Copyright law needs a major overhaul

[Zenpai]

So, last summer we had a bit of an issue with Nintendo suing famous emulation websites LoveROM and LoveRETRO for an absolutely insane amount of money, which caused the former to remove all Nintendo games from its catalogue and the latter to effectively shut down altogether. Seeing what happened to its fellow sites, another famous host of retro game ROMs, Emuparadise, not wanting to go down the same road, decided to remove all links to ISOs and ROMs from the site, leaving only the emulators themselves (which have been ruled to be legal).

 

The lawsuit sent to LoveROM and LoveRETRO reads as follows:

 

"The LoveROMs website alone receives 17 million visitors each month. Such visitors are drawn to the website by the widespread availability of free, unauthorized copies of Nintendo’s video games and other highly valuable intellectual property. The resulting popularity of Defendants’ LoveROMs and LoveRETRO websites has allowed Defendants to reap substantial ill-gotten gains, including through donations and the sale of advertising on the LoveROMs and LoveRETRO websites."

 

Nintendo also demanded $2 000 000 for every trademark infringed by the sites and $150 000 for every single game hosted… so you can see how Emuparadise wanted to get out of this ship fast.

 

 

 

 

Emuparadise founder MasJ’s note on the situation reads as follows:

 

“It’s not worth it for us to risk potentially disastrous consequences. I cannot in good conscience risk the futures of our team members who have contributed to the site through the years. We run EmuParadise for the love of retro games and for you to be able to revisit those good times. Unfortunately, it’s not possible right now to do so in a way that makes everyone happy and keeps us out of trouble.”

 

This whole debacle made me want to jot down my thoughts on copyright law, something which I’ve always had very strong opinions on.

There are quite a few fronts to this issue, so I’m going to go through them one by one:

 

 

 

Term of Copyright and the Public Domain

 

 

You will very seldom hear me defend any part of American law, much less old versions of it, but I’d like to state right here and now that the original version of the American provision for copyright law - you know, the one from 1790 - had it right from the get go. Back then, the intent was to balance the legitimacy of the author to have exclusive profit from his or her own work with the need for the greater society to benefit from it. Hence, the law originally stated that copyright was to last for a period of 14 years, with an additional 14 thrown in if the author was still alive at that point.

 

 

 

 

Sadly, American law changed quite a lot since then, and, in my opinion, not for the better. Copyright Term was gradually made longer and longer until finally, in 1998, we hit our last extension in the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, also known as the Sonny Bono Act, which increased the term of copyright before a published work can enter the public domain from “Life of the author + 50 years” to “Life of the author + 70 years”, and in the case of works authored by corporations, the limit increased from 75 years after the work’s initial publication to 95 years after the initial publication.

 

The Sonny Bono Act is also (derisively) known as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act. The reason for this is that Disney, fearful of their first animated shorts (which premiered in 1928, starring Mickey Mouse) soon entering the public domain, was one of the major lobbyists for an extended copyright term. And they sadly got what they wanted.

 

(Also, Disney lobbying for an extended copyright term is particularly ironic considering how much they benefited from works in the public domain like The Little Mermaid, Pinocchio, Cinderella, etc.)

 

 

 

(Steamboat Willie, the first animated Mickey Mouse short that Disney was so fearful of letting go onto the hands of the general public)

 

 

The immediate consequence of the Sonny Bono Act was that, for 20 years after it was passed into law, absolutely no works entered the public domain. Only now, in 2019, will that sad streak be broken, with works first published in 1923 finally being owned by all of us.

 

And actually… despite 95 years being an insanely long amount of time, it could have turned out to be even worse! The president of the MPAA at the time, Jack Valenti, actually wanted to make copyright perpetual… were it not for the fact that such a proposal would be unconstitutional. He then suggested, as a way to circumvent that limitation, that copyright should be limited for a period of “forever less one day”… but he fortunately didn’t get what he wanted (cheeky bastard).

 

I believe I’m not the only one thinking that 95 years is just way too much time. Granted, authors have every right to benefit from their works, but I believe that after the end of a reasonable grace period (the aforementioned 28 years seem reasonable enough, though I could see the case for a maximum of 50 years due to the increase in average life span over the last 200 years), it’s time for the general population to also benefit from and build upon their creativity. As it currently stands, copyright law is too one-sided, granting too many benefits to the copyright holders (which these days are mostly big corporations) and not the general population.

 

 

(The evolution of the copyright protection period in the United States)

 

 

 

 The benefits of copying

 

There is another problem with the excessive length of copyright term, which is that it disregards the preservation of art. As I said above, we’ve just come out of a 20-year period where absolutely no works of art entered the public domain. Not only is the new 95-year period way too long, many physical copies… just don’t survive all that long. Old films are fragile. Books get recycled (or worse yet, burned) and old electronics will not house their contents forever before failing forever.

 

I’m somewhat famous among my friends for making constant backups of his game saves. I just hate wasted work. So it breaks my heart to see entire works of art lost to the ages, especially if the reason is a piece of legislation that no longer serves its original purpose and, in its current state, just serves to unfairly benefit giant corporations more than anyone else – certainly not the greater society.

 

Many works of art were only preserved because people resorted to unlawful methods to protect and safeguard them. There are a lot of copyright holders that just don’t know the value of their own properties. And to be honest, if they themselves don’t want to protect them… what so wrong about us doing it? They clearly couldn’t care any less.

 

 

 

 

Imagine for a moment that the current copyright law was something that’s been universal since the dawn of time. The amount of information on the History of the world that would be lost to us now would be absolutely immense. After the fall of Rome, many of its texts only survived because the Muslim world kept copies of those texts. And Rome itself also kept copies of many Greek classics whose originals have since been lost to time. So while we may no longer be able to access the originals, their contents live on through the contribution of copies.

 

Now imagine if the contents had indeed been lost forever and the one excuse people gave historians was: “well, you know, the original author wanted a few more pieces of silver and let no one make any copies whatsoever. The originals were sadly lost/burned so now there’s no way of knowing what was in them. Ever. But it’s understandable, right? After all, it was still in its copyright period, so no one could make any copies. It sure is a shame, though… Hey, why are you so red and curling up your hands into fists?”

 

 

 

 

 

The funny thing is, Nintendo – you know, the company that jump-started this conversation about copyright – has been caught selling ROMs downloaded from emulation websites before. Meaning they either lost the original files and needed the emulation websites to sell their own old games or they themselves thought it was simply more convenient to just go to the site and download the ROM, which was immediately ready to use. Either way, they’re proving my point (and also being huge hypocrites).

 

If a game isn’t easily available nor has it been for quite some time, I don’t see what the big deal is in making a copy for historic preservation purposes. And if the copyright holders don’t want us to make unlawful copies… then just make the bloody games easily available! You cannot have your cake and eat it too. This is actually one of the major reasons why I believe we should have a true backwards compatibility system for every major platform, one that encompasses every single platform they ever released and as many games as they can legally muster.

 

My point is: preservation should always come before profit. And just like movies and books, video games are an art form and should also be safeguarded for future generations. I’m not saying every single game ever released is a masterpiece, the same way some books and movies are nothing more than trite, but they still allow us to see what kinds of things people were doing and experimenting with at the time. You never know what will turn out to be invaluable historical information in the future. Hell, things as trivial as old storage inventory logs and tax records turned out to be invaluable information for historians!

 

 

Piracy

 

Now we come to the juicy bit. There’s been a lot of ink spilled over the matter, with many people defending the practice, others deeming it unforgivable under any circumstance and many others somewhere in the middle. Neither side is completely right or wrong, but I wanted to go over some of the more prevalent arguments for both sides below.

 

Let’s start by taking this out of the way: I personally don’t think piracy is the cancer that major corporations make it out to be. Piracy has always been available to the general populace since at least the 1980s (and it’s obviously been around for far longer). This was also the time when VHS recorders started becoming more widespread. Back then, the major movie studios immediately turned into veritable prophets of doom, saying that the new technology would absolutely kill the industry, since people could now just tape movies off of television and not have to pay a single dime to the studios and producers. And we obviously all know they were completely correct /s.

 

 

 

 

Furthermore, there’s also one big fallacy with the big corporations’ major argument: that people are just cheapskates and are pirating just to save up a few dollars. The main flaw with this argument is that corporations are acting on the belief that everyone has the money to buy every single piece of media they consume, they’re just not willing to… which just isn’t true.

 

First of all, not all of us will like something enough to actually speak with their wallets. And I personally don’t really see what the difference is between pirating something and just DVR-ing it. Both are ways of making a free copy of copyrighted material for personal use that can be rewatched as many times as one could want.

 

Not to mention… people actually tend to spend more money on stuff they pirate… after the fact, that is. Let me explain: sometimes, for a number of reasons, people can’t catch a show on TV while it’s airing, but they do hear all the hubbub surrounding it afterwards. Their curiosity is piqued, so they want to try it out. So do they just outright get the DVD/Blu-Ray? Doesn’t seem like a very financially wise decision, considering they might just not find the show all that entertaining. They might even end up hating it, contrary to popular opinion. So, what can they do to check out said show without spending a single dime, just like they would if they’d caught said show while it was airing on TV? Well… they can pirate it. The producers get exactly as much money as they would if you’d watched it on TV and it’s got the added benefit of being easier to watch any place you would want.

 

 

 

 

And how does this lead onto increased spending, you ask? Well, I didn’t use to be a huge anime fan when I was younger, and to be honest, all of that Japanese animation just seemed way too bizarre, violent and sexual for my tastes. But one day, I met a friend at college who lived and breathed not only anime but the whole of Japanese culture. We really hit it off, and the more we talked, the more she kept pressuring me to at least dip my toes in her favorite medium. I didn’t really want to, but I caved in after a few good pitches for some anime. She downloaded (read: pirated) some episodes for three different anime and then handed me her flash drive with said episodes for me to see.

 

And then? Well, let’s just say I thought the worst one out of those three was “merely okay”. I was instantly grabbed by the other two (which doesn’t happen very often with me) and started searching for some more anime by myself. And the more I delved into the world of anime and Japanese culture, the more I fell in love with both. Turns out, all I had to do was to actually give a damn and start searching for series that I’d be likely to be into.

 

Of course, I haven’t liked all anime I’ve seen and tried – there’s always bound to be some misfires here and there, obviously – but the experience hit me so hard that I started taking Japanese classes and got good enough to go to Japan and not utter a word of English to the natives, but most importantly to this topic, I bought manga and anime to the point where my collection already surpasses 1000 single volumes, with nearly 1/5 of that still waiting to be read or watched.

 

(No, I don’t have a problem, why do you ask?)

 

 

 

 

So the question now becomes: who exactly has piracy hurt in here? Was it the original authors of all the anime I pirated? Because I sure as hell wouldn’t have paid just to check out if I even liked something or not. Not to mention all the money I spent in Japanese classes and the Japanese economy that I would just have kept to myself had I not pirated anything. Sounds to me that a lot more people benefited from my piracy than if I had blindly followed the rules.

 

Hell, that’s the entire purpose of adapting manga and games into anime! It’s not to sell the product itself, but rather to increase sales of the original product (the manga) and create a market suitable for the selling of merchandise. Selling the actual anime is obviously good if it happens, but ultimately secondary. Otherwise, why would production companies still make enormous, long-running anime back before the advent of DVD? Because they sure as hell didn’t sell a lot of it back then. Rather, they got their money back through the sales of merchandise and the original manga.

 

And this is just my personal example. How many more people out there gave the copyright holders more money by first dipping their toes into their franchises, no strings attached?

 

It’s as simple as this: if people like something enough, they will buy it. We feel naturally compelled to want to support the makers of our favorite games, movies and shows, and so we will voluntarily buy the legal releases, some merchandise or even both – if we have enough money. And if we don’t… well, then the amount of money that changed hands stays exactly the same, whether piracy took place or not.

 

 

 

 

“But JR”, I hear some of you say, “can’t you just use Netflix or some similar service? Netflix is super cheap and it’s basically everywhere!”

 

Yes, you can. But can you tell me that it contains every single piece of media in existence? Some shows have had their rights expire or aren’t available in some regions (or at all). If the rights holder doesn’t want my money… then it’s obviously not going to get it. Just don’t come crying to me about piracy if people want to give them their money but the copyright holders don’t provide any means for people to do so.

 

It’s particularly difficult when you’re into niche or foreign shows. You can go to Crunchyroll, Daisuki and the like if you’re into anime (and even those don’t have everything everywhere, especially if you’re into extremely niche or older shows), but anything else, especially stuff that’s long been out of print or never even had a commercial release at all, you’re pretty much reliant on either free streaming from the original broadcaster… or piracy. And again, if it’s not available for purchase anywhere and it’s not foreseeable that it will be any time soon… I really don’t see who piracy is hurting.

 

 

 

 

As mentioned above, there are also cases where the stuff you want to watch is available… just not in your particular region. Either it’s a physical release with a different disc region from your own or the original rights holders are making you jump through a lot of hoops (VPNs and the like) just for you to even be able to use a foreign digital store. Well, I personally like to look at things like this this way: if you basically have to compete in some sort of Olympics of regional availability just to be able to get stuff legally… I’m going to reasonably assume the rights holders simply don’t want my money. But again – don’t come crying to me about piracy afterwards.

 

If, like me, you live in the EU, then you have an added problem with regional availability – customs checks. Despite its problems, I like the EU and what it’s done for Europe and the world, but the one thing about it that I do not stand about it is customs. Supposedly, the whole point to their existence is to foster trade within the union by taxing most goods coming from outside, so that people will feel less inclined to give other countries their money and instead spend it in their own countries or at the very least, countries that also belong to the EU.

 

The problem with this logic is that… not everything is fucking available everywhere! This law was made before the online shopping age under the reasoning that people purchasing outside the European Union were just bargain-hunting in countries like China, where stuff can be insanely cheaper than in here. But there are also absolute tons of stuff that you just cannot get in here. As an example, the last thing I got from outside the EU was a 30€ book, with shipping included (roughly the same in US dollars). It was available nowhere else, so I got it from its original country, Japan. Books don’t actually pay any customs taxes, so it should be okay, right? Wrong. Because customs still make you pay VAT and a clearance tax (more like a ransom) before they’ll even get the item to your door. So besides the price of the actual book and the shipping costs, I got stuck with paying another 18€ for no fucking reason. Am I the only one that thinks that a fucking 60% tax is way too high?

 

 

 

 

So, in an era where stuff is easily pirateable, the European Union still insists on imposing outdated, senseless, indiscriminate, protectionist, expensive taxes to every single item coming in from outside its borders? Yeah, that sure as hell is going to incentivize people to respect copyright. When you couple that with Article 13 from the European Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, which would make copyright laws so strict that it could even end memes as we know them, seems to me like the European Union is fast on track to have copyright laws just as absurd as the United States’.

 

(No, UK citizens, despite what I said, and despite these shortcomings, I still believe that being in the EU is a lot more favorable than being outside of it and that it’s a huge mistake to leave it. See this post to know why.)

 

 

Then you come to the question of the second-hand market. Some rights-holders would like to redirect you to the second-hand market as a way to get your hands on your favorite games and shows without having to resort to piracy. Very well. Nothing against the second-hand market – it does have two major problems, though:

 

The first – how is the second-hand market benefiting the rights holders in any way? This just sounds to me like upholding the law for its own sake. Again, not that there’s anything wrong with using the second-hand market to get your stuff, especially if you’re the kind of guy that just has to get everything in physical format, but what really ruffles my jimmies here is the mindless adherence to the law that the rights holders want you to have just to steer you away from piracy.

 

The second – Even if something’s been released in the past, sometimes it’s been released so long ago or in such low numbers that the product’s become prohibitively rare and expensive. Surely the rights holders cannot reasonably expect us to fork over tens of times the original MSRP for a used product that might barely be even working. This proposition gets even more ridiculous when you consider that some of these old copies might be for outdated formats like VHS or for old consoles that are now extremely hard to get a hold of.

 

It’s as simple as this: if companies want to stop the piracy of old games, movies and TV shows, then make them available. People aren’t going to go out of their way and spend insane amounts of effort and money just to respect a law that will ultimately not even benefit those that defend it the most.

 

The problem of availability gets even worse when you take into consideration copyright limbo – which is the place that old works of art go to when nobody really knows who even holds the rights to them anymore. This is particularly serious with old video games – the publisher may have shut down or the video game in question may use licensed properties, characters or music – meaning that a new contract would have to signed between multiple parties before that game could see the light of day again – and most copyright holders just don’t want to bother. And if they don’t want to bother… then why the hell should we?

 

I’m not really a big proponent of civil disobedience. I believe laws were written for a reason and generally protect the broader society. I do make an exception for copyright law, though – at least as it exists in its current state. It’s been getting worse and worse to the point of ridiculousness and right now, it benefits no one but unreasonable corporate interests.

 

 

 

 

There’s also the point that even if you do decide to do everything by the book and consume all of your media legally… it seems that the copyright holders want to make the experience as much of a hassle as possible.

 

Let’s start with digital copies of media: have you ever tried purchasing a movie or a TV Show digitally? If you have, then you’ll know how much of a hassle it is. You need to install a different client for every studio/service, make a different account for every single one of those services… hell, it won’t even let you download the movie at all if you happen to be outside the region where the distributor has the rights to. Whereas if you resort to torrents or (insert favorite means of piracy here), you just search, download and watch – simple as can be.

 

If you’re a PC gamer (which I assume there aren’t all that many of you here on the site, but still), then you’ll also know how much of a pain DRM services can be – your games’ performance is hampered by the existence of a tool that ultimately only serves to punish paying customers. Because no matter how good your DRM is, pirates will crack it. It’s only a matter of time. And they will then be able to enjoy the game without any of that pesky DRM.

 

So yes, let that sink in – the pirates will have a better experience than the paying customers. Because actively making your product more of a hassle to use is sure to incentivize people to stay on the legal end of things…

 

 

Even with physical media, it’s more of a hassle – even before you reach the damn main menu, you’ll have a bunch of trailers for other movies from that studio – which requires you having to manually skip them all (and that’s if you can even skip them)… not to mention the inescapable disclaimers on how “PIRACY IS NOT A VICTIMLESS CRIME” and how “YOU WOULDN’T STEAL A PURSE/CAR, ETC.” – all of this on our legally purchased copy. Whereas with piracy… there’s none of that.

 

 

 

 

Then there’s also the case where the copyright holders do provide a legal copy and keep it in print… but it’s either of extremely low quality or modified in a way that nobody asked for. Probably the most famous example of this would be Star Wars. In the 1990s, George Lucas famously made some very unwanted changes to his timeless trilogy and, save for a very limited release, the original versions never graced a home video format ever again. Hence, the only way people will get the version they actually want… is through piracy.

 

I mean, the copyright holders claim people won’t buy their products, but then refuse to give their customers what they actually want? In this case, if people resort to piracy… that’s on them.

 

 

 

 

The music industry is actually a shining example of how to act in the Internet age. Instead of trying to crush piracy, they made it irrelevant. By providing a more convenient and accessible product at reasonable prices, the amount of music downloaded illegally has decreased dramatically thanks to the existence of services like Spotify and iTunes.

 

And I believe this is key here. Do not treat piracy like the enemy – treat it like the competition. People resort to piracy because it serves their purposes better. If the legal service is clunky, less convenient, less accessible and you have to pay for it… what’s in it for the end user? Remember, people don’t pirate just because it’s free – they pirate because it’s the better service. If you cut out all the crap like mandatory clients and signups and obtrusive DRM and make a quality, affordable product, I can guarantee you that you’ll get a lot more paying customers that way. You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, after all. Shining examples of knowing how to compete would be the aforementioned Netflix in the TV and movie side, and Good Old Games on the videogames side.

 

One thing is for certain, though. You cannot stop piracy. Like the mythical Hydra, you may cut off its head, but two more will take its place. Remember when they tried to eliminate Megaupload? Yeah... how did that turn out, again?

 

 

 

 

And then you come to the more practical side of enforcing copyright law, which is… that you just cannot imprison everyone for such a minor crime. There aren’t enough prisons, there isn’t enough room within those prisons and it would cost taxpayers a lot more to punish copyright infringers than to just… leave everything be. Even law enforcement frequently doesn’t punish minor crimes like jaywalking and incorrect parking (unless it’s really bad parking) despite the fact that they have the authority to do so. Sometimes, even the police has to have a modicum of common sense and realize that some things just aren’t worth all the trouble and would rather save their energies for the things that are – you know, actual crimes, like homicides, robberies and corruption.

 

Heck, even the government stopped giving a damn from the moment they started implementing private copy levies, which impose a tax on any purchase of recordable media like CDs, DVDs and hard drives and then give the proceedings to copyright collectives – all under the reasoning that piracy is just impossible to stop, so let’s just stop bothering altogether and impose a tax on anything that people will most likely use to pirate stuff. So in a way… we’re all technically paying for our pirated media… just in an indirect, roundabout way.

 

 

 

Closing thoughts

 

After all of this, some of you are probably thinking that I’m a lowlife cheapskate that just wants to get everything for free and likely belongs to the Pirate Party (yes, it exists). That is far from the case, as you can see from my personal media collection:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you can see, I’ve purchased hundreds of movies, video games, and most of all, books to the point where I’ve had to make a second row on most shelves and even fill the topmost shelf of my wardrobe to near-breaking point just to accommodate all of them.

 

(No, seriously, I don’t have a problem, why do you ask?)

 

Out of all my friends, I’m by far the one that speaks with his wallet the most. I believe that if you really like something, then you should show your support in tangible ways. But even I can’t buy everything. There’s just so much out there these days that I have to make concessions and stick only to the things I really like (also, I’m kind of afraid the bookshelves will give in someday and give me a papery grave in my sleep if I keep this up – which I will).

 

This post is not meant to convey support for piracy. I do believe that people that make works of art really do work hard to make them and should therefore be compensated for that work. However, I also don’t believe that piracy is the worst thing in the world. People just don’t have the money to purchase everything, and the poorest among us can’t even spend anything at all on luxuries like media. That said, I do believe that if their finances allow them, people will speak with their wallets and support at least the artists and businesses they like the most.

 

 

 

 

Not to mention, artists will always have other means of revenue apart from direct sales of their main products. The music industry has concerts. The best video games never fail to sell at least one million copies. Thanks to smart business practices like Netflix, TV shows are pretty much ensured survival. Movies have ticket sales. And all of them have merchandise – arguably the most important piece of the pie. Because as long as physical goodies (and demand for them) are around, nothing’s going anywhere.

 

I’m not trying to argue for the legalization of piracy, but rather that it no longer be demonized as “the end of all art” and most of all, that more sensible copyright laws be created.  Because the current ones clearly aren’t working.

 

Whew. That went on for longer than I expected. If you still haven’t had enough of the subject, then I recommend you watch the following videos on the matter and read this absolutely phenomenal essay on the matter of video game preservation by Kotaku’s Chris Kohler, which influenced many of the points I made here. Heck, even the comments on the essay are extremely informative and elucidating, so if you still haven’t had enough, please do go check those out as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See you next time!

 

 

Edited March 2, 2019 by jrdemr

[nyonmyan]

On the one hand I agree, on the other hand I disagree.

[SnowxSakura]

1 hour ago, jrdemr said:

People aren’t going to go out of their way and spend insane amounts of effort and money just to respect a law that will ultimately not even benefit those that defend it the most.

 

 

You'd be amazed at the amounts of money people will pay to legally own something, just go look at the 5 figure games on ebay.

 

Also I read most of this, and it just comes down as someone who wants to justify piracy

 

To add to this, the company who created the product gets to decide if they want to continue making their IP available for public consumption or not, no amount of 1st world entitlement is going to change that. It's too bad so sad if they pull it from the market forever, and you have the decision to not partake in purchasing it second hand, or just ignoring it forever.

Edited March 2, 2019 by SnowxSakura

[JohnCenaSong-]

I don't agree with everything but I'll give you props for the effort.

[Zenpai]

32 minutes ago, SnowxSakura said:

You'd be amazed at the amounts of money people will pay to legally own something, just go look at the 5 figure games on ebay.

 

Oh, I'm not saying nobody will do it, just that... you know, the average human being won't.

 

32 minutes ago, SnowxSakura said:

To add to this, the company who created the product gets to decide if they want to continue making their IP available for public consumption or not, no amount of 1st world entitlement is going to change that. It's too bad so sad if they pull it from the market forever, and you have the decision to not partake in purchasing it second hand, or just ignoring it forever.

 

Oh, it is entirely their prerogative if they decide to remove it from the market forever. All I'm saying is... just don't come crying if piracy for your product spikes. And since they don't want to sell it , it's not like they're losing any money anyway.

 

35 minutes ago, SnowxSakura said:

Also I read most of this, and it just comes down as someone who wants to justify piracy

 

I mean... yeah, I'm not going to deny it.

As I said in the main post, while I do think that you should buy stuff if you like it, I don't believe piracy should be as demonized as it is.

[Kittet3]

Ohh, I love intellectual property law! Although my expertise is on patents, there is a bit of overlap with copyright. 

 

There are ways to legally make copies of something to preserve it. It's a bit complicated to ensure you follow the law and you probably have to be a library to do it, but it's doable. This throws out 80% of your argument on why the copyright period is too long. 

 

It's fairly common knowledge that IP law hasn't caught up to the digital age. We're still arguing about whether software is an abstract thought or is patentable or is copyrightable and it's honestly a confusing mess to try and figure it out. Right now the answer is that it depends. 

 

There is no reason we should feel entitled to exactly copy someone's games. There is no lawful way to protect an idea so we can just take our favorite aspects of games and remake them. Look how many platformers there were after Mario. Copyright literally just prevents exact copies of different aspects of the game. Wanting to remove copyright is just being lazy and wanting to benefit from someone's hard work. It's also not just copyright. Many of these Nintendo games have trademarks in them, as OP pointed out. Some of them might even have patents. 

 

Piracy is not okay? Replace the argument with a physical item. I should be able to steal this chair because I might not like it, but if I do, then I will probably maybe buy other chairs from the same chair maker. But I'll probably steal those too tbh. 

 

Got to talk to your lawmakers about your customs. That's not Nintendo's fault and I bet they don't like them anymore then you do. 

 

Honestly, there are too many loosely related arguments in the OP to sift through. The music industry was almost destroyed by piracy. George Lucas literally made Star Wars and if he wants to change it, that's his right. Why do we feel so entitled to something just because someone sells us a copy? Companies rather spend time making new stuff then ensuring their old games still work on today's hardware. They are also releasing a lot of their old games - look at that mini Nintendo thing and the mini Playstation thing that were recently released. 

[Alantor32]

Dear god, I remember something like this on Nintendo Life and I will and always will don't agree with piracy. It's the companies themselves who decides what to do with their products.

[Honor_Hand]

Excellent post OP. I loved reading it I agreed with most of the arguments you presented here on why the current copyright system is all kinds of bullshit. Granted, not everyone will agree with it and, to an extent, I do think creative minds should benefit from their work and effort by wanting compensation for the work they have done.

 

The current time needed for something to enter the public domain is just hilarious and unreasonable. The examples you gave out by saying that, if the current copyright law applied since the dawn of time was totally on point. Of course, society has moved in many different ways since then but if those rules existed at that time, we would basically still be at a dark age with tons of knowledge and valuable information just lost and forgotten.

 

Corporate minds, of course, they only see profit and even in this day and age, they are just still as gullible for not preserving their own products. Many examples abound of companies just losing their own data or not storing it appropriately and this only becomes evident when they need to reuse it for whatever reason. One example that comes to mind was the Silent Hill HD debacle. When Konami had lost access to most of the assets of the original PS2 game and forced the developers, Hijinx Studio, to work from a scratch, resulting in a mediocre port on both PS3 and Xbox 360.

 

For some of us, piracy was our gateway to learning something new that we would get in love with. Coming from a poor country, if it wasn't for piracy, I wouldn't most likely be here talking to all of you. The first PC games I got where pirated and the first Nintendo consoles I saw where the cheap Chinese knock-offs that got into the market here. Why did I decide to collect games? Well, jrdemr is right. I grew so fond of gaming that I wanted to contribute to the industry in some way, shape or form. I still try to do this despite everything. That's some love right there.

 

I never stopped being a pirate, however. I still download ROMs and ISOs from the internet and got thousands of them in my hard drives. Mostly from old games as I don't personally find it appropriate to pirate the more recent stuff. Anime is another great example. I tried Crunchyroll and even though it is cheap as hell, I honestly thought it was pretty poor. Didn't have many of the shows I was looking for, the subbing was just okay and streaming wasn't really an option for me due to having to live with a shitty internet connection. What should I do? Keep paying for a service that sucks or find an alternative? There are many fansubs who do a similar, if not better, job out there and they do it for free. So, why exactly do I have to pay for a service that doesn't provide a comfortable experience for the consumer? Same applies to videogames and all other media.

 

Then again, I'm speaking from a different perspective and background from most people here on this site. Again, I'm not advocating for piracy. I think it's integral for the industry and for the creative minds, the developers, to be able to reap the benefits of their work. That way, the industry thrives and we consumers get better games in the long run (at least, that's how it should be on theory). But the way copyright works now... it's simply not fair in my eyes.

 

I think your best paragraphs were these two:

 

Quote

If a game isn’t easily available nor has it been for quite some time, I don’t see what the big deal is in making a copy for historic preservation purposes. And if the copyright holders don’t want us to make unlawful copies… then just make the bloody games easily available! You cannot have your cake and eat it too. This is actually one of the major reasons why I believe we should have a true backwards compatibility system for every major platform, one that encompasses every single platform they ever released and as many games as they can legally muster.

 

My point is: preservation should always come before profit. And just like movies and books, video games are an art form and should also be safeguarded for future generations. I’m not saying every single game ever released is a masterpiece, the same way some books and movies are nothing more than trite, but they still allow us to see what kinds of things people were doing and experimenting with at the time. You never know what will turn out to be invaluable historical information in the future. Hell, things as trivial as old storage inventory logs and tax records turned out to be invaluable information for historians!

 

In the end, though, I'm somewhere in the middle. I do think both sides have their fair share of positive and negative arguments that can be made out and, in regards to being right or wrong, well, I think both sides are right in the end.

 

Congrats on making such a great post @jrdemr I feel you really went out of your way in laying out your thoughts here and actually brought over some interesting and properly researched topics into the table. Props to you for that. ?

[Dr_Mayus]

5 hours ago, SnowxSakura said:

You'd be amazed at the amounts of money people will pay to legally own something, just go look at the 5 figure games on ebay.

 

I do love consumers like that because they actually think paying someone lots of money to own the actual game is more legit than an emulator. 

 

Nintendo didn't get the money from you buying Earthbound on eBay so what is the difference than if you just downloaded a rom? 

[Alantor32]

@Honor_Hand Oh, so you support the cause of companies losing money thanks to piracy? I don't support piracy, not one bit. Piracy is what ruining companies. I always buys stuff the legal way, even through subscriptions  While roms and emulators are okay, piracy is not okay at all. Piracy should be banned from the web forever and forgive me for being harsh on this, but those who resort to piracy or support it, should be arrested, declared guilty without a trial and locked away forever.

 

I'm sorry, but piracy disgusts me so much that I feel it isn't right. This topic reminds of those fools from Nintendo Life who think piracy is AOK. Piracy may be okay to some, but it's also not so okay to many others who want to buy games the honest way.

[Zenpai]

2 minutes ago, MMX20 said:

I'm sorry, but piracy disgusts me so much that I feel it isn't right. This topic reminds of those fools from Nintendo Life who think piracy is AOK. Piracy may be okay to some, but it's also not so okay to many others who want to buy games the honest way.

 

Funny, considering how I've never pirated a single game in my life. Every game I ever had is right there on display on the second picture I took (even though you might not be able to see all of them due to just how many of them there are ? )

[Alantor32]

Just now, jrdemr said:

 

Funny, considering how I've never pirated a single game in my life. Every game I ever had is right there on display on the second picture I took (even though you might not be able to see all of them due to just how many of them there are  )

Well, I understand, but I don't agree with your post about piracy not being demonized. Piracy is a crime and I don't really like it. Since you never pirated games, I guess I can let it go, but again, I don't agree with your post about piracy not being demonized.

[Cave Johnson]

7 minutes ago, MMX20 said:

@Honor_Hand Oh, so you support the cause of companies losing money thanks to piracy?

 

49 minutes ago, Honor_Hand said:

Again, I'm not advocating for piracy. I think it's integral for the industry and for the creative minds, the developers, to be able to reap the benefits of their work. That way, the industry thrives and we consumers get better games in the long run (at least, that's how it should be on theory). But the way copyright works now... it's simply not fair in my eyes.

 

Reading is hard.

[Alantor32]

Just now, Cave_Johnson_ said:

 

 

Reading is hard.

Heh, you got me there. But again, I don't support piracy.

 

@Honor_Hand Sorry for the misunderstanding. I know you need to resort to piracy and after reading what Cave_Johnson said, I agree. I know you don't like the way copyright is right now, but I understand you're from a poor country and need to do what you feel is right to you. So forgive me for the misunderstand about this.

[Guest]

The things I had downloaded, I wouldn't have bought it or rented it anyways. I'm just that cheap. So when big companies talk about how many millions they lost to people like me, wellll. They never would had made a cent from me either way.

[Zenpai]

1 minute ago, MMX20 said:

Well, I understand, but I don't agree with your post about piracy not being demonized. Piracy is a crime and I don't really like it. Since you never pirated games, I guess I can let it go, but again, I don't agree with your post about piracy not being demonized.

 

And it's your right to do so.

 

To be fair, I also expected this topic to be polarizing. Some people tend to be more on the side of companies while others are more for consumer's rights and a more liberal approach to law. And just like with politics and religion, piracy also tends to be one of those subjects that people have really strong opinions on. But it's fine. I just wanted to put my thoughts out into the open and as long as it fosters discussion, I'll consider myself satisfied.

[Alantor32]

1 minute ago, jrdemr said:

 

And it's your right to do so.

 

To be fair, I also expected this topic to be polarizing. Some people tend to be more on the side of companies while others are more for consumer's rights and a more liberal approach to law. And just like with politics and religion, piracy also tends to be one of those subjects that people have really strong opinions on. But it's fine. I just wanted to put my thoughts out into the open and as long as it fosters discussion, I'll consider myself satisfied.

I understand. Everyone needs to speak out their feelings at some point or the other.

[MidnightDragon]

Agreed, but the people who are trying to "fix" it are bribed by the rich/so out of touch with reality it's ridiculous.

[Honor_Hand]

12 minutes ago, MMX20 said:

@Honor_Hand Oh, so you support the cause of companies losing money thanks to piracy? I don't support piracy, not one bit. Piracy is what ruining companies. I always buys stuff the legal way, even through subscriptions  While roms and emulators are okay, piracy is not okay at all. Piracy should be banned from the web forever and forgive me for being harsh on this, but those who resort to piracy or support it, should be arrested, declared guilty without a trial and locked away forever.

 

I'm sorry, but piracy disgusts me so much that I feel it isn't right. This topic reminds of those fools from Nintendo Life who think piracy is AOK. Piracy may be okay to some, but it's also not so okay to many others who want to buy games the honest way.

I don't support the cause of companies losing money. Again, I stated above that everyone should receive fair compensation for their work. What I don't support is companies mistreating their consumers and the industry in itself with bad practices by not respecting their own work. Video games, as an art form, should be protected. Either by the companies or by whoever is willing to. The current copyright laws don't allow for people, out of their own goodwill, to protect this creative work.

 

I understand people lost money when they are not paid by their work. I certainly wouldn't like others to benefit from a work they didn't do. It's similar to thievery and shouldn't be condoned but I wouldn't throw all pirates in jail without even a trial for their "crimes". The world itself as it is has bigger problems than those (like homicide, corruption, war, rape, etcetera) to use jails to incarcerate people that pirate software.

 

5 minutes ago, MMX20 said:

 

@Honor_Hand Sorry for the misunderstanding. I know you need to resort to piracy and after reading what Cave_Johnson said, I agree. I know you don't like the way copyright is right now, but I understand you're from a poor country and need to do what you feel is right to you. So forgive me for the misunderstand about this.

1

 

It's alright. It's not the same for all us. Believe me that, if I had the means to purchase and collect all games legal, I would do so. Sadly, that's not fully the case. Our backgrounds are different. People here have enough trouble feeding themselves, let alone would think about giving what little money they earn to a corporation that is not giving them a proper service. That being said, I only download ROMs and ISOS from old games. All the current stuff, I make a great effort to buy them. I also have a nice shelve of games. Some of them bought second hand, some new. Same goes with anime, I own a very humble selection of manga and have even imported a number of figures from Japan. It's not like we don't want to support the industry or what we love, is just that it is sometimes incredibly difficult for us to do so.

 

But yeah, the topic is extremely polarizing and feelings will be involved in one way or another.

 

 

[SnowxSakura]

1 hour ago, Dr_Mayus said:

I do love consumers like that because they actually think paying someone lots of money to own the actual game is more legit than an emulator. 

 

Nintendo didn't get the money from you buying Earthbound on eBay so what is the difference than if you just downloaded a rom? 

Here's the difference, as quoted by nintendo's own legal page

 

"

People Making Nintendo Emulators and Nintendo ROMs are Helping Publishers by Making Old Games Available that are No Longer Being Sold by the Copyright Owner. This Does Not Hurt Anyone and Allows Gamers to Play Old Favorites. What's the Problem?

The problem is that it's illegal. Copyrights and trademarks of games are corporate assets. If these vintage titles are available far and wide, it undermines the value of this intellectual property and adversely affects the right owner. In addition, the assumption that the games involved are vintage or nostalgia games is incorrect. Nintendo is famous for bringing back to life its popular characters for its newer systems, for example, Mario and Donkey Kong have enjoyed their adventures on all Nintendo platforms, going from coin-op machines to our latest hardware platforms. As a copyright owner, and creator of such famous characters, only Nintendo has the right to benefit from such valuable assets."

 

https://www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp#download_rom

 

It all comes down to the fact that downloading ROMs are ILLEGAL, second hand goods are not

Edited March 2, 2019 by SnowxSakura

[Dr_Mayus]

5 minutes ago, SnowxSakura said:

Here's the difference, as quoted by nintendo's own legal page

 

"

People Making Nintendo Emulators and Nintendo ROMs are Helping Publishers by Making Old Games Available that are No Longer Being Sold by the Copyright Owner. This Does Not Hurt Anyone and Allows Gamers to Play Old Favorites. What's the Problem?

The problem is that it's illegal. Copyrights and trademarks of games are corporate assets. If these vintage titles are available far and wide, it undermines the value of this intellectual property and adversely affects the right owner. In addition, the assumption that the games involved are vintage or nostalgia games is incorrect. Nintendo is famous for bringing back to life its popular characters for its newer systems, for example, Mario and Donkey Kong have enjoyed their adventures on all Nintendo platforms, going from coin-op machines to our latest hardware platforms. As a copyright owner, and creator of such famous characters, only Nintendo has the right to benefit from such valuable assets."

 

https://www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp#download_rom

 

It all comes down to the fact that downloading ROMs are ILLEGAL, second hand goods are not

Well it is a good thing  I don't download ROMs...but you also have to remember that most of these people that resell on eBay don't pay taxes and that is illegal.

[SnowxSakura]

16 minutes ago, Dr_Mayus said:

Well it is a good thing  I don't download ROMs...but you also have to remember that most of these people that resell on eBay don't pay taxes and that is illegal.

Paypal automatically reports income over 20,000$ to the IRS when you sell on ebay, even between multiple seller accounts. The IRS will also report that same income to your state's government for local taxes. You will also receive a 1099K in the mail to fill out.

 

"

Internal Revenue Code (IRC) Section 6050W states that all US payment processors, including PayPal, are required by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to provide information to the IRS about certain customers who receive payments for the sale of goods or services through PayPal.

PayPal is required to report gross payments received for sellers who receive over $20,000 in gross payment volume AND over 200 separate payments in a calendar year. In order to help you understand these information reporting obligations, we have prepared the following FAQs. After reviewing the following FAQs, we recommend you consult your tax advisor to assess tax implications of Form 1099-K reporting."

 

https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/irs6050w

 

not sure how it goes for other countries though

Edited March 2, 2019 by SnowxSakura

[PooPooBlast]

I mean... Regardless of how successful your company is or how filthy rich you are, I wouldn't want somebody stealing my ideas or hard work that got me to this position and bank on it. So yea imo the hard crackdown on piracy as well as copying someone else's work is warranted and justified regardless of the outcome. 

 

It's also rule #1 in the education system. Don't plagiarize. 

[Fing3rButt3r3]

9 minutes ago, PooPooBlast said:

I mean... Regardless of how successful your company is or how filthy rich you are, I wouldn't want somebody stealing my ideas or hard work that got me to this position and bank on it. So yea imo the hard crackdown on piracy as well as copying someone else's work is warranted and justified regardless of the outcome. 

 

It's also rule #1 in the education system. Don't plagiarize. 

Yeah, that's why my piggy avatar and everything is legitimately my own creation so I wont be called out for plagiarizing anyones character or anything. But those rules/laws are different right?

[Sanetsuken]

1 hour ago, MMX20 said:

@Honor_Hand Oh, so you support the cause of companies losing money thanks to piracy? I don't support piracy, not one bit. Piracy is what ruining companies. I always buys stuff the legal way, even through subscriptions  While roms and emulators are okay, piracy is not okay at all. Piracy should be banned from the web forever and forgive me for being harsh on this, but those who resort to piracy or support it, should be arrested, declared guilty without a trial and locked away forever.

 

I'm sorry, but piracy disgusts me so much that I feel it isn't right. This topic reminds of those fools from Nintendo Life who think piracy is AOK. Piracy may be okay to some, but it's also not so okay to many others who want to buy games the honest way.

 

 

I'll take the jailtime if you take the public flogging for enabling the absolute vast amount of greed prevalent in the videogames industry, an industry mind you, that has taken to taking out content of games that are finished and selling them back to you as a consumer piecemeal.

 

On topic though I used to pirate when I simply couldn't afford buying all the games more or less blind (this was before I learned to understand what a game was like before release or something) and with demos rapidly dying out I instead pirated the game, played until I was satisfied and deleted it. Once I got a job I ended up buying the games I've previously pirated to a massive degree. Don't regret it a second.