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Games that pull the plug should lose some of their copyright protections
Quizzical
Member LegendaryPosts: 25,507
The purpose of copyright protections is to make it profitable to develop and sell games. The problem is that it takes a lot of time and money to create a good game, but essentially nothing to copy it once it is done. If making arbitrary copies of a game that someone else created were legal, it would be essentially impossible to make a profit by developing games, as people would just get a copy of it cheaply from someone else. The logic originally applied to books, but works just as well for everything from movies to computer software.
However, making it so that you no longer legally buy a game at all is not an intended purpose of copyright. It is the effect of copyright laws when a game is taken off the market, however. As such, copyright laws should be changed to not have this effect. Distributing games online costs virtually nothing; we're no longer in the era when publishing and distributing books was prohibitively expensive for low-volume products.
What I propose is that if a company has launched a game, but then subsequently does not make it legally available (whether to purchase or for free) for some period of time, it becomes legal to pirate the game. For single-player games, that would be the usual download a copy from someone else approach. For online games such as MMORPGs, it would mean private servers for that game became legal.
The period of time that a game would have to be unavailable to lose copyright protections must be long enough for it not to happen accidentally. Obviously, a DDOS attack shouldn't mean you lose copyright protections. Furthermore, for a game's publisher to go bankrupt may force a game offline for a while, but it shouldn't mean copyright protections are gone before a profitable game can find a new publisher. I'm not sure how long a game should have to be unavailable to lose copyright protections, but probably somewhere in the ballpark of 1-5 years.
Copyright protections against game assets taken in isolation would remain in place. If a company pulls the plug on a game, it wouldn't become legal to swipe artwork and background music from it for use in other, unrelated games such as League of Angels. Rather, what would be legal is pirating the entire game intact, up to perhaps modifications to make it run on other platforms (e.g., console emulators or different OS) and translation to different languages.
Furthermore, game companies must be able maintain copyrights on games for extended periods of time by keeping the game available for sale. This could be anything from GOG or GameTap style services to PlayStation Now to selling physical copies through Amazon to offering a place to download the game on the developer's web site. To maintain full copyright protections, a game developer would not be required to make the game work on modern systems, nor to make it continuously available on the original platform. For example, a DOS game could have its copyright maintained by simply offering the old DOS executable for sale. Nintendo's offering of some old NES games for sale on the Wii would also be sufficient, even if NES cartridges aren't still for sale.
Offering technical support to get players to actually get a game to work on their intended system would also not be required, and there could easily be a class of games with disclaimers that the company doesn't expect you to be able to get the game they sell you to work as is. Nor would game developers be required to re-release a game with the DRM stripped out or otherwise assist with making games playable on platforms other than originally intended. In some cases, a purchase would amount to, you've paid the developer, so now you can legally go pirate the game to get it to work on your computer via whatever emulator is relevant. Being illegal should not be the only barrier that stops you from playing games that you're willing and able to pay for.
Updates to a game that is substantially similar to the pre-update game would not mean that the company loses copyright rights on the older version. So for example, Vanilla WoW private servers would still be illegal unless Blizzard decides to sanction them or pulls the plug on WoW entirely. But if Blizzard does decide to shut down WoW entirely, then private servers of WoW at any stage of the sequence of expansions would become legal.
However, making it so that you no longer legally buy a game at all is not an intended purpose of copyright. It is the effect of copyright laws when a game is taken off the market, however. As such, copyright laws should be changed to not have this effect. Distributing games online costs virtually nothing; we're no longer in the era when publishing and distributing books was prohibitively expensive for low-volume products.
What I propose is that if a company has launched a game, but then subsequently does not make it legally available (whether to purchase or for free) for some period of time, it becomes legal to pirate the game. For single-player games, that would be the usual download a copy from someone else approach. For online games such as MMORPGs, it would mean private servers for that game became legal.
The period of time that a game would have to be unavailable to lose copyright protections must be long enough for it not to happen accidentally. Obviously, a DDOS attack shouldn't mean you lose copyright protections. Furthermore, for a game's publisher to go bankrupt may force a game offline for a while, but it shouldn't mean copyright protections are gone before a profitable game can find a new publisher. I'm not sure how long a game should have to be unavailable to lose copyright protections, but probably somewhere in the ballpark of 1-5 years.
Copyright protections against game assets taken in isolation would remain in place. If a company pulls the plug on a game, it wouldn't become legal to swipe artwork and background music from it for use in other, unrelated games such as League of Angels. Rather, what would be legal is pirating the entire game intact, up to perhaps modifications to make it run on other platforms (e.g., console emulators or different OS) and translation to different languages.
Furthermore, game companies must be able maintain copyrights on games for extended periods of time by keeping the game available for sale. This could be anything from GOG or GameTap style services to PlayStation Now to selling physical copies through Amazon to offering a place to download the game on the developer's web site. To maintain full copyright protections, a game developer would not be required to make the game work on modern systems, nor to make it continuously available on the original platform. For example, a DOS game could have its copyright maintained by simply offering the old DOS executable for sale. Nintendo's offering of some old NES games for sale on the Wii would also be sufficient, even if NES cartridges aren't still for sale.
Offering technical support to get players to actually get a game to work on their intended system would also not be required, and there could easily be a class of games with disclaimers that the company doesn't expect you to be able to get the game they sell you to work as is. Nor would game developers be required to re-release a game with the DRM stripped out or otherwise assist with making games playable on platforms other than originally intended. In some cases, a purchase would amount to, you've paid the developer, so now you can legally go pirate the game to get it to work on your computer via whatever emulator is relevant. Being illegal should not be the only barrier that stops you from playing games that you're willing and able to pay for.
Updates to a game that is substantially similar to the pre-update game would not mean that the company loses copyright rights on the older version. So for example, Vanilla WoW private servers would still be illegal unless Blizzard decides to sanction them or pulls the plug on WoW entirely. But if Blizzard does decide to shut down WoW entirely, then private servers of WoW at any stage of the sequence of expansions would become legal.
Comments
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
Copyright law has had a terrible effect on games for years, but it's so complicated that it would be difficult for any major change to not screw something else up.
Just let defunct games, or versions of the game so out of date as to be recognisable to the current version, live on the for the niche playerbase that wants them, as long as no profit is made by the host.
There's nothing stopping a company from declaring a game as "free" or releasing it into the public domain. However, that decision rests with the IP owner, nobody else.
The creator of a product should always have complete control over that product, for the full duration of the copyright. Art assets and code in one game may be used in another. As soon as the game is no longer protected, those assets can be used freely by competitors.
I don't care if a game you loved closes. The owners of the IP have every right to protect their product. Hopefully we start treating software pirates like the criminals they are, a couple nights in prison and most of these worthless thieves would never do it again.
Hey, I only need one subscriber to make money!
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
I'm under no obligation to let someone have access to the product any longer than I want them to.
As mentioned, an online game may one day be sold and opened again, so I don't want people pirating my stuff in the meantime..
Sure, if the IP holder feels magnanimous and releases it into the wild, fine, but no way do I want a law passed that take away my rights to control my property as I see fit.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
That would ensure that games which are abandoned will lose their copyright in reasonable duration, while the option to buy extension would mean that games which are not abandoned would retain their copyright.
That system would also make it more clear when the copyright ends than your proposal: An official register of copyright extensions would take some work to create (paid with the license fees), but it's better than a situation where the copyright might have expired, or it might still be in effect because the creator has sold some leftover physical copies without you knowing.
Of course this is just a rough outline and there are a gazillion contingencies that need to be covered. But basically if the IP holder sees the demand, and is not planning to do anything with the game anytime soon, they can recruit private server teams to keep the game going. If the IP holders decide to release a SWG2, then they can demand that the private servers are brought down so as to not impede the profitability of the new game. The owners do not lose any rights at all to their IP, they are just having mercy on the game players that they do not want to anger by leaving them high and dry. And since the private server owners can only use the game released to them by the IP holder (not vanilla or custom), the game can't be sundered to pieces.
The world is going to the dogs, which is just how I planned it!
"The Congress shall have power... To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries"
The way that copyrights do that is by making it profitable to create things that would be unprofitable if people could immediately make copies as soon as you were finished. Most commercial games wouldn't exist if not for copyright laws.
Note that the entire point is to promote the progress of science and useful arts. That is, to promote creation of more books and music, and more recently, videos and games, so that society could benefit from having them available. Making it illegal to make copies at all doesn't serve that purpose.
Furthermore, I'd submit that the prevalence of game companies making it illegal to buy new copies of a game is an accident of sorts. It's not so much that they want everyone to be forced to stop playing their game. If they made the entire game public domain, however, that would mean no further copyright protections on assets that they may wish to reuse with full protections in other games. What I would propose makes it possible to protect the reuse of assets for other games without making it illegal to copy the game in its entirety.
On broader principle, I'm against making it illegal to do things in situations where everyone knows the law won't be enforced. Companies sometimes do zealously try to shut down piracy of products that they still hope to sell, and reasonably so. But when's the last time you heard of a lawsuit by a company trying to shut down piracy of a game that they no longer wished to sell?
We need to update the laws maybe, but not start carving out rights.
Well obviously because a business has to target ONE area,itself whilst consumers would have to go out and hire lawyers to deal with every aspect of life.
So it is a one sided coin and copyright itself is a JOKE,costs almost nothing to copyright/trademark.So even if the business shuts down,they can still copyright their product,keeping it out of the hands of a more legitimate ,HONEST business for mere pennies.
Yep you just read that sentence and said wtf?I am talking about dubious publishers,develoeprs that have no intention of doing a good job but merely getting their foot in the door and taking millions of dollars then riding it as long as they can.Then you ask how i can call an incoming pirate a HONEST businessman?
EASILY,someone who sees a good product and sees that the gamer's were exploited,abused and ripped off and wants to keep a good idea going but in a more honest way.I only need remind people of USED car sales,500 different people can sell the exact same car without having to worry about copyright of Chrysler or Dodge or GM.Some will be HONEST used salesmen and some will be dishonest and gaming is similar,you can have the original seller,then what we now call pirates reselling the same product.Remember the used car salesmen never built those cars,yet they still profit from selling them,how is that any different than gaming?
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Well we don't want to ridicule a struggling business ,so we need a grace period.Perhaps a developer/publisher means well but is struggling financially,they should not lose their business/copyright just because they shutdown for a bit.
IDK,perhaps a one year grace period,after that if they do not make an attempt to satisfy those gamer's they TOOK MONEY from,then they lose the copyright license and all trademarks.We need this sort of solution to keep it FAIR to both parties,NOT just the publisher.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Their creations, their property. Period.
An idea that you strip away someone's rights because you deem the use of their property "inapropriate", is retarded...