Technology

Drugs do use patents with reasonable time limits.

For some reason they are allowed to make miniscule changes and get new patents, but the old ways are then available for generics.

It would be great if copyright switched back to reasonable time limits. Media companies would still live on as repositories that could sell access to high quality source copies and remasters to make income. They would only lose the control over other people using what is already in the public domain.

Exactly - the poor and working class are constantly told they need to evolve to keep up, why shouldn't that apply to rich people too?

Video games were such a wild west back in the 80s and 90s that it's often not clear who even owns the copyright anymore.

And ironically when they do offer it, it's always an unplayable buggy mess. For example, Saints Row 2 (2009) on steam appears completely unplayable judging by recent reviews, it crashes to desktop when a mission ends, and they're selling it on sale.

They should just do what Realms of the Haunting 1996 for MS-DOS did and package the whole thing inside of an Emulator.

That's a great frickin idea...never crossed my mind

Because there's a chance Sintendo will release another port of that one obscure NES game that absolutely nobody is buying their online service for on their next Gen console. If they license any of their games, how can they rape the consumer financially? Can't you think of the hungry employees at this small indie company that is going bankrupt because little 5 year old Timmy downloaded a copy of a game on N64 Sintendo doesn't even have the rights to anymore?

/S

Cause selling new games is more profitable.

If a new games costs €60 and older games €5 or less (which would be a lot less on streaming services), they'd have to sell at least 12 old games for every new game they sell less cause of this change. And if gamers spend more time on older games, it's highly possible that they'd buy, even just a single game, less.

It's the same with movies or TV. They would only loose money if they make the whole archive available as there is just so much of it that some of the new things could become irrelevant.

Not that I'm against archiving, but it is caused by the creative sector having to have to make money, which isn't easy for smaller players, and greed.

(Citation needed)

Relevant

Abandonware isn't really legally defined

Has abandonware ever been legal?

Imo it should be shortened to hard 15-30 years regardless of life or author.

When it comes to works for hire like most commercial games, the term is 95 years after publication, or 120 years after creation, whichever comes first. In another 50 years or so, you can legally fall down all the holes.

If copyright law is involved then you're looking at 70 years after the author's death or 95 years depending on which expires first for it to be public domain and only the original iteration is released into the public domain. That's for the USA and different countries have different laws and I'd imagine that would complicate things massively as an online library would have to be compliant with various laws of different countries

So take Mickey Mouse for example he's now in the public domain but only in his original form in the Steamboat Willie cartoon, anything that uses something more recent than that like his red shorts for example would be taken down.