[dahart]

Copyright law today isn’t about physical goods, it’s now about giving the author of a work the right to control who can copy it. We as a society have decided to give all authors of all works a temporary monopoly, and the reasons for it are well documented.

I’m not sure I understand why wishing Nintendo to continue doing business supports the idea that you should be able to remix their work, which implicitly means you want people to be able to profit from their designs without necessarily adding value. There’s nothing at all stopping people from making new games, why do they want to mod Nintendo’s games without licensing them? Why should that be legal? And if it is legal, how do you continue to protect Nintendo when some of the “mods” will be people making straight copies, changing something trivial like the background color on the box, and selling it for full price while giving Nintendo none of the money? If you respond with, well put a standard for how much it must be changed in place, then consider why your standard should be any different than Fair Use.

[elsjaako]

You're saying "why should we allow people to remix?". I don't want to put words in your mouth, but this makes me think you're saying "We should forbid people from using works created by someone else, unless we have a good reason to allow it".

This isn't a perspective I argue from, because I disagree with it.

I think we should allow anyone to copy anything they want, unless we have a good reason to prevent that. So if you're going to stop people from remixing, I think you should be able to build an argument for that that doesn't start with assuming all the rights are owned.

I don't even like using the word "rights" for copyrights, as I really don't feel like it's in the same category as free speech of fair trial. But if I use other words the whole argument gets very confused.

Should Nintendo have the exclusive rights to games they make for 5 years? I think that argument is easy to make. Personally I'm a fan of slightly longer, maybe 20 years.

Should Nintendo have the exclusive rights to games they make for 100 years? I think that's excessive, and instead of serving to encourage create it encourages rent-seeking (Also, at this time scale a lot of material gets lost before it can be meaningfully archived).

Should someone be allowed to distribute a complete copy of a Nintendo game (still under copyright) with (possibly minor) modifications? I don't think so, I think this makes it much harder for Nintendo to make a profit for the limited time they're given.

Doing so in 20 years? Yes, Nintendo's had plenty of time to profit.

[dahart]

I think I agree largely with your opinion. It sounds like you agree mostly with mine, but I’m asking hard questions to try to extract some legitimate justification for remixes that copy significant value from the source material. A big problem with wanting to copy and remix is the unspoken desire to save time or money or to make money. IMO that’s not a great justification. Your position, like mine, starts from acknowledging the need for some protection time for creators, so I don’t think I need to defend that, do I? All we need to do is agree on a reasonable term, right? And Nintendo is not a good starting place to think about the term. The law needs to work well enough for people who don’t own a Mario franchise. It needs to work for photographers and painters and writers too. The law also needs to assume copies are not in good faith. The problem isn’t game developers who want to pay homage to Mario, the problem is unscrupulous people who want to make a quick buck without adding value. They are the reason the law exists, and the law needs to start with the assumption that will happen again.