For me, ________ is basically all sports games that have ever been broadcast. Most of them are just locked away somewhere, with literally no legal way for anyone to see them.
Libraries = you have a fundamental right to free media
The precedent is already established. Piracy is the modern library. Media and software ownership needs to be something like 3 years from public release. No, you can’t make one cool thing and exploit that for 100 years, and you can’t milk your mediocrity either. If your BS sucks, everyone will just wait for 3 years to consume it for free. So what, you suck at your job and need to find other work. If all software was open source after 3 years, the entire world would advance much more quickly and equally. Capitalism only works if everyone can enter, no one is too big to fail, and the consolidation is a guaranteed failure.
The infuriating thing is, I truly believe the dragons would make more money if they conceded to everything you just said. As it stands, collector’s style box sets still make a lot of money, and everyone knows that merch is where the really sweet cash gets raked in.
If they just hosted basically everything on the Internet, for everyone to watch, for free, that would massively increase the mindshare install base of all their media, which would make way more people likely to buy shirts, bobbleheads, posters, etc.
The profit margins on that stuff = ABSOLUTELY VAST, BEYOND ALL BELIEF. And the fucked up thing is, you sometimes DO see official merch being sold for properties that can’t be legally watched, anywhere. You already paid for that show to be made, possibly 60 years ago. You could increase those merch sales any time you want, just by letting people see it.
But dragons are gonna dragon. Hoarding behavior.
I broadly agree. I would generally want to push that out from three years to something more like ten years, just so that small creators can have the time to finish series they want to make without needing to rush, but I think that adults should be able to freely consume and remix the content they enjoyed as children.
Oh, and companies shouldn’t be able to hold a copyright. People make things, not companies. If a person makes a thing, they have made it and they deserve the right to it; maybe I would be amenable to a temporary but automatic license for work-for-hire which expires after a much shorter time (maybe the three years you mentioned).
If a company wants to monetize a property, they should appropriately compensate the people who made it. If they aren’t being fair about their compensation, the people should be able to take their intellectual property elsewhere.
Oh, and companies shouldn’t be able to hold a copyright. People make things, not companies
Agreed. At the very least, there should DEFINITELY be some heavy regulation, governing how companies can go about transferring the rights, between each other.
I have a horrible feeling that some of this problem comes down to the media dragons waiting for some moment of peak nostalgia, for each media property, only desiring to sell it to another dragon when it’s at its most valuable. It’s like a fucking commodity market, but for our childhood memories, instead of copper or soybeans.
That’s the only explanation I can think of, for why they wouldn’t always want to take our money. Dragon A owns the rights to a specific show, but they don’t actually operate a streaming platform. They just have their hoard of media rights that they’re sitting on. They could sell or lease this particular media property to Dragon B, who does have a streaming platform, and maybe Dragon B has always wanted to buy it. But Dragon A is waiting for the nostalgia peak to happen, so they can charge the highest price possible.
Finally, when the specific Millennial age cohort that remembers that specific show starts talking about it on social media a lot, and noticing that you can’t watch it anywhere, Dragon A finally does decide to sell it to Dragon B.
But then, of course, Dragon B will never be satisfied with the result. Even if they do see an actual jump in their subscriber numbers, which can be at least somewhat reliably tied to that media acquisition, it’ll never be enough to actually pay for the ridiculously inflated price they shelled out. So, of course, when the time comes to re-up those rights, they angrily refuse to pay anything to keep them.
Annnnnd the media goes back into the limbo hole, not to be seen again for another few decades.
It’s basically a bubble situation. Our memories are just a series of goddamned market bubbles, being speculatively traded by these monsters.
In my opinion, that’s just a side effect of the fact that media dragons have changed their business model. Rather than earning profits by making things, they’ve discovered that it’s less risky to earn profit by owning things, and that making things is just an unhappy prerequisite for continuing to hoard them. They’re not only dragons hoarding all the things, they’re very timid dragons hoarding all the things, not willing to step out of their cave to get more gold because it might mean that the gold they bring back won’t be as much as the gold they already have.
That’s why Zaslav is killing off completed movies for a tax break, and that’s why the cost of hosting or producing discs for beloved old properties isn’t worth what they can make off of it, and that’s why they continue to milk old IPs and adaptations even when they’ve gone far past the point where it would make financial sense to just come up with something new. I mean, they really only make something new so that they can own it later.
You’re right about it being a bubble. They’re exactly like landlords, and they’re contributing just as much to society.
I really don’t think 3 years would hurt anyone in any real way. No one is good at playing second fiddle. In reality, fan fiction and derivatives are not hurting anyone. You do not need any real protection. It is a hypothetical that I argue does not exist. First to market carries the momentum and if not, you probably didn’t do the job you may think you did. That is okay too. It is okay to fail and you should have the right to fail often without it being such a major investment and issue. You should be able to creatively exist like an open source repo where fan contributions are just a part of the process without worrying about ownership. You hold the repo as the original maintainer, they hold a fork. If they do it getter than you, the public will follow the better execution. Maybe your next idea will be better, maybe you’re in the wrong line of work. Those things should not be protected IMO.
The big thing that I’m worried about in the three year scenario is the company screwing over the little guy.
Think about a devoted, driven author you’re aware of who has to hold another job, who works for five years on their debut novel and desperately wants to finish a trilogy about it, but whose debut novel becomes popular, leading a multi-billion dollar company to produce an inferior sequel before the original writer can finish their own. With that much money, they could easily overwhelm marketing such that the original author’s follow-up would never be seen by most people.
This isn’t really a hypothetical; authors who grind away at a series part time with mild success for years and only become successful enough to quit their day job later? Companies taking a low-effort opportunity to capitalize on someone popular someone else did? Both of those things happen all the time.
Unlike FOSS software, where the only thing that matters is whether or not your code works better than the other repo’s code, the influence of marketing money on publishing can make or break a story, and the original author’s power in that realm is going to be incredibly weak.
I don’t know about that one. We live in a shitty feudal timeline without net neutrality or freedom of information. Anything you create is very limited in exposure scope. I could search for your exact project on the only two web crawlers google or microsoft either on their website or by proxy, and they will not give me results for your works. They are playing gatekeepers extorting you for exposure to an audience. You will never find success organically like in past eras when freedom of information was too hard to manage and succeed. Your echo chamber is small and growing it comes at a great cost in time and/or money. This means you either already have connections through networking and therefore momentum, or are over valuing and putting too much emotion into what you are trying to achieve, likely with unrealistic expectations.
Like I’ve been casually writing, and may start posting my story universe on Lemmy at some point. I don’t expect it to be popular or go anywhere. I know I’m a bit weird in perspective and have been encouraged to write by some. Maybe I’m naïve but if I create a story universe and others want to contribute it will likely be on a GPL. It is up to me to keep the story compelling and in my artistic control. Ultimately it is about gaining exposure and what you do with that exposure to capitalize off of it. Nothing about an extended copywriter is going to help you increase that exposure because there is no free mechanism for people to share your work. All of the corporate social platforms are connected. As soon as your posts appear commercial in nature they will be very limited in scope unless you pay them for exposure. That payment is more than you will ever make from the results. This is a feudal era and you are traveling a river with many warlords charging tolls far greater than the value of trade for the distance traveled. There is no public square for gathering that is free from corporate pick pockets and thieves. The exception being here, but here is too small to be relevant.
I still see the iterative freedom of a short ownership cycle as a far greater value to artists and creators. It goes both ways. You are much more likely to take the corporate garbage that places like Hollywood vomit out constantly and do a far better job with the stories and characters that they can. This leads to reforming change where audience momentum shifts away from the corporate industrial cattle farm of content to something neutral and centralized culturally that connects creative talent with an audience directly, and with less brand image nonsense like everyone is some two dimensional sitcom character of an artist and creator. You wouldn’t need to limit your creativity to your precious /s lotr :) little bubble but draw inspiration from other places as much as you want. You can even borrow characters, and make connections to other works with impunity. I think that is a much more entertaining and artistic environment that would benefit all. We need this kind of democratization if anyone wants to really succeed. Presently, success is a matter of bribery and connections. You are not a citizen in practice, but a serf behind many gatekeeper overlords that want you to invest yourself massively so they can profit from the massive tolls that will leave you no better off than where you started.
I mean, self-publishing is a viable way of becoming a published author specifically because this model works. But even worse, carving back intellectual property (and, crucially, ending corporate IP ownership) would make corporations desperate for new revenue streams; and jumping into a popular self-published story three years and a day after its original release, to drop a low-effort sequel and siphon off all of its popularity, while the original creator is struggling with two full time jobs trying to finish the sequel they originally came up with–well, that would be just the predatory thing a megacorp would do in this instance.
Yes, we desperately need net neutrality, and to return to an actually open web, but that’s a separate issue.
I guess that is where we differ most. I want to see the corporations fail precisely because the low effort benchmark they exist under is so low any alternative will beat them. Like I don’t care for any video games coming out of any current company. I won’t buy a subscription to anything whatsoever. I refuse to be a serf in neo feudalism. I pay attention if someone does an indie game that is creative, but I despise venture capital and investment banker art. To me, the the people in this space, on both sides, corpo and consumer are all irrelevant imbeciles. I don’t want to be a part of their bubble for all the money in the world. I simply do not care about them and value my freedom over their tyranny even if it means I’m homeless in a gutter as one of the last citizens in the crush of the digital dark ages.
I also want to see media dragons fail. But I don’t think you’re paying attention to what I’m saying their advantage truly is. They can carpet-bomb the world with marketing for their low-effort knockoff such that the genuine article doesn’t get a chance, and most consumers (who don’t really know or care about ownership or authorial intent) won’t know the difference. And then the person who actually labored over that property loses big.
I paid for Amazon prime, Paramount+, and “Ad Free” and it still fucking gives me ads!
I shit-canned Prime on the spot when they announced ads. They already lock most their content off behind further paywalls anyway.
Jellyfin ain’t got no ads though.
Horribly, an argument can be made that ad revenue is one of the only metrics that can really underscore which shows people are actually watching, and encourage the dragons to retain that media, rather than let it slip back into the limbo pit.
What?
Are you trying to say they have no stats on what people stream on their platform if it isn’t connected to an ad? Because that would be completely insane.
No, I think they mean that people interacting with a skip ad button is one of the only ways to tell if someone is actually watching what is being streamed. I think even that is flawed, but also the incentive to have a script click through ads if you’re not actually watching is pretty low.
Oh, I’m sure they have those stats. And, if your service just raked in money from monthly fees without ads, it would only take a tiny amount of division and multiplication to figure out how much revenue a highly-watched show is likely supporting.
But we’re talking about people who graduated with MBAs, here. Not people with real degrees. Not people with functioning brains.
Unless a VP can point to an actual dollars-accrued-per-click number (and suitably screech like the chimp in a suit that he is), the view numbers alone aren’t going to matter.
Tell it to Firefly fans.
You know how mythology often has creatures acting according to arcane, often senseless, and incomprehensible but utterly unyielding rules?
… you might be onto something here.
The lizert people are at it again
All creative works should become public domain in 18 years. Capitalism requires infinite growth, right? Well, there ya go! See how that helps?
Can’t argue with that logic. If we’re going to say “nah, we’ll just be continuing to pump CO2 into the sky and hollowing out the ground for every scrap of precious minerals, until we literally strip the whole globe of every resource we can scavenge from it, and we’ve poisoned every liter of drinkable water, BECAUSE THE ECONOMY DEMANDS IT,” then yeah, we should be placing a similar demand on infinitely growing creative resources, as well.
The irony, of course, being that CREATIVE RESOURCES ACTUALLY ARE FUCKING FUNCTIONALLY INFINITE.
Keep feeding these artist motherfuckers and they’ll keep giving you fucking ideas. Goddamn. That should seem like a sweet deal, right?
Imo it should be only like 1 year if the owner of the media is not providing it for sale anywhere.
Drivers and software packages for older hardware. I know we can’t expect any company to support old stuff forever, but they incessantly purge driver downloads to “save hosting costs” and it makes a lot of retro but usable hardware paperweights. And since their “private intellectual property” they never post it to any kind of open source site, regardless of how old…
This is why the Internet Archive is so incredibly important. If anyone is going to donate money to any causes, put that shit HIGH UP ON THE PRIORITY LIST.
I was going to say Dino-Riders, which was one of my favorite cartoons in the late 80s that I never hear anyone talk about any more, but apparently most of the episodes are on YouTube right now! I guess that’s what I’ll be doing this weekend lol I had a bunch of the toys when I was a kid!
most of the episodes are on YouTube right now! I guess that’s what I’ll be doing this weekend
This section of your comment sums up the problem better than my meme ever could. That shit is on YouTube right now. Very key words. “Right now,” like, at this particular moment.
And you’re going to watch it this weekend.
As in, before the dragons take that shit down.
Oh I’m well aware lol I’m going to try and watch it all before it gets taken down!
Install youtube-dl or whatever the most recent fork of the downloading software is and archive all the episodes for yourself.
Yeah, that one
What are you doing, step crystal?
The entire Unreal series of games.
Cough fuck Epic Games. You used to be cool.
YES. FUCKING YES, OH MY FUCKING GOD.
At this point, I would even accept having Unreal Tournament just exist as…I can’t believe I’m really going to say this…as a fucking mode, within Fortnite.
HEAR ME OUT, OKAY? I’ve never fucked with Fortnite, but it apparently supports several highly diverse gameplay modes, which could already be standalone things. If all us Millennials could just queue for UT matches, we would at least consider installing that shit, without ever touching Sky Bus Floss Dance Battle Mode, or whatever the fuck else.
Sigh. But they would absolutely lock the WarCow behind a fucking paywall. And that would make me sad. Because I’m not paying extra for that shit.
EDIT: Also, there’s no way they would give us the option to just have everyone show up as the original UT characters, regardless of what their player has selected. Epic would insist on all the incredibly random Fortnite skins being forced onto your monitor. And all the goddamn dances and shit.
It would be this horrifically cursed experience of playing Facing Worlds, just like the good old days…but then Darth Vader, Tony the Tiger, Deadmau5, and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man appear, and all start fucking twerking on the flag.
Fuck-a-that.
Though the UT4 Alpha is technically defunct, there is the UT4 Unofficial Update (GitHub.com/timiimit/UT4UU-Public) if you fancy some deathmatch. Carnage Dallas Hub is going off right now with more than 20 players. Plenty of remade maps at this point too (note the unofficial update is the only way to play UT4 as official servers were turned off last year)
Yo, I might have to check that out. It warms my heart, just knowing people aren’t letting it go. Gotta keep that 1990s PC gaming spirit alive, somehow. Arena shooters are to my generation as drive-in movies are to the Boomers.
Not to make unfair comparisons, or anything, but a LOT fewer people caught the clap at LAN parties, compared to the ol’ drive-in. I mean, it’s not zero, but it’s definitely less.
The fact that there were a lot more women at drive-ins compared to LAN parties probably has something to do with it.
Also, people notice you going AFK because you’re taking a fat noodle up your doodle a lot quicker than they notice you aren’t really watching the movie.
Just play Xonotic or Warsow or something.
I’ve tried various ones like that, but the player base is tiny and fragile. That’s not anyone’s fault, but it is what it is. I’ve bought enough of the ones that never built up a solid playerbase that I’m entirely gunshy about it, now.
EDIT: Oh, wait. Those are free. Okay, nevermind.
Also, I think I did play Warsow, years and years ago. I should give those a try. How is the playerbase looking for them? Are there enough people to find good matches, at least on the weekends?
EDIT 2: Actually, you know what? Your suggestion really doesn’t go very well with the whole premise of this conversation. We’re talking about greedy media rights-hoarders, keeping us from consuming very specific shows/movies/games, from our youth. Not genres or categories. Specific titles.
What you’re doing is pushing a Trojan Horse into the conversation. At first glance, your suggestion looks like it fits with the rest of the conversation, but I think it’s really just a way for you to sneak Free Software Fundamentalism into the discussion.
I appreciate the Open Source and Free Software movements, but we’re talking about specific pieces of media, here. If we’re lamenting that it’s difficult for us to play “Unreal Tournament,” it’s because we want to play THAT SPECIFIC GAME. With all due respect, it’s not the place for you to pull out the Free Software Fundamentalist playbook, and start going “ackshually, you don’t need that specific game you have real memories from. This supposedly equivalent Open Source replacement is just as good!”
If that’s really not what you were doing, I apologize. But it kinda smells that way.
Bro. I just like these games and they follow the same playbook as usual tournament. Well they’re really closer to Quake.
I do be into free software though. Money actively works to make things worse.
Money actively works to make things worse
In many cases, but not all cases. I want money to go to the people who are actually responsible for innovation and creation.
You, on the other hand, are clearly one of these head-fully-in-the-clouds people, who literally want all the world’s highly skilled software engineers to have full time jobs at Wal-Mart, then take a short fifteen minute breather, before putting in an 8-hour volunteer shift, developing all the software that we’ll all gleefully use for free.
“Keep that nose to the grindstone, engineers. But no patents for you. We’ve decided ALL patents are evil. In fact, no compensation AT ALL, for you. You’ll be rich in spirit, knowing how many people are benefitting from the sweat off your brains.”
You sure seem to know all about me. /s
If everyone did real jobs, the rest of us could have the time to do our art without the stranglehold of the entertainment industry. Instead features get removed year after year.
Money doesn’t favor engineers. It favors domineers.
If I made a piece of software worth ten minutes of your time, how much more valuable is it when the entire world can have it and use it however they like than if it’s just the people who pay me and have to abide my restrictions? Do you think none of our 8 billion people are making good things for the sake of it? You’d be ignoring those of us who already do despite the existing friction.
You can crack the money whip and make your people build you a pyramid in the desert, but I’d rather pass around seeds and let trees grow wherever there’s dirt and water.
I realize that I got us waaaaay off on the wrong foot, and I want to stop it right now.
I have been guilty of doing what everyone left of the exact political center always does: pick fights with other people on the same basic team.
I mean, maybe you even consider yourself a libertarian, or fully unsubscribe yourself from any of these terms. Whatever. The point is, I think you and I both agree that the major problem in ALL industries = 1% capitalists, sucking up resources and being basically the only ones getting paid, despite doing essentially none of the labor.
I recognize that I was being incredibly rude to you. I apologize. Can you at least admit that maybe I’m not guilty of “cracking the money whip,” just because I want to see the actual engineers and creators being rewarded and living good lives, rather than eking out horrible existences, and yet still being expected to create all the software, gratis?
Basically, I don’t know how you would fill in the following blank: “In my vision of utopia, software engineers would get the money and resources they need to live from _______.”
I honestly don’t fully know how to fill in that blank, myself. But I’m just saying, I don’t believe the best idea is to have people acquiring all the complex and complicated skills necessary to make complex and complicated products…but then having to work jobs that are completely unrelated to software engineering, and only donating their truly rare engineering skills, in their spare time.
If anyone is to receive profits from software, it should be the engineers who create it. Just as a wild stab in the dark, I would suggest that software patents should still exist, but should be drastically cut from their current length of 20 years. And they should only be held by the actual people who do the actual innovation and creation. And they should get all the related money, rather than some goddamn holding company who employs them. And no copyrights for software (with the exception of narrative elements, in games or interactive entertainment software).
You might still disagree. You might still believe it really would be better for people to drive a truck, or pick fruit in the fields, or be a hairdresser, or whatever, and literally just donate their time and skills to make software. I believe that would be impossible, in the case of incredibly complex stuff, like most modern hardware drivers, advanced simulation and rendering software, etc. You have to devote literal years of study time to gain the background that you need, to even begin to contribute to that stuff. There just won’t be enough pure, part-time volunteers for that.
But maybe you think those engineers should simply be paid by the state. I’m actually open to that, even though that surely has its own pitfalls.
All I’m saying is, I’m not some kind of raging anarcho-capitalist, just because I personally want the engineers to get compensated. But even then, not to the point of excessive, stupid wealth. I am on the “eat the rich” team, through and through.
Username not relevant
For me, it was an obscure Canadian tv show from the 80s called ‘The Odyssey’ - but I contacted the rights-holders and they sent me a dvd set of the show for $50.
Fun fact: Ryan Reynolds has a small part in it
glowers at Nintendo
Anything financed with public funds.
There’s no reason why a public broadcaster’s archive isn’t all digitized and made available for a fee (to finance the project) to people living in their country.
Same for scientific research and studies for various projects.
The reason a lot of those shows is actually pretty fucked. They want ownership to the shows because any product still sold based on the show still gives them profits. However, if they put up access to the show, views = royalties they need to pay to the creators + licensing costs. The profit for that isnt enough and they wanna funnel more views onto more popular media to concept profits on shows with the lowest costs + has the highest profit to cost ratio.
Tldr: it’s about appeasing shareholders, as it always is.
My ____ is Iron Chef with the original music. It was from the movie “Backdraft” so they had to remove it from all the YouTube versions, but they also cut out the sound of Chairman Kaga’s shoes and his bite of the pepper.
They ruined the show because there’s somebody out there who still wants their pound of flesh from a movie that’s 33 years old.
1st season of supernatural, simply because they didn’t secure the streaming rights for the music. First season doesn’t hit the same with the alternate music.
Wooooooow. That’s just depressing.
Also, I think the universe might be trying to get me to rewatch “Backdraft.” This is like the fifth time this year that I’ve run across random references to that movie, and I keep thinking “I’ve forgotten almost all of that shit. And I only ever saw the 4:3, standard definition TV edit, anyway.”
Of course, ya know, I will have to just hope there is a way to watch it.
If you watch it, make sure to pirate it so the assholes who are keeping me from that delicious crunch don’t get any money. Fuck them.
Insert willy coyote vs acme refrence:
I want to watch “dark angel” from James Cameron, but like in decent quality thank you
YOOOOOOOOOOOOO, I had entirely forgotten about that show.
I saw it really young, I always forget that show wasn’t a fever dream, along with Jake 2.0
Not exactly a fit for the context but Angus was a really (REALLY) well done YA/coming of age film. The protagonist was a believable marginal/outsider character without being a caricature-he’s overweight, but he’s strong and plays football, his dad is gone and his mom is a long haul trucker so he mostly is raised by his grandpa. His love object is a girl who ultimately calls him out for objectifying her and it’s handled really well.
Because of some weird rights issues it only ever got a VHS release. I’d love to be able to show it to my kids.
Says online it’s available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play, or Vudu. Is it not available where you live, or is the issue that there’s no physical media? If it’s available you can buy it and yo-ho-ho guilt free, or just yo-ho-ho guilt free if there’s no option to buy.
