If you work for a company, you freely signed a contract in which you accept all the details about how your art can and will be used but if you are a freelancer, you make your own contracts with clients, very different situation.
Some of my friends happily work at big studios where they are under such strict NDA that they can't show me or even their own family what they're working on (or else they'd have to kill me, I presume) and others are freelance which means you haven't got all the sweet benefits of company employment (Pixar e.g. has an awesome tennis court/various restaurants/gym etc in return for owning your stuff) but freelance allows for more freedom, it's always a major bit of a trade-off, hard to have it all in one place.

How is it suppressing culture? Just because someone cant write a sequel to someone's elses novel, that is supressing culture? More like promoting it, as it encourages real creative work, making something for yourself.

References and influences is a totally different thing. Everything is intertextual. Everything that you create or even think is an intricate mosaic, an outcome of all the things that you've experienced in life, all the movies, games, books, songs, paintings etc.

Even if you're not conscious of it.

Every creative work is made thanks to the cultural heritage we have + individual experiences.

But that hardly changes anything.

Fair enough, I have actually worked as a freelancer for a prolonged period of time as well. It didn't really work all that differently: I found a client (or a client has found me) and we've agreed on an arrangement. Contract work is how artists worked for centuries - you know, even back when copyright wasn't even a word yet - and they have lived. Why do you think you should be any different?

You have yourself said that there's not really much you can do to protect your works, as opposed to big companies which have a complete upper hand in that area. If that is the case, how exactly does copyright help you, and how would you be hurt if any of your works became public domain in 20 or 30 years?

Again, why should it become public domain, you should be the one to profit from your work.

If you write a book, you should be getting paid for it indefinitely, get some royalties.

Unless of course, you're not interested in it.

I think the compromise to be made is to make sth public domain, lets say even after these 20 years, if you have no interest in it.
Eg. you dont write sequels, the book have been out of print for quite some time, you cant buy it anywhere anyway; basicly, a situation in which it seems as if you've completely forgotten about it.

This way, some obscure works, about which nobody seems to care about, could become public domain, for everyone to enjoy (although it wouldnt mean much anyway, as nobody seemed to care about the stuff).


edit:
Although I still think it wouldnt be quite right.
You write a book, 20 years later someone decides to make a movie out of it - why shouldnt you get paid for someone using your book as a basis for a film?

Copyright infringement is not a modern phenomenon, it didn't take long for people to look at the newly invented printing press and start having devious thoughts. But because historical chronicles prefer to showcase more interesting topics such as the burning of witches & heretics, one could be mistakenly led to think it wasn't an issue, at all. It's like with modern news, if an airplane drops out of the sky it certainly makes for better news than if some artists got ripped off. People studying 21th century history in the far future are most likely not going to think of our present copyright issues as anything even remotely significant but that doesn't mean it's a non-issue for those involved in it right now.

Your logic is sound but I didn't want to make it seem like one has zero chance, it's just a huge hassle to defend yourself as an individual. In a perfect world, no copyright laws would be necessary because people would be decent and have at least some basic respect for each other, meaning you make the small effort of finding out who holds the rights to something you intend to use directly and commercially (research is easy with the internet, used to be way more of a hassle back in the day) and ask for permission if you can use something.
I've met people who honestly believed that you can do anything you like with anything you find on the internet, because "well, it's on the internet so it's free to use". They don't understand that some photographers, programmers and graphic designers etc are specialized on licensing their work and that's pretty much the only way they make money in some cases.

The biggest problem isn't a lack of laws but a lack of basic respect. It should be taught to people while they are kids but human nature is such that even the best upbringing can give no guarantees. So how to enforce basic respect in any way that doesn't result in total blood feud anarchy on one hand and police state on the other hand? Now if you can figure -that- out you'd be a genius, I certainly can't. I agree with you that current copyright laws aren't satisfactory, but not because they are too strict. Rather, because they offer insufficient protection to the small fellow. So yes, I would like to see some changes but instead of tearing down the big companies strength I'd like to see more support for small and medium businesses.

Oooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhh, so now you think intellectual property should be protected? That's quite ironic. Weren't you the one defending piracy for Steam games in a another thread? Talk about hypocrisy.

OH REALLY?
http://www.gog.com/forum/general/steam_offline_mode_not_really_offline_anymore/post357

Oh yeah?

http://www.gog.com/forum/general/steam_offline_mode_not_really_offline_anymore/post4
http://www.gog.com/forum/general/steam_offline_mode_not_really_offline_anymore/post24
http://www.gog.com/forum/general/steam_offline_mode_not_really_offline_anymore/post28

I love this smell of hypocrisy in the air. You didn't care about intellectual property before but now you do? Yeah, right. You never cease to amaze me, Crosmando.
No shit.

http://www.gog.com/forum/general/steam_offline_mode_not_really_offline_anymore/post4
http://www.gog.com/forum/general/steam_offline_mode_not_really_offline_anymore/post357
http://www.gog.com/forum/general/steam_offline_mode_not_really_offline_anymore/post28

You are a creepy stalker, and I have a mind to report your post for it. But you are showing it yourself by digging up my old posts. IP and DRM are not directly related. Not liking DRM, and wanting to actually own the copies of games I buy, has nothing to do with individuals and companies owning the intellectual property of their products.

I own my copies of Planescape: Torment and Baldur's Gate here on GOG.com, but I don't claim to own the assets, code, writing (story/plot), characters of those games. I don't think in 5 years time that PST should become public domain and I should have the right to make Crosmando's Planescape Torment 2: The Blood War Continues, and for it to be an official and canon product, and be able to actual sell and profit from it.

This thread had nothing to do with DRM. "Piracy" isn't theft because digital products aren't a scarce resources, and they aren't diminished by being copied and distributed without authorization. But taking the assets, code, writing (story/plot) of a game/game series and then being able to make an official sequel (because it's not public domain) and then profiting from it, is completely and utterly different. If you think a single digital copy of a game, and the assets, code, characters/story and everything IN THAT GAME, are the same thing, you're deluded.

I simply do not think a creator should lose the rights to their intellectual creations after 20 years (or even in their lifetime, for that matter).

If I buy an e-book, I own that copy of the book, I don't have the right to copypaste the text and plagiarize it and sell it as my own work, or use all the characters/story/setting and make a sequel without the authors approval.

You fail on every imaginable level, and you're a common moron, fuck off.

Wouldn't it hurt GOG the most if older games were made into freeware? Maybe I am wrong, but I get the impression that RPS has a very strange, and strong, anti-GOG bias, and I've never really understood the reason for it.

Regardless, while I like the idea of free games, I also would like GOG to have a secure future; to me, it's the best place to get low prices on DRM-free games, and not just older games. So, hopefully GOG can figure out what to do with itself in just such an eventuality, where some of its hot selling games are made freely available.

They can't just make something into freeware, they don't own the rights to the games. They would need an agreement with the publishers, etc.

GOG doesn't really have any say in how many years existing copyright law grants authors of creative works exclusive rights on their creations. GOG just sells things they've got a legal license to sell due to relationships with authors of creative works.

I personally believe that existing copyright law has greatly excessive lengths of time on exclusive rights for authors of creative works. I'm not sure what exactly a reasonable time frame is and it might even vary from one type of content to another, it's hard to say. That's a discussion that future copyright reform people need to discuss at great length.

But right here right now, copyright law is what it is whether anyone likes it or not and the authors of creative works have exclusive rights to their works for very long periods of time and they're free to sell them wherever and however they wish more or less. When it comes to video games, some have chosen to sell their works on GOG.com, or GOG.com has approached them to try to convince them to sell their products here and I don't see any problem with that.

People who feel strongly about this really need to direct their energy on the problem itself, which is not GOG.com, but poorly thought out copyright laws. GOG has zero power to force some game to become public domain unless they themselves are the sole copyright owner of the given game, so what GOG does is rather irrelevant.

It is the same situation, because whether it's developers with games or software, musicians witn music, nurses and doctors with lives saved, or architects with buildings, beneficiaries are still reaping the benefits of the 'creator's' work years down the line.

It's all about the work ethic, and the mistaken belief that you should be able to continue profiting from a single unit of work indefinitely.

I know it's not, but it's not exactly cheap either. Most up-front licence fees for images for commercial use fall into 3 or 4 digit figures. If you're getting less than that, you're doing something wrong.

Now, I'm going to assume that your point of contention here is with people's use of your photos for commercial use without your permission. Assuming you've only just created it, that's certainly a case for a lawyer. If you can't afford a lawyer, that's sad, and that's bad, but weakening or strengthening copyright rules has nothing to do with that. That's simply attributable to a lack of demand for your work.

The expectation that people should get rich of their work is a major fault in the creative industry nowadays. It's reasonable to expect a living income, yes, and many people do make a decent living out of creating stock photography and promotional music. And it's very true that very few people actually rich, but again, the same holds true to many other professions. Some people simply get lucky - often undeservedly - but that does not give anyone the automatic right to collect tens of thousands in royalties a month.

Crosmando hates it when people refer him back to previous posts of his that are completely inconsistent with current posts (calling people stalkers for doing it seems to be one of his favourite things). It's happened at least 3 times in the last couple of weeks that I have noticed (not that I am stalking). Quite hilarious actually.

Well, it is consistent, but not in an entirely flattering way. His defence of copyright actually has nothing to do with creator rights and everything do to with how he believes literary works to be inviolable and how copyright is the only defence against dastardly derivative works that he deems to be unworthy and should be burned.

As I mentioned above, being against DRM is completely different than supporting intellectual property rights. If you think they're the same thing, you must be deluded.

Please explain how me not wanting DRM on games I buy has anything to do with wanting authors and creatives to not have their creative works violated by glorified hacks and fan-fic writers by forcibly making it "public domain" after 20 years.

I don't find derivative works "unworthy", but they should only exist with the official and explicit approval of the owner of the original work. It makes perfect sense that an author shouldn't be able to steal the characters, setting and plot of someone's else book 20 years after it's published, and use it to make money. Not without getting the permission of the owner/s or having to pay royalties or a license for using their work.

Again, this comes down to what I said at the start of this thread: 1 Public domain would not mean old classic games would be better preserved, abandonware sites are already doing this, and doing a good job of it.
2. But what it would result in is heaps of "official" derivative works which completely shit all over the established canon, lore and story of the original in order to make a quick buck, ie fan-fiction that can be sold. These derivative works could very badly damage many great works.
3. This discussion is irrelevant, because massive changes to copyright/public domain/intellectual property law are not going to happen in our lifetimes, I'll guarantee you that, there's way too many interests involved, ESPECIALLY in the US and so on an international level nothing will change. If you think some lame RPS article is going to change the world, you are deluded. It ain't going to change, and that's a good thing.