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from the you-pays-your-money--you-takes-your-chances dept.
Ars Technica has an interesting tidbit today about one of our more hotly discussed topics here... whether or not "abandonware" should continue to receive copyright protection — Entertainment Publishers fight to block third-party revival of “abandoned” game servers
This article concerns the trade industry response to a brief filed by the EFF last November.
A major game industry trade group is fighting back against a proposed DMCA exemption that seeks to give gamers the right to modify games with abandoned online servers in order to restore online gameplay and functionality. The Entertainment Software Association (ESA), with support (.pdf) from the Motion Picture Association of America and Recording Industry Association of America, argues that the proposed exemption would amount to "enabling—and indeed encouraging—the play of pirated games and the unlawful reproduction and distribution of infringing content."
[...] The US Copyright Office will be holding public hearings [PDF] on the proposed DMCA exemptions May 19 through 21 in Washington DC and Los Angeles. The final round of written comments on the rule will be closed on May 1.
My own thoughts on this is likely our payment systems are just as unworkable as copyright law. Mechanisms are now in place to take our money, give us something, then abandon it, yet prohibit us from using it. Maybe its high time we consider a "Millennium Digital Currency Act" for payments so when the vendors want to abandon the service, the money transfers back to to the buyer, and the copyrights transfer back to the seller.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Justin Case on Sunday April 12 2015, @01:21AM
> offer to buy the rights. And if that doesn't work, buy the rights holder.
Make this offer to whom exactly? Do you know someplace where I can look up the current rights holder of an abandoned film?
(Hint: the rights holder, whoever that might be, is not offering it for sale. Anywhere. Ever.)
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2015, @01:25AM
Have you checked with the copyright office, where copyrights are registered, so you can find out? If you're too lazy to do it yourself, have you hired a lawyer to research it for you? How much do you really care, really?
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Sunday April 12 2015, @01:34AM
> Have you checked with the copyright office
That would (I think) reveal the original author, which I already know. What I don't know is who they sold and resold the rights to over the years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2015, @01:42AM
Why don't you ask them? Legwork doesn't just happen in detective films, you know. It works in real life too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2015, @01:53AM
This is an epic case of someone moaning that "Shut up and take my money" not being good enough. Why should the customers have to do the work?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2015, @02:25AM
Why should librarians have to buy old books and pay for buildings in which to store them? That's like, work, man.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday April 12 2015, @07:45AM
Because they are the ones who get the benefit?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2015, @08:13PM
This dude cuts to the heart of the matter, money.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWP88WKVBKs [youtube.com]
To get a movie made *and* released there are hundreds of 'owners'. The distributors will not even release a movie if there isnt a cut in it for them (ie ownership). Many people are asking these companies to take time to make 10 bucks. When in that same time they could make 200k. It is a classic trade off of opportunity cost.
We get very wrapped up in this stuff because it is very cool an awesome. But the other end of this it is a business. Look at the movie Payback with Mel Gibson. They literally rewrote the whole third act because the director had made a very good movie but it was a very bleak movie. But it would have been a financial failure (even the director and producers acknowledges this).
No one wants to repeat what happened with the GIF thing. Where it went for years extending and changing things then one 'owner' went full on greedy. So we wait :(
(Score: 1) by anubi on Monday April 13 2015, @03:29AM
That "GIF thing" should have made us all ( Especially Law-Makers!!!) aware of the ramifications of bad law.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]