kane_magus (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kane_magus) wrote2021-03-07 05:45 pm
kane_magus) wrote2021-03-07 05:45 pm
Entry tags:
"Two Tweet Threads About Copyright"
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.
no subject
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.