8 ms·

Feds: You Don't Have a Right to Check Out Retro Video Games Like Library Books

115 points by mikhael 2y ago

deafpolygon 2y ago
That's kind of expected. Folks over at the emualtion subreddit @ reddit are foaming at the mouth... when it doesn't even apply to them. Did they expect that they would allow folks to check out other software like Photoshop at the Library?
- vaylian 2y ago
  Photoshop can still be purchased. This is about software that is no longer offered on the market.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    Pedantically, Adobe no longer sells it out right, but they do let you rent it at various price levels via Creative Cloud. https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/plans.html https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/plans.html
    - dvfjsdhgfv 2y ago
      That's correct - today if you want to actually buy Adobe Photoshop, you have to buy from a vendor other than Adobe (and you will miss some recent features).
- robinsonb5 2y ago
  If you're a computer historian, there'd be some value in being able to check out an ancient version that, for example, works on 68k Macs.
  - jhbadger 2y ago
    At least my local public library has hundreds of CD-ROMs of Mac and Windows software (mostly from the 1990s when boxed software was still standard) that you can check out. Granted, I can imagine that's the sort of thing that will get "weeded" in a decade or so when the library needs space and they see this old software as being worthless.
    - jonhohle 2y ago
      As others have mentioned, some of that software is become very rare and collectible. Would a library lend a copy of “Indiana Jones in Revenge of the Ancients”?
- Spivak 2y ago
  > Did they expect that they would allow folks to check out other software like Photoshop at the Library? Ominous-they would really like to disallow it. But yes, of course you should. When you get a license key that's a seat. Commercial software has been making this work forever with license servers. Like this isn't some crazy mental model. When you buy an iPhone you bought the hardware and one indefinite transferable license to run iOS. How else should software ownership work?
  - jonhohle 2y ago
    Licensing is different from fair use and copyright. The games the original article is describing had no license and were only protected by copyright (no different than a book or movie). Licenses can both permit and restrict things that copyright and fair use allow or don’t allow.
ethagknight 2y ago
When you have revolving door regulators, almost impossible to expect regulation that benefits individual freedom over special interests. Copyright is supposed to protect creators while they market and deploy their IP from others selling unauthorized copies. But.. can any legal experts here explain otherwise, that this is a smart ruling?
- mmooss 2y ago
  > When you have revolving door regulators, almost impossible to expect regulation that benefits individual freedom over special interests. No, you just need to clearly and effectively pressure elected officials, and to do that you need to raise awareness, educate people, etc. > almost impossible Never accomplished anything ever.
proc0 2y ago
I don't see where they outline the difference between games and books. This makes no sense at all. I can see where they would draw a line with proprietary IPs like old Nintendo games, but there's probably hundreds of thousands of games that have no owner. I'm tired of video games being treated as something that they're not. They're not services and they're not just for entertainment. It's an art form and they become part of the broader culture, not to mention their full potential as an interactive medium has only barely started to be explored.
- guerrilla 2y ago
  > I don't see where they outline the difference between games and books. The difference is in who's money and how much is behind the law at the relevant points in time.
  - proc0 2y ago
    Sure, I was just wondering their reasoning behind it. Surely it can't be blatantly about making money, but maybe it is.
    - guerrilla 2y ago
      I don't know but I think it's not just about the old games that aren't produced anymore. I think it could be about protecting profit in other areas. They may want to control the Overton window so that it doesn't become thinkable that the same thing could happen to other video games or media. If a library is able to buy a video game and loan it out for free online, then that could become a problem for some models. Is it possible to loan movies and TV series online in libraries now? If you have the resources, then a maximalist IP agenda would be the most rational, to extract as many rights as possible because it creates wider moat for attackers to cross. You keep them busy fighting things that don't matter to you, so they stay far away from your core business interests.
      - realusername 2y ago
        > If you have the resources, then a maximalist IP agenda would be the most rational, to extract as many rights as possible because it creates wider moat for attackers to cross. That's the answer, the IP conglomerates aren't arguing in good faith, they just want to defend their moat as much as possible and push the debate outside of rethinking media consumption in the digital age. Those IP conglomerates have nothing to gain from any legislation change, they basically already have all the rights they could possibly have and want to keep their position. If that means throwing away some old games under the bus, they are happy with that.
AStonesThrow 2y ago
The missing word from this inflammatory headline is extremely important: "remotely". You can certainly access the physical game media in person, and check it out, no problem. The DMCA controversy is over remote access.
- BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
  Wait, why would that matter at all?
  - izacus 2y ago
    Yeah, especially since the publishers have ceased to produce physical media completely.
  - AStonesThrow 2y ago
    Because until GOG and Steam, most video games were manufactured and distributed as physical artifacts, such as cartridges. A ripped ROM image in an emulator is not equivalent to an Atari or Nintendo cartridge. We do acknowledge that these artifacts are discontinued, and extremely valuable, but under DMCA, you literally can't have your cake and eat it too: the cake is a lie.
    - BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
      Under the DMCA, one is able to request an exemption, and the reason it wasn’t granted in this case seems to be lobbying by the industry. Even if none of that were true, why would I use an anachronistic law to define what is and what is not similar? That law should be replaced. Emulated and physical games seem quite similar in the important ways to me.
- michaelbrave 2y ago
  that becomes more difficult though since older games are in essence collectors items and would be stolen or not returned. It's like if most of the books in the library were out of print books that were highly collectable, a recipe for disaster. Not saying they made the wrong call here or anything, but there is clearly a gap here between old games being made available and legal options to access them, libraries tried to own a physical copy and distribute a digital copy, which was an attempt at a fair compromise, but if that isn't allowed either then I guess piracy is the only options now.
badlibrarian 2y ago
> Current rules in the DMCA restrict libraries and repositories of old games to one person at a time, in person. Countdown to Internet Archive getting sued on this one starts now. https://archive.org/details/internetarcade https://archive.org/details/internetarcade
- beej71 2y ago
  I give IA money every month, and I encourage everyone to do the same. I understand that the current state of copyright put them on thin- to no-ice. But that shouldn't be the case, IMHO. It's a net gain for the universe to let them loan these out-of-print materials. Publishers are working hard to make sure it's very expensive or impossible to do Internet lending. And Internet lending is exactly what the future of libraries should be unless we want to be stuck in a perpetually diminishing 1990. IA is fighting the good fight against some seriously long odds.
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    I think they might be pushing it too far though. Archiving software should not be allowed to threaten the internet archive?
    - mmooss 2y ago
      It's a popular criticism, but what's the conclusion? Don't fund the IA and let it die and with it the whole concept of end-user control of the things they buy, intellectual property for the masses, etc.? Also, it's popular criticism - things go wrong, the team gives up a few goals, and the bad response, the loser response, is when people start pointing fingers at each other in the locker room. The right respnose - the only one that wins - is to pull together and fight harder.
      - badlibrarian 2y ago
        If anything, the players slapping each other on the ass cheering each other on as they lose game after game seems like the problem here. Not criticism from fans. Maybe they could pick one sport -- archiving things -- and focus on that for a while? https://ncua.gov/newsroom/press-release/2016/internet-archive-federal-credit-union-pays-ncua-insured-members-shares-full https://ncua.gov/newsroom/press-release/2016/internet-archiv... https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/internet-archive-major-label-music-lawsuit-1235105273/ https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/internet-a...
gonlad_x 2y ago
I am not sure I fully grasp what’s at stake here. Does it mean that: * Only 1 person at a time can borrow play a retro game physically (in a dedicated library) even if there are more than 1 copies available * Libraries cannot offer remote access to their retro games (I wonder, can libraries offer that for books? In know my university library had a digital library but that’s it) even if safeguarded I don’t really understand the actual consequences of this new ruling, the article doesn’t really explain that in my opinion.
- oefrha 2y ago
  > can libraries offer that for books? Not without separate licensing for electronic lending. At least that’s what publishers insist.
- jonhohle 2y ago
  The big deal is that it can’t be over the Internet, even if restrictions are in place to ensure only one user can access one copy at a time. Zediva and Aereo had the same issue, albeit in a commercial application. I was hoping libraries would be given a little more freedom since their purpose is educating the public.
appstorelottery 2y ago
During covid I wanted to enable the local arcade in Amsterdam (Blast Galaxy) to stream their old boards to subscribing internet users for internet play, however I consulted with one of the leading IP lawyers in the city & was told basically "nope". My pitch to the lawyer was that it was simply a case of "longer wires" in terms of board input and output, however there is something in EU law that addresses encoding and transport over networks which causes the issue in terms of IP. Super disappointing.
glimshe 2y ago
Games are information. You can literally print the game's code and assets on a book.
- card_zero 2y ago
  And then you could lend pdfs of these books, and distribute an interpreter that runs them.
  - apatheticonion 2y ago
    Love this comment
  - jonhohle 2y ago
    As long as there is creative expression involved in the translation, that may be accurate. That’s effectively what the decomp community is doing. Instead of PDF and interpreter it’s git and compilers. (Though music and visual artwork must be excluded for different copyright reasons).
- geor9e 2y ago
  Can you though? Harry Potter is information too. You can't legally print your own copy of Harry Potter and lend it out at a library. Libraries could save a lot of money if they could do that.
- xboxnolifes 2y ago
  Everything is information if you try hard enough. That's not really an argument.
ruthmarx 2y ago
So piracy just gets boosted again. Nothing really changes here.
- beej71 2y ago
  On the plus side, the games most in need of archiving take up a relatively small amount of space. Old CP/M and Commodore-64 games are so small you can easily store all of them on a cheap disk. The more people who have complete archives (even if they're not being distributed freely) the more likely these games will survive.
crazygringo 2y ago
This headline is false and clickbaity. You absolutely can check out video games just like library books -- physically. What the article says is libraries can't make digital copies of the games and lend them remotely over the internet. Nothing is preventing traditional physical lending. I personally think it's time Congress got around to putting all works that haven't been commercially available for e.g. 5 years into the public domain. That's the easiest way to fix this. But that's the job of Congress, not the US Copyright Office.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  best I Can do is 90 years after the death of the author. 5 is much too short, though. and "commercially available" is very exploitable. I think a flat 20-30 years would work out fine. 20 is generaally when we call a title "retro" anyway, right?
  - 1970-01-01 2y ago
    The retro wave hits everyone around 30 years, and again around 50. It would be interesting to have a non-continuous copyright claim. The first 15 years it's yours, then 15-30 it's public, 30-60 it's yours again, and finally 60+ it's public domain forever.
    - kelnos 2y ago
      I think that would be incredibly frustrating. If someone were to make a commercial product derived from something that was in year 29 of its lifetime (while in the public domain), they'd have to stop selling it a year later.
  - crazygringo 2y ago
    > 5 is much too short, though. and "commercially available" is very exploitable. It's not too short for things that have stopped being sold. If a book or video game has no more commercial value in selling, why not end its copyright? I'm not saying 5 years after something is published. I'm saying 5 years after it stops being sold by the publisher. If a publisher wants to "exploit" that by keeping everything in print, then great. We still keep the existing copyright limits. But I guarantee you most of the stuff no longer being sold, they don't care about because it's not profitable anymore. If it was profitable, they'd still be selling it.
alwayslikethis 2y ago
Maintaining copyright should require a duty to distribute. If you do not distribute (at a reasonable price, no tricks allowed) your work, the copyright should just expire because you clearly aren't making any more money.
- jordigh 2y ago
  Besides commercial rights, copyright also includes moral rights: the right the author has to the integrity of their work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights I kind of like the idea of allowing verbatim redistribution if the author or their estate is demonstrably not planning to make money off it, but attribution and integrity of the work should be preserved.
  - marcosdumay 2y ago
    Moral rights should be preserved indefinitely, yes. Big IP holders make a large effort to mix both of those so they argue in bad faith that their profit advances human culture. Do not fall for it, they are very different things, and if somebody proposes extra protection for moral rights, only those big IP holders will be against it.
    - jonhohle 2y ago
      Distinguishing work for hire vs personal work would help, as well. Most commercial copyrighted works are created using a work-for-hire model (similar to textbooks). This isn’t what copyright was meant to protect.
      - aithrowawaycomm 2y ago
        This is 100% wrong, the very first copyright law specifically included editors and publishing houses as entities who could hold copyrights for work done by employees or contributors. Many reference books / etc were done by teams of professionals and their employers owned the resulting work. You are appealing to people's ignorance (including your own) by evoking an idyllic past that doesn't actually exist. The copyright problems between individual authors are substantively indistinguishable and the law correctly acknowledges this. The only difference is completely insubstantial: irrational emotional appeal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne
jauntywundrkind 2y ago
It's wild what a reign the anti-digitization forces have had. The law keeps contorting itself into knots to entrench specific versions of the past. The Aereo lawsuit comes to mind as wildly anti-civilian, concocted to make the legal regime as tall and wide as possible. It's just so sad that legalism and Terms of Service feel like they are in a race to remain bigger than technology & possibility, to keep things the same.

115 points by mikhael 2y ago

That's kind of expected. Folks over at the emualtion subreddit @ reddit are foaming at the mouth... when it doesn't even apply to them. Did they expect that they would allow folks to check out other software like Photoshop at the Library?

vaylian 2y ago
Photoshop can still be purchased. This is about software that is no longer offered on the market.
- fragmede 2y ago
  Pedantically, Adobe no longer sells it out right, but they do let you rent it at various price levels via Creative Cloud. https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/plans.html https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/plans.html
  - dvfjsdhgfv 2y ago
    That's correct - today if you want to actually buy Adobe Photoshop, you have to buy from a vendor other than Adobe (and you will miss some recent features).
robinsonb5 2y ago
If you're a computer historian, there'd be some value in being able to check out an ancient version that, for example, works on 68k Macs.
- jhbadger 2y ago
  At least my local public library has hundreds of CD-ROMs of Mac and Windows software (mostly from the 1990s when boxed software was still standard) that you can check out. Granted, I can imagine that's the sort of thing that will get "weeded" in a decade or so when the library needs space and they see this old software as being worthless.
  - jonhohle 2y ago
    As others have mentioned, some of that software is become very rare and collectible. Would a library lend a copy of “Indiana Jones in Revenge of the Ancients”?
Spivak 2y ago
> Did they expect that they would allow folks to check out other software like Photoshop at the Library? Ominous-they would really like to disallow it. But yes, of course you should. When you get a license key that's a seat. Commercial software has been making this work forever with license servers. Like this isn't some crazy mental model. When you buy an iPhone you bought the hardware and one indefinite transferable license to run iOS. How else should software ownership work?
- jonhohle 2y ago
  Licensing is different from fair use and copyright. The games the original article is describing had no license and were only protected by copyright (no different than a book or movie). Licenses can both permit and restrict things that copyright and fair use allow or don’t allow.

ethagknight 2y ago

When you have revolving door regulators, almost impossible to expect regulation that benefits individual freedom over special interests. Copyright is supposed to protect creators while they market and deploy their IP from others selling unauthorized copies. But.. can any legal experts here explain otherwise, that this is a smart ruling?

mmooss 2y ago
> When you have revolving door regulators, almost impossible to expect regulation that benefits individual freedom over special interests. No, you just need to clearly and effectively pressure elected officials, and to do that you need to raise awareness, educate people, etc. > almost impossible Never accomplished anything ever.

proc0 2y ago

I don't see where they outline the difference between games and books. This makes no sense at all. I can see where they would draw a line with proprietary IPs like old Nintendo games, but there's probably hundreds of thousands of games that have no owner. I'm tired of video games being treated as something that they're not. They're not services and they're not just for entertainment. It's an art form and they become part of the broader culture, not to mention their full potential as an interactive medium has only barely started to be explored.

guerrilla 2y ago
> I don't see where they outline the difference between games and books. The difference is in who's money and how much is behind the law at the relevant points in time.
- proc0 2y ago
  Sure, I was just wondering their reasoning behind it. Surely it can't be blatantly about making money, but maybe it is.
  - guerrilla 2y ago
    I don't know but I think it's not just about the old games that aren't produced anymore. I think it could be about protecting profit in other areas. They may want to control the Overton window so that it doesn't become thinkable that the same thing could happen to other video games or media. If a library is able to buy a video game and loan it out for free online, then that could become a problem for some models. Is it possible to loan movies and TV series online in libraries now? If you have the resources, then a maximalist IP agenda would be the most rational, to extract as many rights as possible because it creates wider moat for attackers to cross. You keep them busy fighting things that don't matter to you, so they stay far away from your core business interests.
    - realusername 2y ago
      > If you have the resources, then a maximalist IP agenda would be the most rational, to extract as many rights as possible because it creates wider moat for attackers to cross. That's the answer, the IP conglomerates aren't arguing in good faith, they just want to defend their moat as much as possible and push the debate outside of rethinking media consumption in the digital age. Those IP conglomerates have nothing to gain from any legislation change, they basically already have all the rights they could possibly have and want to keep their position. If that means throwing away some old games under the bus, they are happy with that.

AStonesThrow 2y ago

The missing word from this inflammatory headline is extremely important: "remotely". You can certainly access the physical game media in person, and check it out, no problem. The DMCA controversy is over remote access.

BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
Wait, why would that matter at all?
- izacus 2y ago
  Yeah, especially since the publishers have ceased to produce physical media completely.
- AStonesThrow 2y ago
  Because until GOG and Steam, most video games were manufactured and distributed as physical artifacts, such as cartridges. A ripped ROM image in an emulator is not equivalent to an Atari or Nintendo cartridge. We do acknowledge that these artifacts are discontinued, and extremely valuable, but under DMCA, you literally can't have your cake and eat it too: the cake is a lie.
  - BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
    Under the DMCA, one is able to request an exemption, and the reason it wasn’t granted in this case seems to be lobbying by the industry. Even if none of that were true, why would I use an anachronistic law to define what is and what is not similar? That law should be replaced. Emulated and physical games seem quite similar in the important ways to me.
michaelbrave 2y ago
that becomes more difficult though since older games are in essence collectors items and would be stolen or not returned. It's like if most of the books in the library were out of print books that were highly collectable, a recipe for disaster. Not saying they made the wrong call here or anything, but there is clearly a gap here between old games being made available and legal options to access them, libraries tried to own a physical copy and distribute a digital copy, which was an attempt at a fair compromise, but if that isn't allowed either then I guess piracy is the only options now.

badlibrarian 2y ago

> Current rules in the DMCA restrict libraries and repositories of old games to one person at a time, in person. Countdown to Internet Archive getting sued on this one starts now. https://archive.org/details/internetarcade https://archive.org/details/internetarcade

beej71 2y ago
I give IA money every month, and I encourage everyone to do the same. I understand that the current state of copyright put them on thin- to no-ice. But that shouldn't be the case, IMHO. It's a net gain for the universe to let them loan these out-of-print materials. Publishers are working hard to make sure it's very expensive or impossible to do Internet lending. And Internet lending is exactly what the future of libraries should be unless we want to be stuck in a perpetually diminishing 1990. IA is fighting the good fight against some seriously long odds.
- rightbyte 2y ago
  I think they might be pushing it too far though. Archiving software should not be allowed to threaten the internet archive?
  - mmooss 2y ago
    It's a popular criticism, but what's the conclusion? Don't fund the IA and let it die and with it the whole concept of end-user control of the things they buy, intellectual property for the masses, etc.? Also, it's popular criticism - things go wrong, the team gives up a few goals, and the bad response, the loser response, is when people start pointing fingers at each other in the locker room. The right respnose - the only one that wins - is to pull together and fight harder.
    - badlibrarian 2y ago
      If anything, the players slapping each other on the ass cheering each other on as they lose game after game seems like the problem here. Not criticism from fans. Maybe they could pick one sport -- archiving things -- and focus on that for a while? https://ncua.gov/newsroom/press-release/2016/internet-archive-federal-credit-union-pays-ncua-insured-members-shares-full https://ncua.gov/newsroom/press-release/2016/internet-archiv... https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/internet-archive-major-label-music-lawsuit-1235105273/ https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/internet-a...

gonlad_x 2y ago

I am not sure I fully grasp what’s at stake here. Does it mean that: * Only 1 person at a time can borrow play a retro game physically (in a dedicated library) even if there are more than 1 copies available * Libraries cannot offer remote access to their retro games (I wonder, can libraries offer that for books? In know my university library had a digital library but that’s it) even if safeguarded I don’t really understand the actual consequences of this new ruling, the article doesn’t really explain that in my opinion.

oefrha 2y ago
> can libraries offer that for books? Not without separate licensing for electronic lending. At least that’s what publishers insist.
jonhohle 2y ago
The big deal is that it can’t be over the Internet, even if restrictions are in place to ensure only one user can access one copy at a time. Zediva and Aereo had the same issue, albeit in a commercial application. I was hoping libraries would be given a little more freedom since their purpose is educating the public.

appstorelottery 2y ago

During covid I wanted to enable the local arcade in Amsterdam (Blast Galaxy) to stream their old boards to subscribing internet users for internet play, however I consulted with one of the leading IP lawyers in the city & was told basically "nope". My pitch to the lawyer was that it was simply a case of "longer wires" in terms of board input and output, however there is something in EU law that addresses encoding and transport over networks which causes the issue in terms of IP. Super disappointing.

glimshe 2y ago

Games are information. You can literally print the game's code and assets on a book.

card_zero 2y ago
And then you could lend pdfs of these books, and distribute an interpreter that runs them.
- apatheticonion 2y ago
  Love this comment
- jonhohle 2y ago
  As long as there is creative expression involved in the translation, that may be accurate. That’s effectively what the decomp community is doing. Instead of PDF and interpreter it’s git and compilers. (Though music and visual artwork must be excluded for different copyright reasons).
geor9e 2y ago
Can you though? Harry Potter is information too. You can't legally print your own copy of Harry Potter and lend it out at a library. Libraries could save a lot of money if they could do that.
xboxnolifes 2y ago
Everything is information if you try hard enough. That's not really an argument.

ruthmarx 2y ago

So piracy just gets boosted again. Nothing really changes here.

beej71 2y ago
On the plus side, the games most in need of archiving take up a relatively small amount of space. Old CP/M and Commodore-64 games are so small you can easily store all of them on a cheap disk. The more people who have complete archives (even if they're not being distributed freely) the more likely these games will survive.

crazygringo 2y ago

This headline is false and clickbaity. You absolutely can check out video games just like library books -- physically. What the article says is libraries can't make digital copies of the games and lend them remotely over the internet. Nothing is preventing traditional physical lending. I personally think it's time Congress got around to putting all works that haven't been commercially available for e.g. 5 years into the public domain. That's the easiest way to fix this. But that's the job of Congress, not the US Copyright Office.

johnnyanmac 2y ago
best I Can do is 90 years after the death of the author. 5 is much too short, though. and "commercially available" is very exploitable. I think a flat 20-30 years would work out fine. 20 is generaally when we call a title "retro" anyway, right?
- 1970-01-01 2y ago
  The retro wave hits everyone around 30 years, and again around 50. It would be interesting to have a non-continuous copyright claim. The first 15 years it's yours, then 15-30 it's public, 30-60 it's yours again, and finally 60+ it's public domain forever.
  - kelnos 2y ago
    I think that would be incredibly frustrating. If someone were to make a commercial product derived from something that was in year 29 of its lifetime (while in the public domain), they'd have to stop selling it a year later.
- crazygringo 2y ago
  > 5 is much too short, though. and "commercially available" is very exploitable. It's not too short for things that have stopped being sold. If a book or video game has no more commercial value in selling, why not end its copyright? I'm not saying 5 years after something is published. I'm saying 5 years after it stops being sold by the publisher. If a publisher wants to "exploit" that by keeping everything in print, then great. We still keep the existing copyright limits. But I guarantee you most of the stuff no longer being sold, they don't care about because it's not profitable anymore. If it was profitable, they'd still be selling it.

alwayslikethis 2y ago

Maintaining copyright should require a duty to distribute. If you do not distribute (at a reasonable price, no tricks allowed) your work, the copyright should just expire because you clearly aren't making any more money.

jordigh 2y ago
Besides commercial rights, copyright also includes moral rights: the right the author has to the integrity of their work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights I kind of like the idea of allowing verbatim redistribution if the author or their estate is demonstrably not planning to make money off it, but attribution and integrity of the work should be preserved.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  Moral rights should be preserved indefinitely, yes. Big IP holders make a large effort to mix both of those so they argue in bad faith that their profit advances human culture. Do not fall for it, they are very different things, and if somebody proposes extra protection for moral rights, only those big IP holders will be against it.
  - jonhohle 2y ago
    Distinguishing work for hire vs personal work would help, as well. Most commercial copyrighted works are created using a work-for-hire model (similar to textbooks). This isn’t what copyright was meant to protect.
    - aithrowawaycomm 2y ago
      This is 100% wrong, the very first copyright law specifically included editors and publishing houses as entities who could hold copyrights for work done by employees or contributors. Many reference books / etc were done by teams of professionals and their employers owned the resulting work. You are appealing to people's ignorance (including your own) by evoking an idyllic past that doesn't actually exist. The copyright problems between individual authors are substantively indistinguishable and the law correctly acknowledges this. The only difference is completely insubstantial: irrational emotional appeal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne

jauntywundrkind 2y ago

It's wild what a reign the anti-digitization forces have had. The law keeps contorting itself into knots to entrench specific versions of the past. The Aereo lawsuit comes to mind as wildly anti-civilian, concocted to make the legal regime as tall and wide as possible. It's just so sad that legalism and Terms of Service feel like they are in a race to remain bigger than technology & possibility, to keep things the same.