[saguro]

Agreed. I guess the core of the question is 'what does that ultimately give nintendo?'.

And that's where I think the government needs to step in as it did with copyright and patents, and ask an additional question: 'what does that ultimately give to society?'. The answer is decreased environmental impact and decreased cost of living. The console manufacturers are passing on costs to consumers that consumers shouldn't have to bear - and don't have to bear when it comes to patents and copyrights. Imagine if patents were perpetual like DRM is and rocket engine technology would forever belong to a single manufacturer with the license..?

[resonanttoe]

Totally agree, but the chance of that happening is pretty low. There isn't perceived to be a problem in that area at the moment that Governments worldwide really need to fix.

To the copyright point. Standard copyright will still apply to all the works produced (which is what, 75 years after last publication) but considering that Video games as a somewhat mainstream endeavor is only at absolute best 40-50 years old, were unlikely to get a test of that any time soon, and thats before republication through virtual console and GOG may actually constitute a refresh on the copyright period.

I think its more likely that consumer pressure to do an ID style of things whereby they opensource their older stuff is the likely fix to our problems.