| > You purchase a license to play a copyrighted game on a particular medium. The default right is ours, to be permitted to retell stories, replay musical works we've heard, and even reproduce works of art like video games. We -- from whom the power to govern comes -- cede this freedom for the sake of promoting arts and sciences. But we do so in a limited fashion. See Article I, Section 8, Clause 8: > 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. Our representatives scribbled in "but 'limited Times' means a century or two lol" underneath this and called it "Title 17". As chc states, the copyright gives its holder the ability to grant us licenses. But we could make the case that the limited-monopoly we granted them to begin with has expired or is no longer valid. The copyright holder has concluded that it's not worth their time to continue to offer this work to anyone. So, who then, can curate this work of art that is now an element of our culture? In the mid twentieth-century, if the materials to produce the yellow, green, blue pigments featured in "The Scream" were licensed to painting copiers by Munch's estate, would we be obligated to source those pigments from them? What if his estate no longer sold them? The point I'm trying to hit upon is that you're drawing a distinction between copyright and the consumer's legal rights. But the copyright is merely the instrument by which our freedoms are limited to those specific terms. If we reject the copyright claim, then the license's terms are moot. |