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A post on John Scalzi's website.
I don't have a problem with the idea of copyright, in and of itself. I think it's a good thing, on the whole, because a content creator should be able to legitimately make money for themselves and their family, without having to worry about blatant knockoffs or outright copies of their work being sold (or freely distributed) by others who had nothing to do with the creation of it. (Or worry so much, anyway, given that some people are always going to do that stuff no matter what, I don't care what the laws say, and until ways are developed to prevent that from happening which don't also harm legitimate paying customers [often more so than they do the ones actually being targeted, e.g. pretty much every DRM scheme ever devised], there's just no point getting too worked up over that shit. Because if you protect your work using methods that more often than not harm your actual customers as much as or even more so than they do the ones illegitimately copying/selling your work, then you also become one of the bad guys, in my eyes, about as bad as the so-called pirates themselves.)
I just don't like it when copyright (or trademark or patent, etc.) is used as an indiscriminate bombing run against things (e.g. fan fiction, fan art, fan music, fan games/game mods, Let's Plays of video games, etc.) that clearly aren't harming the original properties, and which can and often does, in fact, drive more sales toward the original work, or at least would if said things weren't just knee-jerk nuked from orbit as a matter of course.
But all of that's almost entirely irrelevant to the above post and is just a thing I usually say whenever the subject of copyright comes up, regardless of the original point being made, so I'll just leave it alone for now.
I don't have a problem with the idea of copyright, in and of itself. I think it's a good thing, on the whole, because a content creator should be able to legitimately make money for themselves and their family, without having to worry about blatant knockoffs or outright copies of their work being sold (or freely distributed) by others who had nothing to do with the creation of it. (Or worry so much, anyway, given that some people are always going to do that stuff no matter what, I don't care what the laws say, and until ways are developed to prevent that from happening which don't also harm legitimate paying customers [often more so than they do the ones actually being targeted, e.g. pretty much every DRM scheme ever devised], there's just no point getting too worked up over that shit. Because if you protect your work using methods that more often than not harm your actual customers as much as or even more so than they do the ones illegitimately copying/selling your work, then you also become one of the bad guys, in my eyes, about as bad as the so-called pirates themselves.)
I just don't like it when copyright (or trademark or patent, etc.) is used as an indiscriminate bombing run against things (e.g. fan fiction, fan art, fan music, fan games/game mods, Let's Plays of video games, etc.) that clearly aren't harming the original properties, and which can and often does, in fact, drive more sales toward the original work, or at least would if said things weren't just knee-jerk nuked from orbit as a matter of course.
But all of that's almost entirely irrelevant to the above post and is just a thing I usually say whenever the subject of copyright comes up, regardless of the original point being made, so I'll just leave it alone for now.
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Date: 2021-03-07 11:59 pm (UTC)From:It's further a mistake to be giving the same duration of protection on every medium in existance. "Life + 50" is insane for damned near anything you can imagine, but exceptionally so in say the video game (or in general computer software) markets. Any and all marketability are gone LONG before it even hits 50 with the exception of a fringe retro market. And seriously if anything from that retro market of 50+ years ago is still considered comparable to the new stuff released today - it says far far FAR more about the state of the current market. Namely about how it apparently seems to have come to a dead stop. At best because the market is literally maxed out and saturated. At worse because they're using copyright to slow down their need to innovate and produce new content. (Consider how drug companies like to draw out marketability of their drugs with patents - only offering modest improvements near the end of a patent in order to extend/renew the patent.)
John's reasons for the long duration of copyright and the 'long game' basically reinforce that idea - milking the franchise as long as possible, including refusing to try to sell to foreign markets until later for the sole purpose of creating additional revenue later on.
If I were to set the duration of copyright, at MOST (Absolute most) would be maybe 40 years. I was thinking about the whole "Life+" setup originally, as John thinks he makes a good remark about "what if I die young? what about my spouse?" issue. But then I realized "Well fuck it. just set an actual absolute number and there's no question about 'what if'. If you're that concerned about yer spouse you won't stop working in your 30's and there should end up being plenty of works that they can profit off of after your death.
But again, different mediums really should have realistic copyright lengths. I wouldn't say 40 years for a video game for instance. I'm also a bit different in what concerns me for copyright. I'm FAR more pissed off and concerned about others profiting off of things I've made. I'm not nearly as concerned about people getting their hands on it for free. I'd propose a 2 tier style of copyright if anything - where the first portion of the copyright is basically like it is today, but after that have a Life+50 duration where nobody can independently profit off of your stuff, but you can't sue people for sharing it freely among themselves. (a creative commons non-commercial setup essentially.)
During the copyright duration, I'd also expect an actual archival setup for preservation to be allowed. Any organization that works as such would need some oversight to make sure they're only doing what they should be doing, but in exchange companies would need to hand over various software needed for online games that would be needed for the proper preservation. ie: the server side code. That code, along with client code, would remain archived but unavailable to the masses until the copyright duration is up. After that, game on. If the original companies haven't innovated in that 40+ years, fuck'em. :P
Oh. /rant.
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Date: 2021-03-11 06:18 pm (UTC)From:Yeah, the video game industry as a whole is barely 50 years old, much less any individual game, aside from maybe Pong or some shit (and, no, even Pong wasn't invented until 1972, so it's only 49 years old). As such, in this case, I think John's desired length for "corporations" (since "Life+" doesn't apply there, since corporations aren't, you know, alive) was still 75 years, which is way too long. I think it should be "some arbitrary number of years far, far less than 75" or "until the company that created the game in question utterly ceases to exist entirely, leaving the question of copyright up in the air" (as has been the case for far too many games), whichever period is shorter. And I don't think copyright should be allowed to be sold for pre-existing products, either. Now, the IP concept in general, I can maybe allow for that being sold, so that you can have things like, say, Activision making more King's Quest games, since they own the rights to the IP now, but not making profits for decades into the future on the sale of the old King's Quest games, since those games were created before the series was ever in the hands of Activision. If anyone should be making money from those, it's Ken and Roberta Williams (and whoever else helped with the later games while they were still fully under the Sierra banner, rather than Activision). After that, after those people are no longer around, those games should be public domain. I don't care if Activision still owns the IP rights to King's Quest as a whole.
As far as free distribution being "okay"... well... if I wrote a novel (and I'm still vaguely kinda sorta plugging away at that), I wouldn't want it being distributed outside of my control, either for profit or freely. That said, I'd still be less inclined to go after people sharing my shit on bittorrent or something than I would someone repackaging it and reselling it as their own shit, though I wouldn't be too awfully happy about either situation.
[1] - Though not for fucking "estates" or whatever, because that leads to shit like the "Conan Doyle estate" still trying to sue for licensing fees on the use of Sherlock Holmes and other asinine horseshit, even though it has been well over 70 years since Arthur Conan Doyle died.
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Date: 2021-03-12 07:16 am (UTC)From:People wouldn't be able to do adaptations or remakes on it either during this creative commons period either. To do that they'd still have to go through the original author for permission, the same way they'd have to during a normal copyright period. If the copyright duration was a straight 40 years, then the creative commons period would be another 40 years. Meaning you'll be pushing 100+ by the time the earliest commercial work you did can be reworked without your permission.
This would end up being "Life+" for the vast majority of the human race.
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Date: 2021-03-15 05:50 pm (UTC)From: