I wasn't the only one to raise my eyebrow when during the last GOG sales, some RPS editor was crying that GOG sold games which should be on the free public domain for culture's sake. There has been some backlash and now they're at it again with a lenghty article. If you have too much free time, you can read it here:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/02/03/editorial-why-games-should-enter-the-public-domain/
I won't debate on it because "didn't read lol" but it might interest a few people here.

Well he's not wrong you know. I mean 20 years definitely sounds like a reasonable timeframe for just about anything to enter the public domain, preferrably with the source code. What the RPS person seems to be complaining about isn't GOG or any other similar initiative, it's the fact that videogaming history remains obscured in a labyrynth of copyright issues, and some might never actually resurface.

Fuckers should just piss off... :D

Kicking up dirt for the sake of it.

He's quite right. After twenty years, games should be in the public domain. Perhaps a bit earlier, even.

An RPS article I actually agree with.

Unfortunately, our laws are quite different from that.

What do you mean "resurface", all these games are freely available on abandonware sites. Having games in the public domain is not a guarantee that they won't fall into obscurity, either way sites will host them for download.

In fact, there's an argument that having them officially licensed and re-released on GOG does more for old games being lifted out of obscurity, because GOG is able to package them with DOSbox and get them running, also GOG comes with us, the community. Having a game in the public domain means private individuals/websites will be hosting the old game files, and they aren't likely to set it up in DOSbox or whatever like GOG does.

There's no evidence that having games in the public domain would preserve them any more or any different than they currently are by dedicated abandonware sites, public domain guarantees nothing - only dedicated fans who want to preserve old games will do it - GOG included.

Also RPS might as well by bashing their heads into a wall regarding copyright. Copyright laws are not going to be changing any time soon ("soon" as in this century).

Didn't read much of the article, but looking at the comments (when GOG is brought up) makes me wonder how common it is that people believe GOG is a publisher rather than a store, and that it isn't just GOG getting paid.

PD binaries and art gain you quite a bit but not necessarily as much as you want.

PD source, on the other hand, gains you everything.

There is a parallel effort to the development of better and better emulation/etc. like dosbox that could be happening if people were able to work on updating the game itself to run in modern environments (see Ur-Quan Masters for example). That would be a good thing.

Not to mention that learning from history is always good. The computing world is very bad at this sort of historical sharing and learning (not just in gaming).

Have you seen the people who "fixed" the Atari ET game? They have an incredible write-up of what the bugs were, how they went about fixing them, and what trade-offs they had to make in the process. The fact that people with that skill, ability, dedication and time exist in a marvel and they should be praised but it shouldn't require people and effort of that caliber to resurrect and fix and old broken game. I don't know what the source code to the ET game looked like but I have to imagine that fixing the bugs in the source would have been much easier and faster and would have required fewer trade-offs.

lolz why would you be against public domain? what is wrong with you, catpower. It would only be good for us players. or do you think there will be less incentive for people to make games if they cant sell em for 2$ in 20 years?

I actually find myself agreeing with the original article, even if it is designed to be clickbait.

We don't live in a world of roses, where developers continue reaping the benefits of their work 20 years down the line. For most of the classic titles, the developers likely aren't seeing any of the money. It's the "copyright industry", as the editor so eloquently put it, exploiting intellectual property rights that they own to something and yet didn't expend any creative energy towards. It's representative of everything wrong with the industry right now.

I'm glad GOG made it possible to acquire these games anew for a reasonable price (well, most of them at a reasonable price anyway - see Rollercoaster Tycoon 3), but at the same time, they are essentially a go-between for gamers and an exploitative old-guard business struggling to justify its existence. I personally wouldn't have a problem if I knew that the money for these games was going to the people that deserved it, but we know that this is not necessarily the case.

And as a rule of thumb, anyone who disagrees with CliffyB is generally going to be right. You forget that GOG only offers a miniscule subset of the legacy titles out there, and that the rights to the vast majority of games out there will never be available to buy again. If we went by the approach that we should wait until games are commercially exploited again, then a lot of classic indie titles from the 80s and 90s would be irrevocably lost.

I bet he wants free prostitutes as well.

He can whine and bitch as much as he wants, but reality will kick him in the nads to bring him back. As much as everyone would wish that the copyright shouldn't be what it currently is, there is nothing that can be done because companies see a lot of money even in old games. (Nintendo comes to mind) Putting a block between companies and money is a sure way to piss them off.

Oh, you can bet it irritates me that books like Animal Farm and 1984 are still not public domain in European Union and I find it highly ridiculous that they won't enter the public domain till 2040+ in America. I'm definitely annoyed that an old movie like the Three Musketeers (1948) and a song like Johnny B. Goode are still not public domain. But, that's it, there's nothing that can be done. Companies have turned copyright into a business and, usually, it doesn't matter whether the original creator is compensated for his work; only if the current copyright owner does.

Games will enter the public domain... eventually, and assuming no multi-national legal changes in the meantime to extend copyright indefinitely.

Walker thinks games should enter the public domain rather sooner: twenty, twenty-five, thirty years after creation. At least one of the people he quotes apparently thinks copyright should be perpetual, which it isn't. (See http://wiki.lessig.org/Against_perpetual_copyright for reasons why it shouldn't be.) So this is an argument between two ideas about how copyright law should look, when what it does look like is somewhere in between. It's theoretical, but it's not nonsense.

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.... yeah, I'm not reading all that!

Well that article is badly written. He almost seems more interested in attacking people who dare disagree rather than actually making a point. That said, there is a serious point hidden between the slurs.

Current copyright laws are ridiculously long (we can thank Disney for that) on that I agree. But 20 years is too short a time. Think about what that means. After 20 years you not only can't get a penny from your own work but you also no longer have creative control of your work. There are some TV shows, book series, etc which last longer than 20 years, why should games be special?

I like free games as much as the next person but in the video game world there is already a problem with content creators getting a really poor deal from publishers. We should be wanting to improve that situation, not make it worse.

Really? So you wouldn't have a problem say in 5 years if Planescape Torment became public domain and some hack fan-fic writers decided to make (and sell) a game called "Planescape: Torment 2" even though none of them had anything to do with the original game? What if that game was painfully bad, and PST's original writers (Chris Avellone and Colin McComb) could do nothing because it was now in the "public domain".

Why don't you look at an example of public domain in action, like HP Lovecraft's works in the public domain, and all the terrible video games (like the recent Minecraft-looking "Eldritch" or "Cthulhu Saves the World") that are able to use his works without understanding them, making them into light-hearted rubbish etc.

No, I definitely think intellectual property exists and should be protected. Public domain has the real danger of being abused by hacks and glorified fan-fic writers to take a dump all over great works.

That RPS article is pure commie rubbish.