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Comments
What profit is it to a publisher, if it gains maximal copyright enforcement, but loses creative talent?
Quite a hefty short-term profit and a decent-sized nest egg to back out with when said creative talent leaves for greener pastures. That's if they ever lose enough creative talent to matter at all -- artistic jobs have a pretty high turnover rate.
That's rather the issue with IP law, isn't it?
Icalasari,
That is an interesting point and I agree that it seems to suggest a significant disadvantage of current copyright law.
The being said, I doubt that most of the people who do stuff like torrent Japanimation or download ROMs have such good motives. I think a publisher could argue that advocating this kind of reasonable archiving "opens the floodgates" so-to-speak as people copy their copies and provide them to others or even sell them rather than just store them for historical purposes.
I am not sure whether that is really a persuasive argument, but it is one I think is worth considering when people openly support "good piracy."
This does demonstrate that some piracy can be good, though I'm not sure I buy that this proves that has benefits in a general sense.
The best option here to avoid "good piracy / bad piracy" quagmire would be to legally define abandonware and keep a running (publically visible/searchable) listing of software that meets its criteria.
Well like, that's the thing. There's not even much corporate incentive to keep limbo software under wraps because the companies by definition no longer exist.
Well, generally, when a company goes bankrupt, its intellectual property rights get sold off to other entities, in part to pay off debt. These entities then become the new IP holders.
Most of the time, it seems they presume that it's possible to make a bit of extra money using said intellectual property. Or, as they would call them, intellectual property assets. So unless you can convince a company that it's in their best interest (read: future profits) to release old IPs as freeware, you probably won't see good abandonware laws in the absence of high-profile proponents (and there currently are none such); any freeware releases of old software will likely be done with an eye toward future profits--the bigger the company, the stronger this eye.
Some developers have released their games as freeware, but these tend to be indie games, not big developers/publishers.
Some developers have released their games as freeware, but these tend to be indie games, not big developers/publishers.
Or major companies releasing older games as publicity. As Bethesda has done with Arena and Daggerfall.
Wanting Abandonware laws is a paradox. It implies there is a demand for those older software that would be abandonware. Where there's demand, there's a profit to be made. Ergo, incentive to not have laws fostering abandonware.
http://deadmeetslead.com/2011/10/dead-meets-lead-post-mortem/#more-778
I just now found out (from the SteamGifts community) that this game, Dead Meets Lead, will now be released for free. This was the first project of an indie developer. This company is...well, it's not quite dead, but apparently it is "going on a hiatus" for now. DML, needless to say, was not a commercial success.
There were 80,000 pirating players...but the developers don't quite blame piracy for their game being unsuccessful. Unfortunately, they don't elaborate further. But we can talk about that. Why do you think they don't blame piracy? How much do you think they ought to?
For what it's worth, you can download the game if you get Desura. I think it's a vendor wrapper for direct downloads, like Steam, but it sells a totally different assortment of games.
Probably they figure most of those people wouldn't have played it at all if they had to pay.
There is plenty of software out there right now with no owner at all because the rights weren't bought before the developer collapsed.
And if there's newfound demand for that software, suddenly intellectual property lawyers will find themselves with lots of business.
Going back to the original topic, that of archiving--I think that might be able to be claimed under fair use.