[–] mrandish 6 hours ago
[–] userbinator 1 hour ago
They now have an opposition which might have the $$$ and will to fight against copyright: AI lobbyists. The world's richest man owns an AI company. As AI makes people realise just how much everything is a derivative work, and remixes of this nature become easier, I suspect the whole concept of IP is going to change dramatically and more people will question its necessity.
or doesn't abolish all IP rights
While that might not happen fully, AI might be the catalyst driving things in that direction.
[–] ndriscoll 6 hours ago
[–] mrandish 5 hours ago
Sure, and that's what anyone into retro gaming or preservation has to do. The problem is that "law" is a legal monopoly on the use of force. So far, the retro preservation community has managed to preserve most of electronic gaming and computing's history up through around ~2010. But only because the technology didn't yet exist to make most 'legacy' digital IPs worth exploiting. There are signs the tacit truce that's existed between retro preservation and rights holders is crumbling.
Interest in retro is booming and Nintendo, EA, Sony and others are increasingly releasing new 'remasters' of retro IP. The same AI tech making decomps/recomps faster and easier for enthusiasts is also shifting the economics of retro monetization for IP rights holders. We can no longer rely on them "looking the other way" and tacitly allowing retro preservation. Rapacious media corporations are determined to squeeze every dollar from the expanded IP rights they paid a lot of political donations to purchase (California senator Nancy Pelosi is retiring a multi-hundred-millionaire). The DMCA and other provisions they bought into law are incredibly expansive. In the past, they had little reason to use them against retro gaming. Now they do.
Yes. The original idea of copyright was to encourage more original creation AND later modification by granting exclusivity for a limited time in exchange for making it non-exclusive forever after.
The Copyright Act of 1790 set the duration at 14 years, with a 14 year extension if the author was still living after the first 14. It's been extended 4 times and is now 70 years after the death of the author or 95 years after publication / 120 years after creation. I agree it's now a cruel mockery of the original intent.
I have no hope this is fixable in any major way because it's now a fully bi-partisan issue. For decades now, RIAA/MPAA/SPA lobbyists have demonstrated absolute, long-term control of both major party's IP-related votes (despite what any politician claims while campaigning). There are only a handful of politicians for whom this is a hill they're willing to shed political capital on. And, in an honest moment, they'll admit the congressional process is stage managed such that regardless which party is in power at the moment (or even a super-majority), meaningfully restricting copyright closer to its original intent will always lose by at least one vote as long as the two-party duopoly controls the U.S government.
Given that sad, disgusting reality, my post was trying to suggest a way to claw back the smallest, most limited win for non-commercial retro preservation that might: A.) Have the slightest chance of actually happening, and B.) Actually be the slightest bit better than the shit sandwich we have now. The ironic part of making any constructive suggestion to improve things even 1%, isn't that even THAT will almost certainly be killed by the RIAA/MPAA/SPA lobby anyway, it's that those who agree with me will bury it under objections it doesn't do enough (or doesn't abolish all IP rights).