Writer, game designer, engineer, bisexual tranthing, FFXIV addict
OC: Anna Verde - Primal/Excalibur, Empyreum W12 P14
Mare: E6M76HDMVU
. . .
i do not recognize the ability of corporations to own ideas. corporations cannot have ideas. only people can have ideas.
therefore, once every single human being who contributed to a creative work leaves the company that claims to "own" it, it enters public domain. because the company that initially created it — that particular group of people — no longer exists
this is why doom is abandonware
Does this apply too if the company itself no longer exists and all the people that contributed moved on to other companies? I can think of a few visual novels that consequently fall under this, despite the changing of publisher hands (multiple times) trying to claim its now theirs.
Mostly agree?
"Corporations can own ideas" is an extremely fishy proposition, and seems like it mainly functions as a way of letting companies alienate creators from their work.
On the other hand, I don't know how to disentangle that from the proposition "creators can transfer ownership of their work," which I have... complicated feelings about. It's not clear that it makes philosophical sense. Then again, it does provide a useful avenue for creators to make money from their ideas.
I think I know what you mean. "Artists need to be compensated for their work under the current systems of capitalism" is an important requirement to hold on to. I guess the question is "Is copyright transfer the best way to achieve that?"
artists are mostly not compensated for their work under the current system — so much creative work is done for salary and then goes on to make billions of dollars for the company over the course of decades. game developers and artists don't get royalties
taylor swift doesn't own her own recordings of her own songs! bethesda got mad at romero for releasing unused assets for the game that he made and that nobody at bethesda worked on! deeply perverse, ownership just passed around as an Asset to extract value from
Good question, to which my answer is "almost certainly not," but I haven't really thought through the policy implications. Especially as they apply to collaborative works.
For starters, though, book publishing seems like a saner model. Authors generally retain the rights to their work and make money by licensing them to a publisher (tv studio, movie studio, etc), not selling them outright.
of course. and what about licencing to another individual then divorcing from the idea, will that individual retain rights still independant from the company?
Also there's the weird fucking taint situation that occurs with things like American McGee's Alice, a game based on public-domain content where American McGee is forbidden from doing a sequel to it because EA somehow owns the rights to the game IP but doesn't want to make another Alice game on their own.
