3 ms·

Planned obsolescence. If people have old games to play, they can play them instead of new games. All sorts of creative industries have an interest in destroyin

Planned obsolescence. If people have old games to play, they can play them instead of new games. All sorts of creative industries have an interest in destroying the public domain because it provides value to the world which thus means less demand for new creations. Nobody wants to admit this, and it is usually not consciously the focus of their copyright arguments (even to themselves), but it's the real source.

anigbrowl 12y ago
As someone who works in the arts, I disagree. You're assuming a 'lump of attention', in which if attention is paid to public domain work (eg a classic silent movie) some other modern work will have to go unwatched. That's true in the very short term, insofar as most people like to watch one movie at once (or play one game at once, or...adjust as appropriate), but a great deal of cultural work depends for its aesthetic effect on consumers' familiarity with prior work, notwithstanding the fact that one is 'competing' with it. The project I'm developing right now includes a bunch of references to other work, some of which is due to fall into the public domain in a few years, and other work which may or may not be in the public domain (I'm actively following a piece of litigation to find out whether I need to cough up thousands of dollars in licensing fees to have someone sing 'Happy Birthday', for example).