They’re not “self-imposed” if they’re illegally imposed by a tyrant.

a b rated movie about some old coots in NY.

What, you mean this?

It’s not “extra” if it’s a legal requirement.

More to the point, I’m not saying it has to be licensed as Free Software or that it has to be made immediately public. I’m saying that a copy needs to be sent to a government archive, regardless of how messy it is, so that the government can make it public later when the company doesn’t care anymore.

LOL, what? You’re the one trying to make a point here, not me. Spit it out. I’m not gonna do your fucking work for you!

It sounds like you’re trying to “hint” at the idea that a bunch of games are using Epic Online Services and/or the Online Subsystem Steam API associated with it, but beyond that I don’t understand what point you’re trying to make.

If you’re trying to obliquely cite that as some kind of counterexample where it’s reasonable for a game’s source code to remain secret just because part of it is that library, then no, it fucking isn’t. I can’t tell whether EOS has the source code available along with the rest of the Unreal engine or not, but if not, it ought to be and IDGAF about any excuses Epic might have for not making it so.

If you go full blyatski and outlaw personal ownership, you get Soviet Russia, a nation whose contribution to global culture has been a few ballets, some long depressing books and precisely one video game, because nobody is given incentive or even opportunity to create anything, so they don’t.

To be fair, Soviet Russia probably has a bunch more stuff than that; we just don’t know about it because it didn’t get translated and distributed to the West. The “Dr. Livesey Walk” meme is from a Soviet cartoon, for example.

I can only assume artists got funded by government grants or something, IDK. It probably did result in a lot less of it being created than in the West, though.

(Also, I think the ballets and books you’re alluding to might’ve been pre-Soviet?)

Anyway, I completely agree that copyright and patents are a compromise, and that the pendulum has swung way too far to the side of rights-holders at the moment.

This would be the only type creative work that would be burdened like this.

It’s the only type of creative work that needs to be burdened like this, as all other types of works have always been “self-contained” (for lack of a better term) with no continued reliance on the publisher after the purchase.

Ditto with older games, BTW: you’ll notice that this “Stop Killing Games” movement didn’t start until the game industry started using tactics like DRM and “live service” architectures to forcibly wrest control away from the gamers. Before that, people could just keep playing their cartridges and CDs and even digital downloads, and hosting multiplayer themselves using the dedicated server program included with the game, in perpetuity and everything was just fine.

The industry got fucking greedy and control-freakish, and this is the inevitable and just attempt for society to hold it accountable.

I find it paradoxical that we’re trying to save the gaming industry by burdening (mostly) small developers. Larger studio will no longer be able to abuse the system, but complying will be easy for them.

I find it weird that you’re making what seems to me to be a strawman argument about “burdening (mostly) small developers,” as I’d say they are mostly not the ones trying to do this bullshit where they try to retroactively destroy art and culture because it stops being profitable enough. Indie studios typically don’t design their games to use publisher-operated servers with ongoing costs attached in the first place, let alone to self-destruct when they shut off!

¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

If no such thing exists, they should create it.

Oh I see, you’re just a troll who keeps lying and spreading FUD. Reported.

Nobody can be forced to keep supporting their older stuff forever, assuming it is even possible.
There are solutions to keep a server online or to give ways to run a local server (a docker image comes to mind), but you cannot think a company will keep a server active after years to just make few dozens happy with all the implications.

No shit, Sherlock. That’s why the tenable and preferred option is for them to give it up once they’re done profiting so that the public can do it themselves instead.

I agree on the spirit of the initiative, but I cannot really see how it can carried out: my fear is that some types of game will not be sold anymore in EU: no legally sold copies, no legal obligation to keep the server online forever. And in this case we all lose something.

LOL, nothing but FUD. Game publishers made plenty of profit before they came up with this “live service” bullshit, and they’ll continue to make plenty of profit even after we stop allowing them to screw over everyone too.

In case you weren’t aware of it, the only reason we grant copyright to creative works in the first place is to encourage more works to be created and eventually enrich the Public Domain. If the works never reach it (because the publisher is using technological means to destroy it before copyright expires) then they have broken that social contract and don’t deserve to be protected by it in the first place.

These live service game publishers are trying to eat their cake and have it too, and they simply aren’t entitled to that. The fact that they’ve been getting away with this theft from the Public Domain is unjust and must stop.

It’s not even an issue of “orphaned works.” Every work becomes Public Domain eventually; that’s the point of it.

In fact (according to originalist American sensibilities, at least) the entire point of copyright law is “to promote the progress of science and the useful arts” (i.e., to enrich the Public Domain) to begin with! Allowing works to be copyrighted (essentially, borrowed back from the Public Domain temporarily so the creator can profit, thus incentivizing the creation of works) is merely a means to that end, not some sort of moral entitlement.

Why are you lying about what I wrote? I never claimed the publisher should be forced to maintain it forever.

What part of sending the source to the government archive did you not understand?

Yes.

If they don’t like it, they can keep supporting their older stuff. Or better yet, rethink their decision to impose a “live service” business model now that they’d actually be held accountable for it, and consider going back to giving users the means to run their own servers.

(Also, by the way, “security by obscurity” is bullshit. If disclosing their server-side code leads to exploits, that just means they’re fucking incompetent. I have no sympathy at all.)

The Public Domain isn’t a “license.” It’s simply the default state of a work when copyright is no longer being enforced for it. I’m saying that copyright should immediately expire for any published work that is no longer being made available by some entity with the right to do so (phrased carefully so as not to break copyleft licenses, BTW) and that anyone should be able to get it directly from a government archive of all Public Domain works.

As for selling Public Domain works, that’s always been allowed and I don’t see any particular reason to change it, provided that regulatory capture doesn’t result in the public archive being the digital equivalent of hidden away in a disused lavatory in a locked basement with a sign saying “beware of the leopard.” If the free option is prominent and well-known but you want to pay money for some reason anyway (in theory, because the person selling it added value in some way), that’s your business.

Games should be required to have reproducible source for all components (client and server) sent to whatever the European equivalent of the Library of Congress is, to be made available in the Public Domain whenever the publisher stops publishing them.

Because the FTC has been regulatory-captured.

Unless they write it carefully, all a law like that is going to do is further encourage the use of subcontractors as second-class employees.

I should come up with a “scam MAGA” business model. Damn ethics…

No, I mean the webinar. Is it going to be about the technology in general, or about Australia-specific government policies for installing it?

I wonder how applicable this would be to folks outside Australia?