Maybe add a short time-out period in case there are momentary hiccups with a creator.
Make it apply not just to videogames, but books, movies, music, etc.
After all, if you can’t buy it, you’re not depriving the creator of revenue.
Actually, looking back at what I wrote, I think maybe I’m just describing the Copyright system as it was originally envisioned before times were extended to such ridiculous lengths. Whoops.
A good chunk of the history of copyright law is publishers finding creative ways to front-run their own authors. Publishers would agree to publish your book in, say, the US - where they'd be bound by US copyright law - and then abscond with it in a country where US copyright didn't apply, and therefore the translations would be a new work wholly divorced from the author's ownership. Modern copyright law is written with the assumption that any unauthorized sale is a lost one, because nobody is going to buy the same work twice unless we take away the one that wasn't paid for correctly.
After copyright law was maximized in this way, publishers pivoted to demanding total control up-front. This created the modern creative industry with hordes of "creative working class"/"below the talent line" professions that wouldn't exist if control were atomized to individual creators negotiating licensing agreements for everything. One quirk of this new business model is that certain legacy rights became far more lucrative. Publishers realized that they could take works off the market and then bring them back to profit off FOMO, or sell 'better' versions of the same work twice anyway.
You still come to the same conclusion I have, though, which is that the problem is term length. Instead of carving out new loopholes, variable term lengths, etc... just make them smaller overall. The publishers won't negotiate with us, why negotiate with them?
https://www.npr.org/2023/07/21/1189450157/the-classic-video-...
Once the copyright for most media stopped being owned by artists and started being owned by corporations there was a lot of value in keeping artistic works locked up by copyright and legally inaccessible to the pubic.
Mostly, it means that companies don't have to worry about old things competing for the time/attention of the people they want spending money on their new things. It also lets them amass huge catalogues of out of print media that can be sold or traded.
It's just one more way that our modern copyright system has been corrupted to work against its original goals, all so that corporations with vast fortunes can get even richer by robbing us of our own culture.
Pretty sure Nintendo is internally opposed to the idea of secondhand games and would stop it if they could without a massive outcry.
If the changes were minor, then maybe it would stop, say, a textbook company from releasing a zillion versions of the same book with minor changes or the question ordering switched in order to extract money out of the next class of students instead of simply allowing them to buy the previous edition used. ;)
I think so, even though the context around it might be more confusing/less modern or relevant.
For books and research, you can argue a lot of trivialities. For games and art, I think it's a necessary preservation requirement. For example, the other day I wanted to play Armored Core 4/4A. Digital copies can't be bought now that the servers are dead, and secondhand physical copies run well over $400. Your only convenient option for experiencing AC4/4A is emulation or piracy, which is absurd (but also the inconvenient truth).
Unless we'd rather these old and seemingly irrelevant works fall off the face of the earth, legalizing their preservation and archival should be urgent.
They recently did a study to counter the industry's claims to the copyright office that they're already doing enough to preserve its history. Turns out 87% of classic (ie old) games are unavailable.
Beyond that, as you say, it'll never happen, because entities like Disney are not going to forego their ability to drum up demand by "vaulting" their properties.
Because copyright laws (in the US at least) are (supposed to) provide to creators a limited time monopoly on their work in order to "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts".
Getting the right to squat on a piece of art that you claimed copyright over but not doing anything with is counter to that whole purpose of providing copyright in the first place.
> Secondly, that puts an unfair burden on creators. If I do a run of of my book, and it sells out, I don't think it becomes open season on duplicating it digitally, and I shouldn't have to always carry excess inventory just in case it's a hit.
This is a strawman interpretation. There is a lot of room between "I ran out of stock today" and "this game hasn't been on sale for 3 decades".
A side effect of this would be to encourage the creator or company to continue making it available.
> Secondly, that puts an unfair burden on creators. If I do a run of of my book, and it sells out, I don't think it becomes open season on duplicating it digitally, and I shouldn't have to always carry excess inventory just in case it's a hit.
That’s why I explicitly included a short time period to account for such hiccups. And, for example, if you’re talking about books then print on demand is certainly a way to satisfy the for sale criteria.
Nobody is asking for that. We only want it to become open season on duplicating it digitally if you choose not to do any further runs of it.
That's what the large conglomerates keep saying, although they haven't been able to produce any study proving that.
Since there's no proof of it, the loss of revenue is some urban legend.
I think the thing that most people misunderstand is that Nintendo is "renting" this stuff to you. They certainly don't shout it out but that is the case.
Tbf I'd love if laws were changed so that exclusivity was illegal - it's the reason Netflix wen't from being "oh, this is cool I'll pay rather than pirate" to the absolute hellscape that it is now, Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Crunchyroll, Funimation, Amazon Prime Video, etc, etc (seems to be a new one every month). It should be illegal to withhold content based on company or region. No more greedy suit & ties shaking their grubby paws for exclusivity on x show for y streaming platform for z months in j region.
But that'll never happen. Same thing as price controls on Hollywood, etc. Why does the movie cost 300 million to make? Oh yeah cause we're paying the main actors & actresses 50 million, 45 million and 30 million. WHY? Because capitalism, movie studios can just offer more than "the other guys", but of course this cost, instigated by greedy businessmen, gets pushed onto us the consumers. "Oh but making a movie is a risk, it might not do well" would it would certainly be less of a fucking risk if it was capped so that budgets were more in the 50 million range. But just like ridding the world of tax havens and other nonsense, it'll never happen.
Capitalism is proving to be more and more anti-consumer.
The owner of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin by Wu Tang would be pretty mad if it was freely shared because it couldn't be bought or rented.
Context from Wikipedia for those who don't know it: "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin is the seventh studio album by the American hip hop group Wu-Tang Clan. Only one physical copy of the album was created, with no ability to download or stream it digitally. Purchased directly from the Wu-Tang Clan in 2015, it became the most expensive work of music ever sold."
You'd have to have special categories whereby quantities could be intentionally limited.
But then Nintendo would presumably argue that they intended there to be a limited number of Wii's or Pokémon Red or whatever.
Wu-Tang Clan intended this to be a weird kind of performance art, so I won't judge them for this. However, this kind of artificial scarcity is absolute bullshit. The whole reason why we have copyright law is so that creative works are created and made widely available, not to create new asset classes for the ten-figures class to park money in.
Nintendo's argument wouldn't be that they only intended to make so many Wiis. Their argument would be that copyright is about control, they're entitled to control, and if you don't like it you can go fuck yourself[0]. To them, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin is just copyright maximalist extremism: yes, if we think we'll make more money selling one copy and denying the rest of the world access to the work, then it's our right, and anything less than our right is equivalent to setting loose a home-invading rapist[1].
[0] This is rhetorical, I do not actually intend for any commenters on HN to do that.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Valenti#Valenti_on_new_te...
But the value to who. We have copyright laws (ostensibly) for the benefit of society as a whole by allowing creators to have a limited time monopoly on selling their ideas.
> then Nintendo would presumably argue that they intended there to be a limited number of Wii's or Pokémon Red or whatever.
Them arguing it doesn't make them right. Any more than it makes sense to allow Disney to keep extending copyright decade after decade simply because they're greedy.
This is artificial scarcity, especially when applied to things that can be distributed digitally. I don’t particularly see a reason to encourage it. It’s not like 1s and 0s are in short supply compared to, say, precious metals.
And omitting that carve out will explicitly prevent Nintendo and other companies from making that argument.
The speculative gains such a person hopes to receive aren't a good measure of value.
If something increases pleasure via entertainment, this is objectively quantifiable. Every pair of ears that hears it increases its value. Preventing it from being heard drives that value down near zero (to 1, presumably). Even if we posit that each person who would listen would be willing to pay a different amount for that privilege, then the person who is hoarding it is driving that price down below whatever paltry price the million listeners might each pay individually.
I see no reason why copyright policy should be driven by the needs of lame publicity stunts.
Indeed. And? If you say that in that case it would never have been produced, well this does not change much for the N-1 current and future humans.
In the other hand, yes sometimes you might want to limit diffusion somehow, it's your right and it might be complicated. Better to have full copyright, but for 20 years. (That would mean Wii games out of copyright in 3 years), LGTM.
Emotionally, I do understand the sentiment. Especially when more content like Mickey Mouse or The Hobbit (in Canada, just the books, next year) go public domain - I wouldn't be shocked if we get calls to just abandon the concept of public domain from how companies are using it.
Let me be clear: I still support Public Domain. I also think people who make slasher films using childhood characters are the most perfect method you could devise, if you were a corporation, to make people mad at Public Domain's existence. If I were Disney and somehow capable of sending money anonymously, I'd pay for the creation of as much awful Winnie the Pooh content as possible; then send a letter to a local senator asking for Congress to investigate restrictions.
Anyway, people having fun with Winnie ? Who will care in 2 years? Do you often see shock content of cinderella ? Or xxx content of beauty and the beast?
If someone is saying "public domain is bad because the people who want to control works they don't and can't really own can no longer control these works they absolutely do not own"... They're really missing the point.
Fascinating. I have not actually seen that reaction in my filter bubble. Much the opposite, actually.
We had to put the things in boxes, then pallets, wrap the pallets in plastic, label them, and then someone would come with a machine and take them away. It was more than a week of dusk-to-dawn physical work, lost a lot of weight.
In my mind, turning Winnie the Pooh into an horror story makes a lot of sense.
I would Love to see more horror on weird stuff, especially Disney stuff.
Those people can make the choice not to buy or consume those kinds of works. That's their right, but it does not and must not infringe on the rights of others who don't share their delicate sensibilities.
> Some are even calling for copyright to be eternal because the public is showing that it cannot handle public domain responsibly.
There is nothing at all irresponsible about artistic works that appeal to some people but not others. Outside of legal constraints, there is no one person or group dictating to the world which art is or isn't responsible and I'm so glad the decision of where those lines are drawn and when they should be crossed is largely left up to the artists when creating and to the audience when consuming. Artists and audiences self-censor all the time and it isn't a problem.
By way of example, when Gaiman was writing Neverwhere he thought it originally made running away and joining a underworld society of homeless people seem fun and magical, and he worried that making homelessness a bit too cool might inspire young readers to make poor choices. He made changes to his story until he felt comfortable with what he was putting out into the world. I think I'd have liked to read his original version, but I fully respect that he felt it would be irresponsible. Not every writer would have made that choice, and certainly not every writer should be forced to.
Every author should be free to decide for themselves if they're comfortable or not with their own words. Audiences should be free to walk away from things that make them too uncomfortable, and free to stay and enjoy what the artist created otherwise. The absolute worst case scenario would be one where the only art we ever have access to is a bunch of watered down, homogenized, G-rated content that doesn't confront or challenge anyone at all.
> There's even a growing argument that copyright actually prevents unoriginal ripoffs and shock content more than it stifles creativity.
I have no doubt that it does, at times, prevent some "ripoffs" or shock content, but I fail to see how censoring art to avoid those things is in any way preferable. The harm to society caused by censorship far outweighs the harm caused by "things exist that I don't like". It simply isn't worth the loss of our freedom to prevent "bad" art.
Worse, even perpetual copyright wouldn't eliminate those things entirely. Shock content, especially those created based on 'wholesome' artistic works has always been with us, and not even copyright has been able to stop it. For just about every franchise you can imagine illegal artistic works created to satisfy 'Rule 34' exist and illegal fan fiction can be found filled with sex and gore. None of it has caused society to collapse. It won't destroy society when that art can be legally made and sold either.
It's not exactly feature perfect yet, but 2024 gives them time to fix up many of the features they haven't gotten working, and hopefully expand support to more games.
I think this could replace the likes of Universal Updater (3DS's main homebrew browser) if it gets to public. Not that UU is bad, it just lacks the tiny eshop dudes :)
Regulators should force companies to open source any games and associated server software that consumers paid to "own", yet companies are no longer willing to maintain.
Yeah, about that - ‘FAQ from Nintendo says that players will be able to download patches and redownload games purchased from the eShop “for the foreseeable future.”’ Directly from the link in the OP.
I mean that still doesn't solve the problem of games that require servers to operate for online play, but at lest that would return digital goods to near-parity with physical media in terms of copy-protection and transferability and ownership.
If you go the extra mile and require that companies publish free dedicated-server-binaries for end-of-life products and allow clients to point to custom servers, you could still run the game while still protecting the seller from piracy. I mean, you'd have no security patches so if you're running eg your own Star Wars Galaxies server you'd want it to be invitational-only and secured with a VPN, since playing with strangers would get the server and clients hacked.
That seems like it would be a reasonable compromise for video-game preservation - old games are therefore available indefinitely to anyone who purchased access to them (and this is transferable), but without companies having to abandon their copyright protections.
I mean this approach would probably have to be mandated by a government or a near-monopoly e-store like Valve, so I'm sure it would get screwed up and fail, but a boy can dream.
Your right to protection against piracy should end when you discontinue a product.
If the software runs on general-purpose hardware, it would be trivial to modify it to bypass the blockchain authentication step. If the software is only compatible with some sort of locked-down platform that won't run modified code, then it already has an enforcement mechanism (whatever is used to prevent running modified code), and a blockchain is redundant.
> Regulators should force companies to open source any games and associated server software that consumers paid to "own", yet companies are no longer willing to maintain.
Nintendo shouldn't be forced to support them, but consumers should be able to continue using them. The hardware still works great, and even if not, we have virtual hardware. This should be no different from me being able to pick up a game of Clue that my parents bought in the 60's and play it. These 3DS and Wii-U games were purchased by millions of people, and they are part of our global culture. People should not have to worry that they are legally prohibited from finding ways to play them.
That they are releasing emulator-based ports shows that the platform is still alive, and yet, they stop supporting the actual hardware.
It is totally within their rights to discontinue support, and it is not even unreasonable, but unlike some companies that offer some nice "parting gifts" when they do that (ex: open source, DRM free version, or just free credit), you will get nothing but lawsuits from Nintendo.
At least, you will still be able to play the game you bought, there are more evil companies out there.
Cloud-based software allows corporations to rewrite ownership rights however they see fit.
edit: Aside, marking the lifespan of a product from launch is wrong. It should be marked from the date of distribution of the last product from the manufacturer, because that's the last time somebody was able to buy a "new" one, and a buyer has a reasonable expectation of long-term-support for buying a new piece of hardware. For example, I can buy a 2022 Moto G Stylus from the Motorola website today. They promise 3 years of security updates... but that phone was released a year and a half ago, so they're actually promising 1.5 years of security patches.
This sort of well-we-have-planned-obsolescence-built-into-our-product should be a hard red line that's worth fighting now, because pretty much any game released today from AAA studios have at the very least lip service online functionality. If we continue down this path, it'll be like the dark ages of tv where entire libraries of important cultural works were lost due to neglegent preservation (see BBC tape reuse).
It's likely that when this comes to a head, there will be countless titles gone forever and nobody with the skill/licensing to repair the loss of culturally relevant material. If EA decides dragon age is no longer worth their servers kicking, will I lose my BioWare collection? Probably.
Someone really needs to work on creating a open console or even one with a form factor similar to the 3DS/DS. I mean imagine how cool a analogue pocket DS would be or maybe even a fantasy console based on the DS. But regardless I really wish consoles weren't so locked down.
If they wanted "open platforms" they should've bought PC games.
The 3DS has a fantastic library but a good chunk of it is very difficult to obtain these days—either because it was only available digitally, or because prices for used physical copies are unreasonable.
It’s sad that Nintendo don’t give a shit about preservation past their ability to sell old games over and over, but if I can no longer give the creator money for a game I’m of the opinion that largely absolves any immorality of piracy.
It's a sad state of affairs for copyright law, but generally by the time Nintendo shuts down "official" access to content for a console generation, rom files are readily available from a few google searches and a relatively well-thought-out and simple modding process for the hardware.
There are many first party nintendo games and remakes that still haven't made it to newer consoles like the Switch yet. Hopefully Nintendo comes up with better backwards compatibility in the future for current Switch titles, but assuming they won't as they often don't, piracy and emulation tend to fill in the gaps pretty well in my experience.
>Pokémon Bank
I have 0 hopes tbh, the writing is on the wall.
Pokemon Bank is an awesome feature, basically allowing you to play through the whole franchise from Pokemons across all games...
Sure, there are a lot of works to copyright every year. That's a lot of data. But we need to save all of that somewhere, so it might as well be some place that can't go bankrupt.
The British (National) Library held and still holds the duty to acquire in the form of legal deposit, at least one print of each book published in the UK.
So every single book published gets stored in there, and has been since its inception 50 years ago.
It gathers 170–200 millions unique items, and counting.
With free access to anybody, able to physically access the library. It has a budget of less than £150 million.
I bet implementing an archive of digital content would be a cheaper and despite more technologically challenging would remain do-able with a reasonable number of techies.
Oh isn't it what the Internet Archive is, and even more? Is that not what they've attempted to fulfill for a while now and the primary reason they haven't accomplish it is due to a legal war with large IP distributors and their armies of top paid laywers shaping the interpretation of copyright legislations?
The ability to upgrade, and still have easy access to your long-standing library, will be increasingly appealing to consumers, at least those who aren't merely casual. Either consoles will go from glorified locked-down PCs to actual PCs, or gaming PCs will just resemble consoles more through quality-of-life features.
This is yet another case of falsely advertised "ownership", that is really a rental.
So far I have yet to see Nintendo make any effort and it really should be a crime. These things are literal PC’s and tablets, there is no technical obstacle anymore.
I gave mine to my nephew a while back, it's probably broken by now. But it's still sad.
Sometimes I just feel like playing some classic games like Castlevania, Metroid and Earthbound.
