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Microsoft consumes Activision; and a plea

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Re: Microsoft consumes Activision; and a plea

#61

Post by bruce511 »

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.

I doubt any would describe my voice as "loud", but I suspect I fall into the 0.01% you mention.

I sell code (programming libraries, and commercial business systems) which have been under continual development sint 1996. So 27 years.

Copyright in this context would be complicated in a "20 year" model. Last month saw a significant upgrade to a product first released in 2000. Should the 2K version be public domain now?

I get the main complaint, especially in the context of old games like infocom (which are abandoned). It feels like those should move gracefully to public domain. But on the other hand there are those of us who do still make a living from old, but active, code.

I do agree that current copyright is absurdly long, but I also understand why Disney et al see ongoing value in their creations and are prepared to lobby for that value.

I don't think there's a simple fix here, one which covers such a wide set of circumstances. All the fixes I've seen proposed are "great for x, terrible for y".

Re: Microsoft consumes Activision; and a plea

#62

Post by rrjjww »

eru wrote: post #9
echelon wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If AI makes creation of all artistic works easier and cheaper, then the value of old content becomes significantly lessened. We should adapt new copyright policies to not only preserve these works, but to push people to keep innovating.

> If AI makes creation of all artistic works easier and cheaper, then the value of old content becomes significantly lessened. Even today, creation and publication has become a lot easier and cheaper since Shakespeare's times already. But people still like his work, despite a flood of new material having come out since they were first published. Of course, Shakespeare is exceptional in his cultural cachet. > We shoul…

I believe it was Schopenhauer who said in one of his essays that (I’m paraphrasing) just because content is new, doesn’t make it good, because with a constant stream of new content, what’s good doesn’t stay new for long.

Re: Microsoft consumes Activision; and a plea

#63

Post by kmeisthax »

audiodude wrote: post #29
rgmerk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 curre…

That's not the most annoying thing about the 1976 Copyright Act.

The most annoying thing about the 1976 Copyright Act is that copyright is only nominally automatic. To be clear, it casts a huge shadow over all creativity that would have otherwise been uncopyrighted. But on the other side, there's still a registration system. You need a registration in order to sue infringers, and you don't get statutory damages on infringements that happened before registration[0]. This trips up loads of creatives, and especially photographers, because it's a lot of boring bureaucracy that never gets explained to them up until they've already talked to a lawyer who says "no you can't get $$$ out of this big company that used your Facebook uploads without permission, because copyright lawsuits are never worth pursuing without statutory damages on the table".

The cruel irony of US copyright law is that, while we only half-implemented Berne, we still use Berne as a thought-stopping cliche for why we can never claw back copyright protection from the half-dozen publishers and creative artists that actually benefit from owning your childhood. Because the base assumption of copyright is that only the creative upper class is worth protection. Protecting artists as a class requires syndicalism and mass unionization, not atomizing everything into individually held psuedo-property rights that are financially ruinous to assert against anyone who won't fold immediately and settle.

The orphan works problem you're talking about is deliberate. Publishers like the idea that when they knock out a less-scrupulous competitor, their creative works spill out onto the ground like Diablo loot, and they can collect all that up and just idly hoard it forever. At the very least, a work that nobody knows how to license or can't afford to license is a work that has been taken off the market and can't compete with them.

Funnily enough, GitHub repos without a LICENSE file are covered by a fallback license in GitHub's ToS that basically says you're allowed to fork and PR. They've probably also explicitly added a "and we can train GPT on your code too" EULA ruffie in there too.

[0] There is a short grace period for this, of course. I think it's 90 days.

Re: Microsoft consumes Activision; and a plea

#64

Post by vlz »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #44
rgmerk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

20 years, same as patents. People aren't writing books because of the profits they might make 25 years from now.

I have to disagree somewhat. People write books for a lot of reasons, but one alluring thought in many an author's head certainly is: "Sure, it might not be commercially viable directly now, but over time…"

Writing books can be a pretty risky proposition from a financial point of view. Copyright should at least span an authors lifetime in my opinion.

Thinking that an author could profit not at all from a work if it gains popularity 20 years after it was written also seems unfair, seldom though as that case may be.

Re: Microsoft consumes Activision; and a plea

#65

Post by AlexandrB »

echelon wrote: post #6
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 AI makes creation of all artistic works easier and cheaper, then the value of old content becomes significantly lessened. We should adapt new copyright policies to not only preserve these works, but to push people to keep innovating.

I'd argue that the rise of AI makes all pre-AI works more valuable. Not only because only pre-AI works are guaranteed to be free of AI filler "content", but also because pre-AI works represent a larger investment of authorial time and expertise. Kind of how hand-sculped works from the renaissance era are more valuable than far more detailed 3d-printed objects.

Re: Microsoft consumes Activision; and a plea

#66

Post by xlii »

nordsieck wrote: post #27
rgmerk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 anoth…

I like the idea but would tie it to a yearly revenue + total for receiving entity and cut those in periods (10 years maybe less) in a form like:

Free, 1% of revenue, 10% of revenue, 100%, 1000% etc.

Thus non commercial darlings could be kept relatively long without high cost but all commercial offerings would wither off relatively quick. Pipe dream as obviously companies in power are controllers here.

Re: Microsoft consumes Activision; and a plea

#67

Post by 3seashells »

nostromo wrote: post #34
nordsieck wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 anoth…

This scheme seems to protect the largest companies with the largest bank accounts the most. Why would we want a system like that? I actually have the opposite view: I'm more worried about a small-time author that say, makes living on a low-volume text or training book, than I am protecting Mickey Mouse.

It's realistic to be adopted cause it acknowledges the takeover of democracy by buisness. What good is a policy, when it in implementation a maiden pure but has no chance in hell to become real? Purity signals are useless, when constructing the signal network that runs society.

Re: Microsoft consumes Activision; and a plea

#68

Post by cable2600 »

baggy_trough wrote: post #26
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.

Get this: https://davidgriffith.gitlab.io/frotz/ and use the datafiles from the DOS version in DOSBox.

Re: Microsoft consumes Activision; and a plea

#69

Post by echelon »

AlexandrB wrote: post #65
echelon wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If AI makes creation of all artistic works easier and cheaper, then the value of old content becomes significantly lessened. We should adapt new copyright policies to not only preserve these works, but to push people to keep innovating.

I'd argue that the rise of AI makes all pre-AI works more valuable. Not only because only pre-AI works are guaranteed to be free of AI filler "content", but also because pre-AI works represent a larger investment of authorial time and expertise. Kind of how hand-sculped works from the renaissance era are more valuable than far more detailed 3d-printed objects.

You'll still be able to make films the old way. It'll become an artistic choice.

Re: Microsoft consumes Activision; and a plea

#70

Post by redwall_hp »

nostromo wrote: post #34
nordsieck wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 anoth…

This scheme seems to protect the largest companies with the largest bank accounts the most. Why would we want a system like that? I actually have the opposite view: I'm more worried about a small-time author that say, makes living on a low-volume text or training book, than I am protecting Mickey Mouse.

Exactly. Works that generate massive amounts of commercial value are therefore more culturally important and should fall out of copyright faster, to maximize the amount of creative derivatives that can be produced while it's culturally relevant.

Works with little to no commercial activity should be protected longer to provide more opportunity to do so and give more protection to unknowns.

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