Hacker News Reader

Comment by lesser23 | Hacker News Reader

Why shouldn’t old art be permitted into the public domain to encourage improvement and innovation?

Draconian Mickey Mouse copyright law has likely stifled more innovation that we could possibly imagine. Much like patent law there should be a strict, non-renewable period where a company can recoup their cost and make profit. Then it is introduced to the public domain.

Not “allowing people to play NES games for free” is rent seeking, innovation stifling behavior that extends far beyond simple NES games.

Further, why shouldn’t I be allowed to share a game I rightfully own? If I do not own it, then I lease it. If I was not made aware of that then it is fraud. The ethics are simple: When buying is not owning, piracy is not theft. Simple as that.

View on HN

It's proof enough about the damage IP law did to culture to see current major American cultural artifacts being 50 year old star wars and even older Marvel comics. That's what current teenager's grandfathers watched.

Like WH40k emperor, the American mass culture is a rotting corpse propped up by copyright law owned by megacorps. Any reformation would force the companies to compete and create new things again.

The grandparent specifically rejected letting the Mario IP enter the public domain. So whether or not it should, that's a completely different discussion from the one being held here.

You can share a game you own even if it is still under copyright.

I'm saying there's a middle ground--or could be, if the laws were changed--where companies can keep their IP, but reselling and rent-seeking on decades old creations wouldn't be possible.

For example, 20 year old Mario games would be free for all to appreciate and preserve, but Nintendo can still get value out of their exclusive Mario IP, but only if they're making new games--and that's the important part, Nintendo would have to keep making new games, they can't just resell the same decades old games over and over.

That's the trade we make as a society. Copyright is a pretty big infringement on true freedom (think, anarchy freedom), but society gives up freedom to copy in exchange for people and companies creating new things. If companies aren't making new things, but are just rent-seeking, then let's end the trade and just let people be free to copy. Because we're not giving up our freedom to copy so you can rent-seek for the next 150 years, we're doing it so you can create new things.

Is Mario art?

Putting that question aside: why should an artist be required to make their creations free for anyone to use after a certain period of time? Why are their wishes at best secondary? Now, to be clear: I am pro-emulation. If someone is no longer selling a game, I see no ethical problem with pirating it. I don't, however, think anyone has a right to the game simply by virtue of it existing.

And you can share your copy of SMB3. You can lend someone your cart or give it away. No one will stop you. No law will punish you. But that's not the same thing as dumping the cart's contents and putting them online for anyone with a computer to download.

I don’t particularly care either way but I can see the argument that any human no matter how brilliant is a product of the society he/she was raised and thus purely personal ownership does not exist. Your work is our work, we just play pretend for a few decades but in the end the pieces return to the box they came from.

A different question to ask is why the public is obligated to enforce artist's rights in perpetuity? And don't forget that artworks don't just spawn from a single mind - they are buit upon existing, freely available art and general culture, which isn't a subject to special protection in the first place.

> why should an artist be required to make their creations free for anyone to use after a certain period of time?

If it’s digital it’s free by default, even protected IP that isn’t digital is often cheap to copy or substantially replicate

So a better question is, why should people be prevented from making copies of things they like at their own expense forever?

The rights we give creators over their creations are not fundamental rights, they’re legal rights given because society decides the positives (incentivising creation, enabling creation to be an industry) outweigh the negatives (artificially restricting the flow of information, reducing and gatekeeping access to valuable art and knowledge, etc.).

There’s no particular reason to believe that the optimal solution here is either a complete lack of “IP” protection or giving creators absolute control and exclusivity in perpetuity.

It’s almost certainly neither, but IMO it’s quite clearly much less protection than creators currently enjoy.

> why should an artist be required to make their creations free for anyone to use after a certain period of time?

This will never be required. An artist is free to keep their art for themselves and never make a copy.

Once an artist has distributed a copy however, the question becomes, why aren't other people free to do things they are capable of doing, like making additional copies?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com