[freedomben]

Emphasis added:

> The GOG Preservation Program is our ongoing effort to save classic games from being lost to time. That means working to secure rights, fixing compatibility so they run hassle-free on modern systems, and even rebuilding missing features so the experience is the best you can get, while staying true to the original.

It still baffles me how the "rights" to a game (or any IP) can be a thing when the company has essentially abandoned it. Like take the Resident Evil example FTA: Launched in 1996, 2000-2023 not available (i.e. not for legal sale). I am a bit of an extremist wrt IP laws, but that just seems so crazy to me that we would provide a legal system to "protect" IP that isn't being used and is just being (essentially) hoarded.

[Cthulhu_]

Just because a company doesn't have their IP available for modern systems doesn't mean they abandoned the IP, see also all the remasters and remakes coming out today.

That said, my gut feeling says it's mainly about them not willing to invest in it, because they can't see the economic viability. If GoG were to go to the rights holders and say "Hey lad, we have a platform and a lot of experience in reviving older games, you'll get x% of revenue", I'm sure some would be like "ok".

Of course, I'm also sure these rights holders have received offers like that from various parties for a long time now.

[Zambyte]

See all the remasters and remakes that didn't happen because they weren't legally able to. We are worse off as a society that enforces artificial scarcity on ideas than we would be if we returned to a world that did not have such bogus laws (not that long ago, but beyond the memory of anyone alive).

[1980phipsi]

I think it's reasonable to argue something like, "some IP protection is good, but too much is bad, and we probably have too much right now." It would be impossible to calibrate the laws so that the amount of IP protection is socially optimal, but we can look at the areas where the protection is too much and start there.

[observationist]

It's not impossible at all. We should do 5 year copyright - 99% of all commercial profit of all media is collected within 5 years of publishing.

Copyright is granted to media creators in order to incentivize creativity and contribution to culture. It's not granted so as to empower large collectives of lawyers and wealthy people to purchase the rights and endlessly nickel and dime the public for access to media.

Make it simple and clear. You get 5 years total copyright - no copying, no commercial activity or derivatives without express, explicit consent, require a contract. 5 years after publishing, you get another 5 years of limited copyright - think of it as expanded fair use. A maximum of 5% royalties from every commercial use, and unlimited non-commercial use. After 10 years, it goes into public domain.

You can assign or sell the rights to anyone, but the initial publication date is immutable, the clock doesn't reset. You can immediately push to public domain, or start the expanded fair use period early.

No exceptions, no grandfathering.

There's no legitimate reasons we should be allowing giant companies like Sony and HBO and Paramount to grift in perpetuity off of the creations and content of artists and writers. This is toxic to culture and concentrates wealth and power with people that absolutely should not control the things they do, and a significant portion of the wealth they accumulate goes into enriching lawyers whose only purpose in life is to enforce the ridiculous and asinine legal moat these companies and platforms and people have paid legislators to enshrine in law.

Make it clear and simple, and it accomplishes the protection of creators while enriching society. Nobody loses except the ones who corrupted the system in the first place.

We live in a digital era, we should not be pretending copyright ideas based on quill and parchment are still appropriate to the age.

And while we're at it, we should legally restrict distribution of revenues from platforms to a maximum of 30% - 70% at minimum goes to the author. The studio, agent, platform, or any other distribution agent all have to divvy up at most 30%.

No more eternal estates living off of the talent and creations of ancestors. No more sequestration of culturally significant works to enrich grifters.

This would apply to digital assets, games, code, anything that gets published. Patents should be similarly updated, with the same 5 and 10 year timers.

Sure, it's not 100% optimal, but it gets a majority of the profit to a majority of the creators close enough and it has a clear and significant benefit to society within a short enough term that the tradeoff is clearly worth it.

Empowering and enabling lawyers and rent seekers to grift off of other peoples talent and content is a choice, we don't have to live like that.

[temp84858696945]

I'm fairly certain that would not work at all for media such as sci-fi/fantasy books, where a system like this would result in people just forever reading older books which are free and effectively kill the market.

There is a limited amount of time to read in a day and the amount of 10+ year old content that is still amazing is more then anyone could ever read, and it's hard to compete with free.

I think video games is actually kinda an anomaly when it comes to copyright because they have been, on average, getting better and better then games released even in the recent past, mostly due to hardware getting better and better. Also any multiplayer game has the community issue where older games tend to no longer have a playerbase to play with.

Same could be said about movies/tv shows that rely on CGI up until somewhat recently where the CGI has pretty much plateaued.

[bombcar]

I think the sales of books is pretty much uncoupled from the supply or price, as piles and piles of great books are available for free online or at the local library.

More recorded shows exist than any one man can watch in a lifetime, and yet there are multiple concurrent series ongoing right now.

I think the real kicker is that IP law was built around things like books, that don't suddenly stop working or need to be maintained, etc. Modern laws should take software into account and deal with it differently.

[zimpenfish]

> 99% of all commercial profit of all media is collected within 5 years of publishing.

If that were true of music, companies wouldn't be buying back catalogues for (upwards of) hundreds of millions[0][1].

[0] https://apnews.com/article/music-catalog-sales-pop-rock-kiss...

[1] https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/ranked-biggest-music-catal...

[bombcar]

If it were modified to "99% of media has commercial profit collected within five years" it's probably pretty close to the mark, given how much is released and never reprinted/etc.

However, even 1% of a very large market is a huge tail, which is valuable.

[chocochunks]

Only the PC version of the original version of Resident Evil was unavailable. It had a Remake in 2003, a port to the DS in 2006 and AFAIK has been and still is available for purchase on PSN in PS1 form for PS3, PSP and Vita since 2009 and PS4/PS5 since 2022. That's not even counting all the sequels and movies. And the PC port is generally considered, not the best.

There's better examples like No One Lives Forever that have been stuck unavailable for purchase because of rights reasons but RE1 is arguably not that.

[pjc50]

This is related to "cadastral mapping" in real estate law systems. IP does not have such a map, or indeed any map at all. At best you might find a (no longer obligatory!) copyright notice on it saying who originally owned the rights to something. That doesn't work when the rights get sold.

There's no good way to even ask "who owns this?" for a piece of IP other than the highly inadequate and risky approach of just pirating it and waiting to see who sues you. But even then DMCA provides all sorts of problems with unauthorized groups claiming to be rightsholder representatives.

[bombcar]

For software at least, something akin to real estate may be needed long-term if you want to codify it, allowing adverse possession if you pay the taxes, etc.

[PurpleRamen]

Sometimes, the legal situation is complicated, especially with old content. Sometimes the technical situation is also complicated, very typical for old games. Not releasing, can't be automatically considered abandoned; we just don't know what's going on behind the scenes.

[paxys]

That's how copyright law works. There's no "use it or lose it" provision. Once you create something it is yours, and others only get rights to it 70-100+ years later.

[saulpw]

That's only how it works since 1992/1998. Prior to 1992, you had to renew your copyright explicitly after 28 years (for another term of 47 years). 1992 made that renewal automatic. (1998 extended it by 20 years).

[rendaw]

I don't understand your reply. GP didn't claim that the law said otherwise.

[greatgib]

Basically it is the problem with GOG also, I think that if you do nothing the game is Abandonware and I don't think that anyone can go after you to use it pirated or whatever, and even distribute it. Maybe it is shady, but something like that if there is no commercial activity and the IP violation is not enforced for some many times, it can be considered that you are responsible for this and there was no legal way for the user to be able to use the software.

But if GOG comes and the restore the "commercial activity" of a game, actively selling, even if no one buys, then you can't say that it was commercially abandoned, and that will postpone of that much that it will be on GOG the legal claim of "having the IP active".

[ndiddy]

"Abandonware" is not a legal concept. It's basically shorthand for selective IP enforcement. Essentially, it's saying that if you're illegally distributing a game or piece of software that the original publisher is no longer selling, it's probably fine and they probably won't go after you due to legal action being expensive for something that has little to no impact on the publisher's revenue.

> if there is no commercial activity and the IP violation is not enforced for some many times, it can be considered that you are responsible for this and there was no legal way for the user to be able to use the software.

That's somewhat true for trademarks. If you don't consistently enforce a trademark, then the person you're suing for trademark violation can use that as an argument in court. However, it's not true for copyright (such as someone illegally distributing a game you own).

[rpdillon]

This is a deeply flawed argument. The idea that folks focused on preservation are creating a legal hazard is false. Copyright law does not care whether the "IP is active". What GOG is doing here is an unmitigated good. To be clear, there is no "commercially abandoned" element to copyright, even if there should be.

[dmoy]

In fact there's no commercial requirement at all for copyright, abandoned or otherwise.

You can make a thing, copyright it, and also never sell, see for example open source software. You can even copyright something that nobody's seen before.

Copyright, patent, and trademark all have substantial differences.

[WillAdams]

Yeah, but it's a bit depressing when one buys a game (Lego: Lord of the Rings), but it promptly crashes and there's no response when one asks:

https://www.gog.com/forum/legor_the_lord_of_the_rings/crashe...

(there are other forum posts about other crashes)

So, when I had some money left over at Christmas, I got a couple of Lego games for my Nintendo Switch instead.

[PetitPrince]

> Like take the Resident Evil example FTA: Launched in 1996, 2000-2023 not available (i.e. not for legal sale).

The Resident Evil IP is still alive and kicking though (with the latest installment trailered during the game awards a few weeks ago).

[burnt-resistor]

Why? IP including copyright and trademarks are assets that can be licensed and/or bought/sold. How hard is that to grasp?

[qwertfisch]

The problem is not even this. If you knew who has the rights, you could make an offer for selling digital licenses.

It’s often much more difficult getting to know who has what rights. There is the developer, there is one or more previous publishers (can be different per region in the world), there are investors and sponsoring publishers. And then there are sales, mergers and liquidations after bankruptcy. And no-one really knows (or wants others to know) what rights where are.

[nikanj]

If you don’t sell me a copy of your family albums, I should be allowed to freely sneak into your house and make a copy? After all, you still have the originals and are not making money from them