10 ms·

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 short

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. Counterargument to myself and trivia: All the authors of Zork are still living. (I assume they receive no royalties, though, based on how the game industry generally works).

echelon 3y ago
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.
- eru 3y ago
  > 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 should adapt new copyright policies to not only preserve these works, but to push people to keep innovating. What do you have in mind? Archiving is already mostly allowed by current copyright policies. And I'm not sure how copyright policies can 'push people to keep innovating'? At most you can try to get out of the way. Or, if you are being sneaky, you can lobby for arcane and arbitrary censorship rules: after all, limitations breed creativity. Eg East German political jokes were a lot better than West German ones. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Void https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Void or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oulipo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oulipo
  - rrjjww 3y ago
    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.
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  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.
  - echelon 3y ago
    You'll still be able to make films the old way. It'll become an artistic choice.
eru 3y ago
> Games made before I was born whose copyright won't expire until long after I'm dead. Just like Mickey Mouse or movies from the 1960s? Or the Lord of the Rings books? > In fact, games should have a shorter copyright term since they're harder to preserve and less valuable over time. I don't understand how that's an argument for the length of the copyright either way? If I draw with water-colours on a fallen maple leaf, that is really hard to preserve and because of lack of artistic skill, was never valuable in the first place (mostly due to lack of artistic skill); but I don't thing that should have its own special copyright term length. Rights to some artifacts being less valuable over time already factors into the severity of punishment when you get caught pirating (if memory serves right): aren't damages based on revenue supposedly lost from pirating? > Counterargument to myself and trivia: All the authors of Zork are still living. (I assume they receive no royalties, though, based on how the game industry generally works). That shouldn't make a difference: when they agreed on the deal to sell their rights (assuming they did so), the parties took into account how long the sold copyrights were likely to last. > 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. I don't much like most of current copyright law. Whether you want to feel any shame is up to you, it's a moral decision, not a legal one.
- harimau777 3y ago
  > I don't understand how that's an argument for the length of the copyright either way? One argument might be that, compared to other media, video games' continued availability may be particularly dependent on whether or not they become public domain. If video game hardware quickly becomes out of date and old games lose their economic value quickly, then the copyright holder may not be motivated to put in the effort to keep the game available. However, an archivist motivated by artistic or historical rather than economic value may still be willing to put the effort into keeping the game available if it is in the public domain.
- bobsmooth 3y ago
  >Just like Mickey Mouse or movies from the 1960s? Or the Lord of the Rings books? Yes? It's because of Disney that copyright laws are as ridiculous as they are.
rgmerk 3y ago
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.
- andyferris 3y ago
  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.
- ethbr1 3y ago
  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.
  - mlyle 3y ago
    And there's a sibling to your comment proposing the exact opposite https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37895648 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37895648 I can think of arguments why derivatives should get more favorable and less favorable treatment than overall copying. To me it feels like a wash and they should probably be treated similarly-- though trademark can provide some limited protection beyond copyright terms if the work's use in commerce has been continuous.
    - ethbr1 3y ago
      My reasoning is: The original thing has already been created, and proceeds benefit whoever created it (or who they sold rights to). Whether they choose to continue to actively market it or not, while under copyright, can't be influenced by copyright. Abandonware under copyright is still abandonware. But! There's a class of derivative works, built on top of the original, that currently can't get made. If they were, we'd all be better off. Arguably, I can even see an aggressive sunsetting for derivative works being net positive for the original work's commercial value ("See the original").
atum47 3y ago
I've been meaning the finish return to zork for a while now. Tried to install it in scummvm with luck. I need to try it again so i can play in bed before going to sleep
RomanAlexander 3y ago
if I hire you to write a HN News app, do you feel like you're entitled to royalties?
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  I mean, your app is making use of either scraping or using an API that's not yours. You may own the app but there's not much of value you can copyright. I wouldn't feel entitled to royalties becsuse you're not getting royalties to begin with. But for BOTD: tech workers tend to get paid well to deliver one specific project so the industry doesn't have as strong demand for royalties as art. Especially since tech isn't necessarily creating art itself but implementing other's creations. It's a bit different compared to an artist who makes a popular character and that character is being used decades later to sell plushies. Or a writer who's book is turned into a billion dollar franchise. The worst thing you can sell as an artist is your entire creative IP but that's unfortunately common in industries like animation or publishing.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    > tech workers tend to get paid well to deliver one specific project so the industry doesn't have as strong demand for royalties as art It's not exactly that; a builder doesn't get well paid, but still delivers one specific project. That builder won't get royalties from all the transactions that happen from building a shop building. We've just decided that we'll special-case art so people can live off the proceeds for work done in decades past.
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      At the end of the day, yes. It's all arbitrary and art's monetization came from diferent historical contexts. There could be a timeline where artists are highly respected and well compensated positions while tech is just some nerdy hobby being used for exposure. But I feel it's more interesting to understand why and how we came to those contexts. e.g. for tech, the big money came from the explosion of tech in the U.S. during the 90's and the vast amounts of money being invested into up and coming companies to take advantage of it. Getting to a point where the biggest companies would give the biggest money to the biggest talent simply to keep them away from competition, or from becoming future competitors themselves. Companies paid for labor and time, so compensation worked accordingly. I don't have an intimate history in art but I imagine a part of its monetization history comes from the fact that the primary delivery doesn't make that much money on its own; i.e. you don't become rich broadcasting Mickey Mouse on public cable to millions. You get rich selling Mickey Mouse merch and making deals to slap Mickey Mouse on whatever wants the advertising boost. So how do you determine how much to pay the creator in that case, which may make $100 or 1 billion? some sort of rev/profit sharing system makes sense. If it fails they get a pittance and if it becomes huge success the creator retires for life while the IP holder still gets the bulk of the money.
willis936 3y ago
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.
LocalH 3y ago
In fact, you should feel no shame about actively preserving your particular copy of those games. You never know who has a release that has not been preserved. Piracy is preservation. The only reason works are preserved tomorrow, is because somebody is pirating them today.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  The law explicitly permits making copies of computer programs for archival and backup purposes.[1] You will run into legal problems if you try distributing those archives/backups, but simply making them for your own use is perfectly legal. Obligatory IANAL. [1]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/117 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/117
  - PostOnce 3y ago
    You can't (practically) though, they all require internet activation and are very hard for a layperson to crack (if one isn't available for download)... they're effectively coasters unless deep skill and time are invested in the cracking (which is usually the case but maybe not always).
malkia 3y ago
You can play Zork in COD Black Ops (and ColdWar I think) ;)
- bhdlr 3y ago
  You can play Zork with chatgpt
0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
Disney keeps lobbying for copyright extension. How about we create a system where you lose your copyright after 15 years say, but you can pay the government an annual fee to extend the copyright of a specific work indefinitely? That way Disney is no longer incentivized to extend the copyright for works that no one cares about, and it also unlocks a new stream of tax revenue for the government. Everyone wins.
hooby 3y ago
Worse than the long duration of copyright is that (in this case, and not just this case) it does absolutely nothing for the actual creators of the IP, but only serves to enable all those huge companies that have zero history with the IP (and often zero interest in it) - to sell and buy those rights, and maybe send some cease-and-desists, but otherwise just let them collect dust. 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.
safety1st 3y ago
I'm sure many people (myself included!) would be very happy if Microsoft released all the Zork IP under a Creative Commons license. If we think about this from a Microsoft perspective though: releasing games is a lot easier these days. They sell access to hundreds of games via Game Pass which is something they're marketing pretty hard and trying to make successful. Why not add all of the Infocom games to it? This would sell a couple Game Pass licenses (mainly for the somewhat neglected PC version of Game Pass, so that's nice), preserve the titles and expose them to a much broader audience. I mean the hobbyist and game historian in me loves it all going CC but the realist and the guy who thinks about scale and impact says if MS would just get these old titles on Game Pass that'd be a pretty nice nod to the past and a win for them as well. The fact that Zork doesn't enter the public domain until 2047 is a bigger issue where somehow, incomprehensibly, we've allowed Hollywood and Mickey Mouse to rob us of our cultural heritage from the 20th century at gunpoint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

echelon 3y ago

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.

eru 3y ago
> 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 should adapt new copyright policies to not only preserve these works, but to push people to keep innovating. What do you have in mind? Archiving is already mostly allowed by current copyright policies. And I'm not sure how copyright policies can 'push people to keep innovating'? At most you can try to get out of the way. Or, if you are being sneaky, you can lobby for arcane and arbitrary censorship rules: after all, limitations breed creativity. Eg East German political jokes were a lot better than West German ones. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Void https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Void or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oulipo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oulipo
- rrjjww 3y ago
  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.
AlexandrB 3y ago
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.
- echelon 3y ago
  You'll still be able to make films the old way. It'll become an artistic choice.

eru 3y ago

> Games made before I was born whose copyright won't expire until long after I'm dead. Just like Mickey Mouse or movies from the 1960s? Or the Lord of the Rings books? > In fact, games should have a shorter copyright term since they're harder to preserve and less valuable over time. I don't understand how that's an argument for the length of the copyright either way? If I draw with water-colours on a fallen maple leaf, that is really hard to preserve and because of lack of artistic skill, was never valuable in the first place (mostly due to lack of artistic skill); but I don't thing that should have its own special copyright term length. Rights to some artifacts being less valuable over time already factors into the severity of punishment when you get caught pirating (if memory serves right): aren't damages based on revenue supposedly lost from pirating? > Counterargument to myself and trivia: All the authors of Zork are still living. (I assume they receive no royalties, though, based on how the game industry generally works). That shouldn't make a difference: when they agreed on the deal to sell their rights (assuming they did so), the parties took into account how long the sold copyrights were likely to last. > 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. I don't much like most of current copyright law. Whether you want to feel any shame is up to you, it's a moral decision, not a legal one.

harimau777 3y ago
> I don't understand how that's an argument for the length of the copyright either way? One argument might be that, compared to other media, video games' continued availability may be particularly dependent on whether or not they become public domain. If video game hardware quickly becomes out of date and old games lose their economic value quickly, then the copyright holder may not be motivated to put in the effort to keep the game available. However, an archivist motivated by artistic or historical rather than economic value may still be willing to put the effort into keeping the game available if it is in the public domain.
bobsmooth 3y ago
>Just like Mickey Mouse or movies from the 1960s? Or the Lord of the Rings books? Yes? It's because of Disney that copyright laws are as ridiculous as they are.

rgmerk 3y ago

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.

andyferris 3y ago
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.
ethbr1 3y ago
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.
- mlyle 3y ago
  And there's a sibling to your comment proposing the exact opposite https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37895648 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37895648 I can think of arguments why derivatives should get more favorable and less favorable treatment than overall copying. To me it feels like a wash and they should probably be treated similarly-- though trademark can provide some limited protection beyond copyright terms if the work's use in commerce has been continuous.
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    My reasoning is: The original thing has already been created, and proceeds benefit whoever created it (or who they sold rights to). Whether they choose to continue to actively market it or not, while under copyright, can't be influenced by copyright. Abandonware under copyright is still abandonware. But! There's a class of derivative works, built on top of the original, that currently can't get made. If they were, we'd all be better off. Arguably, I can even see an aggressive sunsetting for derivative works being net positive for the original work's commercial value ("See the original").

atum47 3y ago

I've been meaning the finish return to zork for a while now. Tried to install it in scummvm with luck. I need to try it again so i can play in bed before going to sleep

RomanAlexander 3y ago

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

johnnyanmac 3y ago
I mean, your app is making use of either scraping or using an API that's not yours. You may own the app but there's not much of value you can copyright. I wouldn't feel entitled to royalties becsuse you're not getting royalties to begin with. But for BOTD: tech workers tend to get paid well to deliver one specific project so the industry doesn't have as strong demand for royalties as art. Especially since tech isn't necessarily creating art itself but implementing other's creations. It's a bit different compared to an artist who makes a popular character and that character is being used decades later to sell plushies. Or a writer who's book is turned into a billion dollar franchise. The worst thing you can sell as an artist is your entire creative IP but that's unfortunately common in industries like animation or publishing.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  > tech workers tend to get paid well to deliver one specific project so the industry doesn't have as strong demand for royalties as art It's not exactly that; a builder doesn't get well paid, but still delivers one specific project. That builder won't get royalties from all the transactions that happen from building a shop building. We've just decided that we'll special-case art so people can live off the proceeds for work done in decades past.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    At the end of the day, yes. It's all arbitrary and art's monetization came from diferent historical contexts. There could be a timeline where artists are highly respected and well compensated positions while tech is just some nerdy hobby being used for exposure. But I feel it's more interesting to understand why and how we came to those contexts. e.g. for tech, the big money came from the explosion of tech in the U.S. during the 90's and the vast amounts of money being invested into up and coming companies to take advantage of it. Getting to a point where the biggest companies would give the biggest money to the biggest talent simply to keep them away from competition, or from becoming future competitors themselves. Companies paid for labor and time, so compensation worked accordingly. I don't have an intimate history in art but I imagine a part of its monetization history comes from the fact that the primary delivery doesn't make that much money on its own; i.e. you don't become rich broadcasting Mickey Mouse on public cable to millions. You get rich selling Mickey Mouse merch and making deals to slap Mickey Mouse on whatever wants the advertising boost. So how do you determine how much to pay the creator in that case, which may make $100 or 1 billion? some sort of rev/profit sharing system makes sense. If it fails they get a pittance and if it becomes huge success the creator retires for life while the IP holder still gets the bulk of the money.

willis936 3y ago

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.

LocalH 3y ago

In fact, you should feel no shame about actively preserving your particular copy of those games. You never know who has a release that has not been preserved. Piracy is preservation. The only reason works are preserved tomorrow, is because somebody is pirating them today.

Dalewyn 3y ago
The law explicitly permits making copies of computer programs for archival and backup purposes.[1] You will run into legal problems if you try distributing those archives/backups, but simply making them for your own use is perfectly legal. Obligatory IANAL. [1]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/117 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/117
- PostOnce 3y ago
  You can't (practically) though, they all require internet activation and are very hard for a layperson to crack (if one isn't available for download)... they're effectively coasters unless deep skill and time are invested in the cracking (which is usually the case but maybe not always).

malkia 3y ago

You can play Zork in COD Black Ops (and ColdWar I think) ;)

bhdlr 3y ago
You can play Zork with chatgpt

0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago

Disney keeps lobbying for copyright extension. How about we create a system where you lose your copyright after 15 years say, but you can pay the government an annual fee to extend the copyright of a specific work indefinitely? That way Disney is no longer incentivized to extend the copyright for works that no one cares about, and it also unlocks a new stream of tax revenue for the government. Everyone wins.

hooby 3y ago

Worse than the long duration of copyright is that (in this case, and not just this case) it does absolutely nothing for the actual creators of the IP, but only serves to enable all those huge companies that have zero history with the IP (and often zero interest in it) - to sell and buy those rights, and maybe send some cease-and-desists, but otherwise just let them collect dust. 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.

safety1st 3y ago

I'm sure many people (myself included!) would be very happy if Microsoft released all the Zork IP under a Creative Commons license. If we think about this from a Microsoft perspective though: releasing games is a lot easier these days. They sell access to hundreds of games via Game Pass which is something they're marketing pretty hard and trying to make successful. Why not add all of the Infocom games to it? This would sell a couple Game Pass licenses (mainly for the somewhat neglected PC version of Game Pass, so that's nice), preserve the titles and expose them to a much broader audience. I mean the hobbyist and game historian in me loves it all going CC but the realist and the guy who thinks about scale and impact says if MS would just get these old titles on Game Pass that'd be a pretty nice nod to the past and a win for them as well. The fact that Zork doesn't enter the public domain until 2047 is a bigger issue where somehow, incomprehensibly, we've allowed Hollywood and Mickey Mouse to rob us of our cultural heritage from the 20th century at gunpoint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]