[bombcar]

I think it's interesting to look at your opinion (not you particularly, but everyone) and see if it would have been different if instead of "Atari" it was "Chris Sawyer".

If it would have been, then there's probably an inconsistency somewhere.

[zem]

I don't think it's inconsistent to think that a person's right to their IP is worthy of respect but a faceless corporation's isn't. you can disagree, but it's not an inconsistency.

[bombcar]

It is somewhat, because you then have to say you respect their right to the IP, but don't respect their ability to sell said right.

You can make that argument, but you need to actually do so and not just leave it unsaid.

[OkayPhysicist]

The distinction is that people respect people who make things they like. That's good, and noble: no matter what kind of topsy-turvy economic system you live under, making stuff is a valuable (not always the most valuable, but valuable nonetheless) skill, because people need and want stuff.

People who merely buy stuff to extract rent from it are, at best, a necessary evil. There's nothing admirable in rentseeking behavior. It's just playing the game.

If we're hanging around a campfire in the paleolithic, the guy who figured out how to make beer is going to be everyone's best friend. The guy who won't let anybody drink from the stream because it's "his" is liable to meet an unfortunate end.

[zem]

I think the difference in sentiment is between "I created this and I would like to continue deriving benefit from it" versus "we bought this and we would like it to retain its value". again this is not about the legal difference, just how people personally feel about it.

[da_chicken]

Eh, Sawyer's career has left him a multi-millionaire, and Transport Tycoon is the foundation of that. If you've already made several lifetimes worth of income, I also don't really care about your IP rights anymore.

[zem]

i don't care so much about his IP rights (legal) as about the fact that this is his project (moral)

[da_chicken]

Sort of. Releasing something into the world is, in a real sense, giving it up. At some point, you don't have ownership of it anymore. You're the one that created it, but you're no longer in control of it.

Copyright being as extremely long as it is makes us think that making something once means we should profit from it in perpetuity, but that's not really beneficial for society to work like that. That's exactly why patents don't work like that.

Remember, the purpose of copyright is to encourage the creation of new works. Well, if you can create one work and profit from it effectively (i.e., your entire career), why would you create another work? That's just a waste of effort. That's literally the business model of IP holding companies. They don't create. They just own. They're rent-seeking.