Poll of the Day > I think video games should have a "life span", lack of better term

(+) Yeah! (+)

That there is a certain timeframe the a company has after copies were produced before people could get them in other ways.

Like all those old school games that are next too impossible to find, and some may not even been working now.

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I kind of agree, unless they keep making it easily available

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Sulugnaz posted...

That's actually already a thing, really. Blame Disney for making it so that the time is longer than it should be.

My lack of copies of many games says otherwise.

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I can kinda see an argument for abandonware, but idk. I think it's a somewhat thorny subject.

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hypnox posted...

My lack of copies of many games says otherwise.

things go into the public domain when they become older than steamboat willy. all you need to do is invent video games in the early 1920s, or delay the creation of steamboat willy

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well technically they go into the public domain when the author has been dead for longer than the creator of steamboat willy has been dead. so you could also extend the life of walt disney, or steal his idea and live a long time

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Sulugnaz posted...

That's actually already a thing, really. Blame Disney for making it so that the time is longer than it should be.

Anything older than Mickey Mouse is public domain, anything younger is not. It's the golden rule.

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I assume once there are videogames old enough to be relevant that public domain laws will apply to them. I'm sure there will be some legal wrangling to clearly draw the lines (and depending on the environment the lines might be ridiculously stupid) but at some point "Videogames become public domain after X years" will be a thing people are relatively sure of and can say.

I don't think it should be an age thing so much as a usage thing. There's no reason Disney shouldn't retain the rights to all of their old cartoons and characters that they're still actively using (especially with Disney+ granting access to almost everything they've ever made). Instead, individual pieces of media should automatically become public domain after a certain period (possibly 10 years) of not being available for sale. Especially in today's environment of digital distribution being so commonplace, there's absolutely no reason for a copyright holder *not* to have their works available for purchase, so if they don't, treating that as a tacit admission that they don't want to sell them anymore seems perfectly reasonable, and pirating content that a copyright holder doesn't want to sell is completely harmless (outside of cases where distributing the content can carry inherent harm, like porn).

Obviously, that doesn't necessarily solve some issues, like Nintendo charging ridiculous prices for a quarter-assed N64 streaming service that is currently the only official way to acquire those games, but that should remain Nintendo's prerogative. These are their products, and they should be free to price their products however they wish (just as we, in turn, can choose not to buy them). What shouldn't remain Nintendo's prerogative is actively preventing people from playing games they have no intention of ever selling again. Earthbound was impossible to officially obtain (bearing in mind that used sales provide no more revenue to the publisher than pirated copies) from about 1997 to 2013, during which period three Smash games released that included Ness to drive interest in the game. Even then, its VC release on the WiiU came as a surprise to pretty much everyone, since it was expected that it would never be officially released again. It's still impossible to officially purchase most GC games (off-hand, the only first party exceptions I can think of are Metroid Prime 1&2, Wind Waker, TP, and Mario Sunshine, and that last one has since been artificially discontinued), almost 15 years after the system's production stopped.

That's not okay, in my mind. I certainly don't want to force them to sell products they don't want to sell, because that's generally not a good precedent to set (certainly not for non-essential products), but actively trying to prevent people from enjoying an existing work whose enjoyment causes no harm is just bad for any artistic medium and ultimately deprives the world of enjoyment for no reason.

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