it is beneficial as otherwise we would not get high quality work unless rich people do it themselves or sponsor the product. Cause with weaker copyright the risk rises and with higher risk other investments are more profitable. therefore why should a person work really hard on creating a world for years only to not be able to use that world after only ten years? better choice would be to do accounts and slowly climb the corporate ladder. No mate. you are confusing a product (for example System Shock 2) with copyright on that product. The product you are right: 80-95 percent of income probably comes in first few months and first big sale. maybe a year or two. The copyrighted material tough has a longer liftetime. System Shock hasn't been used for a long time... shame. but can still turn on profit when they decide to release System Shock 3. or do HD version. or just release SS2.
It is not about whether investment is to be remade. you do not invest to get your money back. you invest to earn money. and any extra sales even years afterwards contribute to decision making on whether you invest in game or you invest in mining operation in cambodia. you are wrong mate. most books are still being sold and still earn money for authors, music, movies the same. games? slightly different because of limited sale points, limited by shelf space... but that also no true. there are many releases of old games even before digital distribution. and more importantly. sequels, remakes. you want to take that away with copyright.

and...
you are on gog. a site which was dedicated to selling older than10 year old game. you are wrong on that account. no. Fanfic, youtube videos are on average worse than commercial products. just because they do not have money backing them up. Shorter copyright includes less chance of making money, less chance of milking the series. sans less money = worse quality. thats a fact.
it also creates a problem for authors who would write stuff only once per decade. instead of having constant stream of revenue from decades of work (and possible movie deals, game deals like witcher) they would have to either to concentrate on some different type of work or concentrate only on writing stuff they don't want to but have just to pay bills and support family.
they lose
we lose full of shit you are as you should know that patents and copyright are completely different things. what the hell you do there? do you swap papers or are you actually involved with patents.

first thing first.

Patent on drugs is done by dozens people, who can create patents on constant basis. Thats not the same with single or a tiny group creating copyrighted work.

So thats what you are suggesting. Big companies will make only products and little people won't be able to profit on that.
cause
why pay for script for a movie? just wait 10 years and bam. you have a free cheap movie. music? why hire a musician to write it if you can just use any song from 100 years of music creation?
or book deals? CDprojektRed wouldn't pay Sapkowski anything? or that Cyberpunk guy? what for? over ten years right?

Yeah. Public wins...
no.

we don't.
we lose.

we lose authors who will do something else instead of writing novels. we lose small time software developers who can profit over longer period of time like Spiderweb which avernum games allowed them to stay in business...

shorter copyrights terms kills smaller entities. sure. big content survives. we lose tough as big content will control more.
because at this moment while we can't make a mickey mouse video game without permission as it would be copyright infringement (and trademark)
we have people who can create their own works without being screwed out of their own profits in ten short years.

Yes, I know. I'm clearly in the wrong, but the rate at which this specific topic reappears is higher than normal. Especially considering the fact that "abandonware" has more of a "de facto" than "de jure" status. What I'm trying to say is, I'm sure people have better things to do than discussing something akin to getting worked up about someone illegally chopping down a small bush when there are entire sections of the rain forest getting felled. The consequences of abandonware are not as dire as some people like to think.

I highly doubt game companies factor in sales that happen 10 years after release when they decide whether to fund a project. System Shock 2 would still have been made even with a copyright that expires after 10 years. Only then, the game would have been freely available for three years now, a definitive plus for the public. And, an HD remake or System Shock 3 would be more likely, because that's exactly the thing fan modders like to create. Also, every game developer could now create a sequel, or remake, not only whoever idly sits on the rights at the moment.

Well, you still have to pay for a script to get hold of it in the first place. So scriptwriters would still write scripts, only in this case in ten years' time, everyone could turn the material into a movie, not just the people holding the rights. More material available to directors=better movies=benefit for the public.

So Sapkowski wouldn't have written these books had he known that someone would make a game out of them for free, 20 years later? Doesn't make much sense to me. We'd still have these books, only now every game (or movie!) company could use them, which could lead to great things.

When I imagine specific examples, in the vast majority of cases it seems to me that a shorter copyright would be beneficial.

Edit: It almost reminds me of a snowball effect. Creative people would have a much wider range of creative works to freely draw upon, resulting in even more, even better works and so forth.

they do! The factor sales after ten years. They factor whether the IP has longevity. Ten years is very short time. IP would be available eight years as SS1 was released in1994. Questionable.
Why develop new IP while you can milk already existent ones right? I do believe there is too many sequels too many same things and you are suggesting more of the same.
Furthemore.
milking.

system shock is not about shodan, not about the title is not about the UI... we love it for much deeper thing.
thing which is not copyrightable.
therefore if system shock is widely availble.
System Shock peggle game
Shodan: The Corridor Shooter!
and so on.
therefore
benefit is very very questionable. not if anyone can make it. high risk of ripoff and competition. if they do not want to do it now why should they do it when they dont own rights to SS?
but i do admit chances are higher for smaller company? Just like black mesa source?
and HL is very mod welcomed.
so probability is practically zilch. true
but at the same time there can be many system shock 3 right? that might cause some troubles.
and therefore, lesser chances of return on the investment. and if nobody wants to invest in SS3 when they have exclusivity... then it is hard to phantom why would they do that if they do not have that exclusivity. without paying script writer a dime? then why should scriptwriter even do that? at least as main source of income?
cause selling scripts is not an easy job. if you are super famous then yeah. you write it today and tomorrow you can cash your check. most scriptwriters spend years trying to sell their stuff for movies, tvshows. and big players were small too. before they got their hit they also wrote dozens of those. and with 10 years. they would not be picked up. what for? if you got to pay for it. nope
less material
worse movies (to small extent at least) as script writers would have to spend time on other stuff instead of selling scripts = we are worse off In a way yeah. In 2000 anyone could be making witcher books. Look how artists are butthurt when someone use their work without permission (not even for profit)
You think he might reconsider writing then? knowing that in 10 years he will lose control over the world he developed?
wouldn't artist be hurt seeing piece of their soul being milked by everyone, by people who make millions while he/she doesnt get a dime?
wouldn't he reconsider knowing that in 10 years time if he wants to write a new book in that world he will have to compete with everyone else using his characters, his world, his work?
plus of course releases of his books would make money for publishers, bookshops while he will have nothing.
so yes.
he would reconsider. and definitely to a lot of shit.
while at the same time increasing risk of failure.
sans
less chance of great things as publisher who forked out the money would demand greater returns. I don't see a single reason why it would be beneficial for anyone. definitely not for creators, definitely not for us. I kinda see how big publishers could turn that to their advantage.... think zynga style but storylines, characters, not just game mechanics. they have a wide range of creative works to freely draw upon. just because you cannot write a star wars novel does not mean you are being abused by the copyright!

i really don't see the point of your last argument. how are we bound creatively?

Fair enough.

We already get too many sequels. If there were many "System Shock 3s", for example, the developers had to make an effort to make their game more distinct, to stand out from the crowd. They couldn't simply rely on the strength of the franchise anymore, as is the case now.

Only if that's what people want. And if it is, there's your benefit right there.

Competition would lead to better games, I think.

Exactly. Whoever owns the rights doesn't want to make a sequel, probably because the franchise isn't popular enough for an AAA game. But smaller companies or indie developers might be interested.

There have been a few fan remakes that had to be abandoned because of copyright issues, like the Chrono Trigger one. If those were legal, and people would want them, of course we'd get more of them.

It's not that nobody wants to invest in System Shock 3, it's just that the one entity that owns the rights doesn't.

Most writers already have a very hard life, that wouldn't change for the worse. If something they have written strikes a company to be potentially profitable, they'll pay for it, lest somebody else does, and steal their thunder.

So, suddenly a shorter copyright would make creative types millions? Isn't that the opposite of what you've been saying so far?

Because the creativity is being locked up by whoever holds of the rights. There are many books that could be turned into fantastic movies, to use a simple example, but only the select few who have the rights are able to do that.

Fuck it. Bored with this. Keep doubling down on those mistakes and continuing to make copyright even less respected and less relevant.

to me, its interesting and fun to get my opinion out there and debated everytime, and hey, you wouldn't demand our fun from us would you!?

just being lighthearted, i hear what your saying too. theres a lot of repetition here, and it gets old for some people, but if you don't like it, you don't have to post anything!
the laws the law. if someone made a rediculas law that didn't make any sense, i probably wouldn't follow it.

and here obviosuly, is your point: that is EXACTLY what this copyright thing is!

but to me, its not to that point of rediculasness yet. to be truely rediculas, a law has to say something like "you may not drink water" or "you may not open your car door more then 2 times a day" these are things that impede our lives and have no reason for being in place, to keep someone from downloading abandonware does not impede anybody's life in any way.

clearly we can argue all day over this, but truthfully, you will never convince me it is meaninglessness enough to break, i will never convince you it isn't. consider that when you write you next post, I probaly wont argue with you over the same old stuff over and over without bringing anything new to the convo.

hey.
i am not suggesting copyright is not broken. why go to extremes?
just pointing out how unrealistic is such a short period as 10 years. over hundred years ago they know that kind of short period of time is not workable. and now when people live 30 years longer, reproduction is much much easier and it can be done anywhere on the planet 10 years is even more silly.

Also I'd add:

5. Can no longer be obtained legitimately, in a way which the rights holder would still benefit, due to discontinuation of printing and marketing.

That's precisely my point. I know that abandonware as a concept is acknowledged de facto these days (a copyright holder or stakeholder that enforces these rights automatically excludes abandonment of them, as they wouldn't otherwise pursue them), and what I'm talking about here is taking about theoretically enshrining them in law. Saying that the topic of abandonware comes up every week is like saying the concept of games comes up every day. Of course it will come up frequently - until 2008, our only source of getting old games was abandonware, and for many truly abandoned titles, that remains the case.

I'm well aware that abandonware is not only not legally sanctioned, but rather outright illegal. I'm aware that the question of *whether* abandonware is illegal is discussed back and forth constantly, what I'm trying to discuss is whether it could theoretically be legalised. The unauthorised distribution of true abandonware is basically akin to a victimless crime, which is for me an indication that the law at present is too broad and does more harm than good.

It's not really a victimless crime. While you consume abandonware you might buy less not-abandoned ware, therefore decreasing potential profit of somebody. If I produce a game and sell it for some period and then not sell it, why shouldn't I be well within my rights? If the seller cannot decide what to sell, his freedom is restricted severely.

Without a way for proper financial compensation, abandonware will more resemble piracy. So the minimum is that people who use abandonware must buy all games immediately when they are available again. How many people would be doing it?

By that logic, legitimate freeware should also be a crime. Hell, I was playing Battle of Wesnoth pretty much non-stop for three months. Should the dev team be prosecuted because I wasn't paying for games in that time? Should Rovio go to hell because I was playing the free version of Angry Birds on my phone instead of paying for another game?

What you're suggesting is the start of a very slippery slope.

Legal definition: A game which has been explicitly abandoned by the publisher in an official sense.

Ethical definition: Any game unavailable for sale physically or via digital distribution. I also think a prospective "searcher" should contact the publisher and offer to pay an agreed-upon fee before downloading it via abandonware if it does not meet the "legal" definition.

I meant it specifically for this context. What you suggest is that as long as it doesn't hurt anybody at the moment directly you can use anything. Like me going to your home and reading all the books you aren't reading at the moment. You wouldn't like that for sure but it would be a victimless crime. This is also a very slippery slope.

I change my example and say, the victim is the original coypright holder when he wants to sell his game again. He can not be sure that the people playing it in the mean time are going to pay for it. He might end up with reduced profit. Also it would restrict his freedom severly to decide what to do with his property.

So what about the interest of the public to preserve art? Those who quote freedom are usually quoting a very one-sided argument, namely to claim their own freedom at the expense of another's. Art is a collective resource, and yes, there does need to be an incentive to benefit from it, but this needs to be balanced by the need to preserve this and to encourage further innovation.

You ask about what would happen if you entered my home and read all my books that I don't use anymore, but you miss the problem entirely. The problem is not that you are reading my books. The problem is that you are trespassing in my house. It would be akin to hacking into a server to play someone else's games because they aren't using them anymore.

You quote the interest of the author, but there are opposing interests that are just as worthy of consideration. Society does not look well upon people who rake in money without doing a great deal for it. It frustrates me that the Tolkien and Herbert estates, for example, rake in countless amounts of money for the rights to the respective books, although the people getting the dosh haven't really done a great deal for it apart from being in the right family at the right time.

And aside from the interest of the public to have access to that art, there also needs to be an incentive to produce new material instead of churning out copies of the old one.