I think you make a big mistake in thinking gog's DRM free was based on some misplaced idea of idealism, it is based on a realistic idea that DRM free is more practical and fall within copyright laws, though this briliant idea of theirs attract a lot of attention to folk who suddenly think everything is possible.
To be honest I'm perfectly happy if you say you create work and are happy if others use your work as long as you apply it to just yourself and likeminden individuals.
As such you say the copyrightlaws are completely useless, again you make a gross underestimation as why copyright law was invented in the first place, because it was needed. Now I won't say it is perfect and that some things could be improved because it probably can. However these laws are based solely on respect of property, which in my case I have but you don't.

Why would you do such a leftie communist anti capitalist thing of preventing business opportunities? You lefties that hate on the free market make me sick, go back to Russia, Trotzki!

So does that mean we are wrong on the DRM thing? I mean every large videogame company on the planet,EA included, disagrees with your views on DRM and your views will never influence anything - because most people who have ever produced a piece of intellectual work don't want to have it stolen by "the public" and vandalized by warez and hacker groups, especially when it's their life's work.

Please think about what you write, try to be at least some challenge.
Seriously, are you a dumbass? I just explained to you in detail how they ARE different things, but the hilarity is derived from your justifications for and against those issues. Your insults don't change the issue, they only amuse me, they tell me that you know you messed up.

No, I can do both at the same time.

It's not in the interest of creators though. If you didn't create something, you don't have the right to own it. 20-year PD is only in the interest of hack writers who are incapable of writing original content.

If you want to use an image I created but feel there is no need to pay for using it (whether now or in 20 years), then the lack of work ethic and mistake would be on your part, not mine.
So let's say you want to use an image. You can either:

1. hire an artist to make a new image
2. pay an artist to license an image
3. make the image yourself

If you make the image yourself, you'll see that it needs time and time equals money. (Oh noes!)
Some people give away work and time for free and that's great but it can't be demanded or expected as standard procedure from anyone.

If a small business can't afford the 3-4 figure price for flat fee licensing / royalty with up front advance then they have the cheaper option of using stock images which can be bought in bulk and only cost peanuts (fractions of a dollar per image in many cases).
If someone finds an image that wasn't created for them but just so happens to fit their needs perfectly, lucky day for them because even flat fee licensing is still less expensive than hiring the same artist to create custom made work from scratch.

Whether an image was 'only just created' or made 20 years should make no difference. Nor should it make any difference whether the creator is famous or unknown. Unauthorized use is unauthorized use.
People who steal do so because there are (mostly) no consequences. If there were consequences, people wouldn't steal.
Right now, only the well-to-do can afford to hire lawyers and make those consequences happen.
My problem is, how can the actual protection of law be made available for all citizens without having to resort to utopian non-functional systems (the world has seen its fair share of those)

No one forces you to buy Mickey Mouse & Jar Jar toys for your kids, you can also buy stuff from people who don't make gazillions in royalties a month. If you think an artist or company selling creative content makes too much money, you can easily avoid them and support someone else's business. Tons of artists on Etsy etc, so much choice. More choices than ever before.

In the end criticism of copyright often appears to me as nothing more than a strategic angle of attack to make the big shots give up stuff you personally want and they're sitting on. We all want Grim Fandango, but we aren't automatically entitled to it because cultural heritage / national treasure or whatever. Used copies can be found on Ebay for 20 bucks and played with ResidualVM if you really want it, no pasa nada.

As I said before, instead of fighting the big how about supporting the small? The big entertainment companies became big partly because you willingly gave them your money, not because they're just evil and stole it all (not saying they aren't evil though...looking at you, Electronic Arts).

Why do you insist that only bad or "hack" writers will capitalise on it? Big corporations will be able to use old forgotten stuff without going through licensing hoops. They can make it better quality than the original. This would be a big boost for everyone.

I never said any of that! Well apart from the bit that I'd be perfectly happy if others used my work.
First of all, this. I am very well aware of how GOG works, and I have never judged GOG in any way for how it works.

Second, I have never said copyrigh laws are useless, I have said that in their current form they're so bad we'd be better off without them.

Moron. Your logic is completely, ridiculously stupid, you're now making the false equivocation between crackers and would-be plagiarists. Warez and hacker groups do not change games beyond removing the DRM checks.

How does that have anything to do intellectual works being forcibly released (against any desires of it's authors/original owners) into the public domain, and then the public being free to do whatever they like with those works, even making a sequel without the approval, authorizations or involvement of the original work's authors.

A hacked, modded or cracked video game is not an official or canon video game, hackers or crackers cannot sell a video game they cracked in an official sense. If a work goes public domain, then people CAN make sequels or derived works that are %100 official and canon, because the work is PD.

You obviously cannot understand the different between official and unofficial, it's like I'm actually talking to a monkey. Yes, people can have different views on different issues. You can do nothing but pathetically nitpick old posts I have made, it is the extent of your ability to argue. You cannot defend shit like 20-year Public Domain so you bring up things I said in a completely different thread, months ago, about a completely different topic. You are admitting you have lost and have no argument every second you continue to use those old comments of mine on DRM as some kind of tool to say "You aren't allowed to have those opinions on Public Domain, because for some vague reasons which make little sense I think they contradict with the way you argued against DRM". Yeah.... You are so full of shit. I doubt that you are capable of breathing and standing upright at the same time.

Dude, you're confusing "legal" with "official".


You write a novel, and you get an IP. Then you have several years to do whatever you want with it: write a sequel, hope it keeps selling and live off it doing nothing else, forbid it from being sold ever again. Whatever you want. Let's say you never write a sequel, so 20 (or however many) years later somebody else does. Then, 2 things can happen: either it's bad and it gets ignored, or it's good and succeeds. Chances are a lot of people will try their luck, and fail. However, let's say there is this one person who actually makes a wonderful sequel and sells it. That's when you come in and "sue the ass off" this person, and get all the money from the sequel. The way I see it, at that point it would be you making money off the guy who wrote the sequel; as you did nothing and the other person put made the effort.

I would like for the Legacy of Kain saga to be finished, however Square holds the IP (unless I'm mistaken) so unless they think it's profitable, they won't do so. 20 years from now, it becomes public domain and everybody and their mother starts making "fanfics" about it. And then comes this indie dev, old fan of the saga, and makes a really awesome Blood Omen style game that actually explains Vorador's resurrection on a reasonable way, ties all the loose ends and where Raziel doesn't resurrect to make out with Kain. At that point, I don't want Square leeching off this dev, thank you very much.

And yes, he could have made a similarly awesome game with all-new characters. But if the IP holder is doing nothing with it, I see nothing wrong with letting others use it. And mind you, since most games' IPs are owned by the publishers and not the creative people. So I would definately want the copyright to expire and then have Amy Hennig herself write a novel to wrap things up without Square's influence. And not even you would call that a trash fanfic, I hope.

Also, I like that nowadays we can use Cthulhu's name without having to pay HP Lovecraft's great grandson. Because the great grandson has truly done nothing to deserve that money.

Again I dissagree, the copyright laws themselves aren't the issue, the real issue when copyrightlaws get abused is because the people who sign bad deals and agreements, you can't blame the copyright laws for that.
But I guess you like living in the wild west.

It doesn't matter who does it, they could write a good work, it doesn't matter, it's about rightful personal ownership.

I might not agree with what George Lucas did to Star Wars, but it was still his right to do what he wanted with the prequels, and it was also his right, to sell it, because he owns it.

But if the laws can be abused - is that not a case that said laws need to be revised so they can no longer be abused?

Why would "I" (speaking hypothetically) or any author have to make this choice. What if an author wrote a book, one book, and he thought that was it, it was complete, even perfect, and nothing needed to be added, no prequel or sequel or nothing.

If he wanted that work to "rest in piece" as it were, to be left alone and to stand on it's own, without being violated or having any derived works, I think he has that right.

And I think no one has any right to say that person doesn't have a right to sit on their IP until they die and then hand it on to their children, or put it into an estate like Tolkien.

We're not talking about laws of physics here, civic law can and always will be abused, trying to create something that is allencompassing is just not possible, we have laywers and judges who try plug the holes for that, .

but is it not an aim to create laws that are as less open to abuse as possible? is this not to shrugging off responsibility pushing the blame on someone else?

The current state of copyright laws is far more akin to the wild west than their complete absence.

First of all, courts work via precedents, even when it comes to the copyright laws. The crap with copyrighting words we see around us oh so often? That's the result of the 'strong' securing their grounds for the future, while the 'weaker' can't really do a damn thing about that without wasting a lot of their precious time and money in court. Now I'm not blaming the 'strong' for doing so - they have to. Because of copyright laws.

Secondly, when a powerful company's rights are infringed, it's very easy for it to defend - they have their own departments of lawyers, working at this kind of stuff non-stop. And then there are the small ones, individual creators, who - as awalterj pointed out already - can, at best, write a polite ceise and desist order and hope for the best. Sure, they could take their case to the court, however that's very time-consuming - and a creative person can't afford to lose that time, nor to lose the money they would if they'd happen to lose.

Thirdly, your own example of 'signing bad deals and agreements' - that's exactly the kind of stuff copyright laws should protect you against, not support it in abundance! How this works most of the time is that, when you're no longer profitable enough, a big house approaches you, basically saying "Look, you give us all your past IPs and we employ you, saving your from losing your jobs". There are very few genuinely successful small companies which would give up their freedom - and what I have just described is blackmail, plain and simple. Of course you'll sign that bad deal, at the end of the day, food on the plate is more important than what you have created.

That's wild west. There's very minimal protection for the little guy, and when a law is so open to abuse as you yourself admit, there's something very wrong with it.

When a law more commonly achieves the precise opposite of what it's supposed to represent, it's just no a very good law to begin with. Of course, there's a good chance these laws are not at all written to protect the little guy, and are open to abuse on purpose - but that's another discussion entirely