Owyn_Merrilin said:
What you just wrote is an excellent argument in favor of piracy. If we recognize that the point of purchasing a product, rather than pirating it, is to ensure that its creators get paid, why is it our moral obligation to pay for a copy that they won't see any money for? Hear me out, because I'm not arguing for piracy so much as pointing out that our current copyright laws are seriously flawed. This is coming from a US perspective because the US copyright laws are the ones I'm familiar with, and because it's mostly American companies that are going after people for copyright enforcement.
Because those people who worked to make the game got a nice paycheck for making said product in the first place. It's not like a publisher whips people to make a game then tells them to fuck off. What you said is basically that because McDoanlds doesn't actually raise the cattle or prepare the burgers you shouldn't have to pay for your meal. After all, it wasn't me the frycook who raised the cattle, butchered it, then pressed it into 1/10 ounce circles. It was a butcher. All i did was make it usable to you. Much like how publishers take the end product and distribute it to the public.
When you fastforward to the very first US copyright law, it was enacted with the intention of allowing a content creator to profit off of his work for a short period (something like 20 years, although I could be off by a little bit) and then allow it to go into the public domain, during which he could still profit off of it, but would not have a legally enforced monopoly on its production. This is, ultimately, the point of copyright and public domain works; to allow a content creator to profit off of his work for a period, but not for all eternity.
Fast forward to today, and the copyright lasts for 75 years after the creator's death. At this point, his grandchildren's grandchildren will be seeing money off of something they had nothing to do with -- or, more likely, the grandchildren's grandchildren of the publisher who bought the rights from him. We have Disney to thank for this, since they politely ask congress to extend their copyright every time Steamboat Willie is due to go into the public domain, and congress always obliges.
It actually isn't for all eternity, the reason why it is so long is so that big business companies can't just sit and vulture anyone's works. Penny arcade has hit it's twentieth year. Now imagine if any company with a lot of power just starting raping them as hard as they can. Every comic book publisher can now just take there shit and mass produce it, being able to smother them out of the picture simply because they can use all that money they saved on creating there own product to mass produce and over advertise. Now imagine this on a webcomic that is lesser known. Lets say wonderella. Now imagine once it hit its twentieth year mark suddenly there are three tv shows, a movie, and thousands of t-shirts. All being mass produced by people who have no idea who really made it. None of that money going to the original creator who simply couldn't afford mass branding.
Thus, big business has a limitless pool of ideas to steal from, legally. Which do you prefer, a company can hold on to its rights for a long time, or they can simply just sit and wait to steal ideas from anyone they want. That way anyone who isn't rich can watch as their hard work is plundered by people with more money and influence then them.
But hey, at least you can play Halo for free yeah?
Now, can you really support a system which allows people who aren't even related to the creation of a work to profit off of it indefinitely? It's a complete perversion of the original intent of copyright, not to mention ironic, coming from a nation whose economy was basically founded on piracy. When a system that was meant to protect the creator of a work turns around and prevents him from profiting on it (as the person quoted above described) how on earth can we continue to support it?
Yes, i can. Because that game, or movie wouldn't exist with financial backing from someone. The people who develop are hired ot do a job. They are not kept in the dark about what is going on.
They are well within there power to work and make a game together with no outside financial help. However they have made the conscious decision to take a job under a company and work for a stable salary rather then take the risk and work off their own steam.
Not ot mention there is something called the Creative commons
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
That people have the option of using. Once again, all those developers have the power to strike off on their own, risk it all, and use that Copyright. However they make the choice not to.
The choice is always there, people simply choose not to take the risk. A publishing company puts forth money and connects investors. In return they essentially purchase the finished product. They get the rights to it because they just paid the developing company money equal to the agreed upon terms, who in turn paid all their employees money equal to their agreed upon terms. Nothing is immoral or corrupt. Unless you twist it as hard as you can.
TL;DR: Copyright is seriously screwed up, and is in a state completely opposed to its original intent.
Because its original intent is outdated. Times have changed. And more the large companies are protected by copyright. All laws can and will be abused, that however doesn't mean it's flawed. It means there are pricks out there.
Copyright does more to protect the little guy then it does to protect the rich. The only reason people fight it is because either a)They hear a horror story or b) they think they deserve whatever they want.
