Rights-holders can make these products available whenever they want. Nintendo added many old “abandonware” games to their subscription catalog that had been unavailable for much longer than ten years. If someone else is putting them out for free, they’re stealing Nintendo’s lunch.
There are very few cases where copyrighted material would have no owner and no legal mechanism to determine ownership.
Not saying I support the current system. I think current US copyright law is ridiculous and a net negative for our culture. Just clarifying that “Well, no one was selling it” is not a legally defensible position when it comes to copyrighted work.
It absolutely isn’t a legal defense. You’re right.
I’m saying it should be legal. Starting now, since digital is a standard. Nintendo needs to put it out or let people share it. They can have 10 years (or the highest of 5 years from now/10 years from when it was last available). Something like that.
The TV movie standard of everything being available should be the video game standard.
The TV movie standard of everything being available
TVs and movies are not universally available. Dogma is a pretty famous case of being universally unavailable for over 15 years. It was only announced this year that a new licensing deal had been reached. There are plenty of lesser-known shows and movies that are just gone forever.
But that is a case in favor of piracy and physical media. Films like 1922’s Nosferatu only survived to today because of bootlegging. If we’re expecting Netflix to: one, be around as a company for 80 years until their films enter into public domain; and two, maintain their originals on their servers for that entire time, then we’re setting ourselves up for some pretty big disappointments and some rather huge holes in our cultural history.
Rights-holders can make these products available whenever they want. Nintendo added many old “abandonware” games to their subscription catalog that had been unavailable for much longer than ten years. If someone else is putting them out for free, they’re stealing Nintendo’s lunch.
There are very few cases where copyrighted material would have no owner and no legal mechanism to determine ownership.
Not saying I support the current system. I think current US copyright law is ridiculous and a net negative for our culture. Just clarifying that “Well, no one was selling it” is not a legally defensible position when it comes to copyrighted work.
It absolutely isn’t a legal defense. You’re right.
I’m saying it should be legal. Starting now, since digital is a standard. Nintendo needs to put it out or let people share it. They can have 10 years (or the highest of 5 years from now/10 years from when it was last available). Something like that.
The TV movie standard of everything being available should be the video game standard.
TVs and movies are not universally available. Dogma is a pretty famous case of being universally unavailable for over 15 years. It was only announced this year that a new licensing deal had been reached. There are plenty of lesser-known shows and movies that are just gone forever.
But that is a case in favor of piracy and physical media. Films like 1922’s Nosferatu only survived to today because of bootlegging. If we’re expecting Netflix to: one, be around as a company for 80 years until their films enter into public domain; and two, maintain their originals on their servers for that entire time, then we’re setting ourselves up for some pretty big disappointments and some rather huge holes in our cultural history.