Copyright

[radiofloyd]

The Grinch Who Stole the Public Domain

Saw this linked on RPS. I guess corporate greed knows no bounds (as we know from the recent youtube copyright and net neutrality fiascos).

[Sly Reflex]

Everything John Walker says in his copyright articles is spot on. Everything in the link above is correct.

Take the music stuff for example. It's about profiteering for people that own the rights because those songs are popular. Elvis is (supposedly) dead and gone, yet for some reason his estate is still worth millions and will continue to gross god knows how many million dollars for the fat boring grey fucks who own the rights. You're not telling me that whomever got the money from those songs needs more money. Release it, dissect it and examine it, learn from it and then go on and create from it. Let the people that can make better things out of it do that.

By that, I don't mean straight ripping it off. I mean, if you were in a class that looked at how to make a good video game, you'd have a case study. Let's say CoD4. In 2027 (going off JW's 20 year thing), creative minds can sit in class and have someone essentially reverse engineer everything that was good about that game. Sure, by 2027's standard in gaming CoD4 will be a pile of crap, similar to how we as kids thought To Kill a Mockingbird was a load of old crap, but it yields important history and refinement. How are things held in the cache? How far can you push textures before you break the 60fps? Why when played online does the latency spoil what you see and what other see? Which parts of the MP were exploited and why? There's so much students could learn for the future, by studying the past you can make things better in future. Instead of Acti making pennies (if anything) off CoD4 in 2027 onwards, they could be making millions (or trillions the way inflation is going) or someone that has studied whatever field they've studied from PD games and learnt to refine for future creations. Having the PD there stops people resting on their laurels in search of the next big thing.