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Great comment. I would add that part of the tradeoff is that in exchange for the exclusive right to sell a certain product there is the expectation that the pro

Great comment. I would add that part of the tradeoff is that in exchange for the exclusive right to sell a certain product there is the expectation that the product will enter the public domain after a period of time. But the copyright law in the US grants that protection for 70 years. 70 years seems like plenty of time for an art piece, a book or a piece of music to be useful to its creators and still remains useful for the public after that time. I don't think the same time frames are relevant for online multiplayer: imagine sitting down 50 years from now and trying to reverse-engineer a WOW server. What if copyright only applied to the supported life of a game? For instance, copyright can apply to a game for up to 70 years, or whenever one of the game's core components ceases being supported plus 5 years, whichever is sooner.

snvzz 9y ago
70 years is insane to begin with. Keeping art out of the public domain for that long does seem hardly in the interest of the general public. They'd need to justify these 70 years really well. Which they have not.
- philipodonnell 9y ago
  I think its just from a long time ago. The idea back then was to give a specific author the ability to profit from their own work while they were alive and for another generation or so and then free that work to benefit the general public; 95/70 years was just like 'that's way longer than anybody lives'. As usual, though, once companies could have copyrights they used some of the money to bribe politicians to extend that original idea to add time and cover all sorts of things to prevent the public from benefiting at the expense of the copyright holder, while claiming the opposite. Its not unreasonable they would do that (longer and more expansive copyright means more value for shareholders), I just wish it wasn't the only thing anyone with the power to change it was thinking about.
  - meheleventyone 9y ago
    It's not just that sort of thinking but that later pieces of legislation have extended the period of copyright for works that should have expired. There are a lot of corporations like Disney that don't want to see their properties ever enter public domain.
  - justinpombrio 9y ago
    > The idea back then was to give a specific author the ability to profit from their own work while they were alive and for another generation or so and then free that work to benefit the general public; 95/70 years was just like 'that's way longer than anybody lives'. Copyright was originally 28 years, and has been increasing linearlyish ever since: long copyrights are a recent phenomenon. Also, it's 70 years plus the author's lifetime. There are nice charts in Wikipedia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_...
  - soneil 9y ago
    I don't think it's just when it was that's significant here. Some works simply age slower than others. Stephen King's "It" is 30 years old. It doesn't seem insane that he should be making money off the recent cinema adaptation. Games feel a lot more ephemeral. They're not being commercial exploited for 30 years. In some cases the franchise is, fine. In most cases, it's nowhere near 30 years. "Not worth preserving" is basically the industry admitting this! But we can't wait 30, 70, whatever years to preserve WoW, for example. Most of the work needs to be done while the servers are still available. Even if you wait 95 years to publish the work, the work has to be done while it's not legal. It's the only way it's possible. That disconnect seems nuts to me. I think this is something our copyright legislation is ill-equipped for - having to admit that not all works are created equally. A book might be profitable for an entire lifetime. A game is not. Trying to pretend the same solution can solve both problems will only fracture the system.

snvzz 9y ago

70 years is insane to begin with. Keeping art out of the public domain for that long does seem hardly in the interest of the general public. They'd need to justify these 70 years really well. Which they have not.

philipodonnell 9y ago
I think its just from a long time ago. The idea back then was to give a specific author the ability to profit from their own work while they were alive and for another generation or so and then free that work to benefit the general public; 95/70 years was just like 'that's way longer than anybody lives'. As usual, though, once companies could have copyrights they used some of the money to bribe politicians to extend that original idea to add time and cover all sorts of things to prevent the public from benefiting at the expense of the copyright holder, while claiming the opposite. Its not unreasonable they would do that (longer and more expansive copyright means more value for shareholders), I just wish it wasn't the only thing anyone with the power to change it was thinking about.
- meheleventyone 9y ago
  It's not just that sort of thinking but that later pieces of legislation have extended the period of copyright for works that should have expired. There are a lot of corporations like Disney that don't want to see their properties ever enter public domain.
- justinpombrio 9y ago
  > The idea back then was to give a specific author the ability to profit from their own work while they were alive and for another generation or so and then free that work to benefit the general public; 95/70 years was just like 'that's way longer than anybody lives'. Copyright was originally 28 years, and has been increasing linearlyish ever since: long copyrights are a recent phenomenon. Also, it's 70 years plus the author's lifetime. There are nice charts in Wikipedia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_...
- soneil 9y ago
  I don't think it's just when it was that's significant here. Some works simply age slower than others. Stephen King's "It" is 30 years old. It doesn't seem insane that he should be making money off the recent cinema adaptation. Games feel a lot more ephemeral. They're not being commercial exploited for 30 years. In some cases the franchise is, fine. In most cases, it's nowhere near 30 years. "Not worth preserving" is basically the industry admitting this! But we can't wait 30, 70, whatever years to preserve WoW, for example. Most of the work needs to be done while the servers are still available. Even if you wait 95 years to publish the work, the work has to be done while it's not legal. It's the only way it's possible. That disconnect seems nuts to me. I think this is something our copyright legislation is ill-equipped for - having to admit that not all works are created equally. A book might be profitable for an entire lifetime. A game is not. Trying to pretend the same solution can solve both problems will only fracture the system.