That’s plenty of time for creators to profit. Art that has become part of our culture shouldn’t be owned by anyone.
Post reply on HN