71–80 of 163 posts
Microsoft isn't about to let go of IP rights around the most well known text adventures.
But at the same time, I'd be surprised if they don't do anything with them either.
The synergy between their investment into OpenAI and their acquisition of Activision might suggest that they'll be doing quite a fair bit with those franchises indeed.
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…
Copyright is no longer about protecting the rights of the original creators... but purely about allowing big companies to purchase and exploit IP created by others.
We all know Microsoft bought Activision _for_ the Infocom IP. It’s clearly the most valuable asset.
Getting nerds who grew up on Zork to effectively give free problem solving training data and pay a subscription price for the privilege by grounding RLHF data collection into a beloved franchise might not be that low on priorities over at Microsoft.
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 do think that the current copyright regime is too long. I guess I'd like to see something like ~25 years from publication for human authors, but easily/cheaply renewable to lifetime copyright; and 25 years from creation for copyright held by companies, or for works for which the copyright has been assigned to someone else other than the original author, with no renewal.
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.
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?…
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…
nice.