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Microsoft consumes Activision; and a plea

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Re: Microsoft consumes Activision; and a plea

#21

Post by andyferris »

rgmerk wrote: post #17
PostOnce wrote: post #5

Games made before I was born whose copyright won't expire until long after I'm dead. They ought to be public domain by now. In fact, games should have a shorter copyright term since they're harder to preserve and less valuable over time. I still have a box legally-purchased of Zork games (CDROM editions) and manuals and a copy of Planetfall here, but should I feel any shame about pirating them? I don't think I should…

All copyright is way too long but authors go completely off-piste at anyone who suggests that it should be something more reasonable (I kinda like 21 years myself). Part of the issue is that the loudest voices are that 0.01% of authors whose work still has some commercial value decades after its creation.

Shorter copyright would be great.

I could imagine an argument for harmonising the duration with patents for even more simplicity.

Another interesting consequence is a lot of GPL code would become public domain. I haven’t really thought about that before.

Re: Microsoft consumes Activision; and a plea

#22

Post by michaelmrose »

keyle wrote: post #15
chewychewy wrote: post #2

Zork for XBOX in 4K coming to Game Pass.

You know what, I'd play that! Give me a new Zork story, great font, great music, I'd be all over it. Obviously you'd chose actions from a list due to the controller, but with progressive disclosure you wouldn't really feel like cheating the game.

I don't think there is enough meat in the zork games without the interesting aspect of figuring out exactly what one can do and open ended input via the keyboard.

Re: Microsoft consumes Activision; and a plea

#23

Post by RomanAlexander »

PostOnce wrote: post #5

Games made before I was born whose copyright won't expire until long after I'm dead. They ought to be public domain by now. In fact, games should have a shorter copyright term since they're harder to preserve and less valuable over time. I still have a box legally-purchased of Zork games (CDROM editions) and manuals and a copy of Planetfall here, but should I feel any shame about pirating them? I don't think I should…

if I hire you to write a HN News app, do you feel like you're entitled to royalties?

Re: Microsoft consumes Activision; and a plea

#24

Post by ethbr1 »

rgmerk wrote: post #17
PostOnce wrote: post #5

Games made before I was born whose copyright won't expire until long after I'm dead. They ought to be public domain by now. In fact, games should have a shorter copyright term since they're harder to preserve and less valuable over time. I still have a box legally-purchased of Zork games (CDROM editions) and manuals and a copy of Planetfall here, but should I feel any shame about pirating them? I don't think I should…

All copyright is way too long but authors go completely off-piste at anyone who suggests that it should be something more reasonable (I kinda like 21 years myself). Part of the issue is that the loudest voices are that 0.01% of authors whose work still has some commercial value decades after its creation.

There's an unexplored (to my knowledge) middleground where copyright expires more rapidly with regards to derivative works, but not the original.

E.g. At x+10 anyone could make a new sequel to Zork, but the rights to the published Zork are retained for x+25

That feels fair.

Re: Microsoft consumes Activision; and a plea

#26

Post by baggy_trough »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #25

Activision is also actively selling the Zork collection on Steam. I'd expect that to show up on Gamepass. It includes: Zork I, Zork II, Zork III, Beyond Zork, Zork Zero, and Planetfall https://store.steampowered.com/app/570580/Zork_Anthology/

It's pretty hard to play, unfortunately. It runs in a strange dos box and the "terminal" is pretty ugly to deal with.

Re: Microsoft consumes Activision; and a plea

#27

Post by nordsieck »

rgmerk wrote: post #17
PostOnce wrote: post #5

Games made before I was born whose copyright won't expire until long after I'm dead. They ought to be public domain by now. In fact, games should have a shorter copyright term since they're harder to preserve and less valuable over time. I still have a box legally-purchased of Zork games (CDROM editions) and manuals and a copy of Planetfall here, but should I feel any shame about pirating them? I don't think I should…

All copyright is way too long but authors go completely off-piste at anyone who suggests that it should be something more reasonable (I kinda like 21 years myself). Part of the issue is that the loudest voices are that 0.01% of authors whose work still has some commercial value decades after its creation.

> All copyright is way too long but authors go completely off-piste at anyone who suggests that it should be something more reasonable (I kinda like 21 years myself).

> Part of the issue is that the loudest voices are that 0.01% of authors whose work still has some commercial value decades after its creation.

My favorite scheme is that all copyright last for 10 years by default. You can register it for $100 for another 10 years. And every 10 years after that, the cost goes up by 100x. That way commercial works that are very economically valuable can be protected for a pretty long time, but everything makes it into the public domain relatively quickly.

Maybe the numbers need to be tweaked a bit, but I think the idea is fundamentally sound.

Re: Microsoft consumes Activision; and a plea

#28

Post by willis936 »

PostOnce wrote: post #5

Games made before I was born whose copyright won't expire until long after I'm dead. They ought to be public domain by now. In fact, games should have a shorter copyright term since they're harder to preserve and less valuable over time. I still have a box legally-purchased of Zork games (CDROM editions) and manuals and a copy of Planetfall here, but should I feel any shame about pirating them? I don't think I should…

Publishers have a vested interest in keeping supply reigned in. They aren't just competing with each other, but their past catalog. By not keeping the entire catalog conveniently available they help get buyers to bite more often on their new projects.

Re: Microsoft consumes Activision; and a plea

#29

Post by audiodude »

rgmerk wrote: post #17
PostOnce wrote: post #5

Games made before I was born whose copyright won't expire until long after I'm dead. They ought to be public domain by now. In fact, games should have a shorter copyright term since they're harder to preserve and less valuable over time. I still have a box legally-purchased of Zork games (CDROM editions) and manuals and a copy of Planetfall here, but should I feel any shame about pirating them? I don't think I should…

All copyright is way too long but authors go completely off-piste at anyone who suggests that it should be something more reasonable (I kinda like 21 years myself). Part of the issue is that the loudest voices are that 0.01% of authors whose work still has some commercial value decades after its creation.

Another annoying thing about the 1976 Copyright Act/Berne Convention is that copyright is automatic. You don't need to register with any organization, any "original work of authorship fixed in a tangible form" is copyright. This is the real problem with public github repos that don't have a license file, because they also likely lack a copyright imprint with a date.

This is not related, but another problem with current US copyright law is that there's no exception for companies that go out of business. The works are still copyright encumbered even if no one exists that can enforce that right.

Based on the former two points, you end up with works where you can't find out who holds the copyright, and it doesn't matter if they're dead or whatever because it's still copyrighted. This leads to the "assume everything is copyrighted" posture that stifles so much creativity.

Re: Microsoft consumes Activision; and a plea

#30

Post by beej71 »

chasingthewind wrote: post #20
LeoPanthera wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet you could use some kind of generative AI to automatically render images of each scene from a text adventure.

Somebody already did this for Zork though I can’t find the link at the moment. When I looked at it, it was interesting, but not particularly good. I’m sure it would get better in time.

It was AdventurImagen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpCrBBj6AWE
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