LogFAQs > #977070331

adjl posted...

The annoying thing is that Disney should retain full copyright control over everything they've made. They're not wrong to have fought for that, they just fought for it the wrong way. If they'd fought for "we're still using that thing we made, so nobody else should be able to use it until we're done instead of some arbitrary time limit" instead of "we're still using that thing, so we want the arbitrary time limit extended," copyright law would be in a much better place.

Though even 20 years is longer than I think is reasonable to wait these days. With digital distribution, I'd say even 2-3 years without the product being officially for sale (or a clear plan for when it will be on sale, to account for potential hiccups in developing an emulator or something) or otherwise commercially available (e.g. streaming) should qualify it for public domain. There's absolutely nothing stopping Nintendo from keeping the eShops running for the 3DS and WiiU, especially if they just use the same storefront for all systems moving forward. Subsequent to that, there's absolutely nothing stopping Nintendo from making their entire historical library available. That they aren't selling it means only that they've chosen not to sell it, and if they're choosing not to sell it, they have no basis for objecting to people pirating it.

I would be good with that, but I think in order for it to happen the whole "Company X owns the copyright and company Y owns the trademark" stuff needs to be worked out as well. That is another thing that makes games go into sales "limbo". See Prey (2006), which Bethesda owns the Trademark and 2K owns the copyright. Oddly enough, the other example I used to point to (Wolfenstein 2009) is now a non-issue since Activision owns the copyright and Bethesda owns the trademark. Now it is all under Microsoft.