Purchase rights to commercicial episodes and make them GPL

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SupFanat
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Purchase rights to commercicial episodes and make them GPL

Post by SupFanat »

No, this suggestion isn't for my sake. I don't care at all if Commander Keen costs $5 (AFAIR) or it's free. $5 is almost nothing for something which you pay only once and then use forever without annoying DRM. The fun is worth $5, I can easily afford this price.

It's only about your ideology. Would you like to spend some money for ideological reasons? I think this could happen. For me the ideology doesn't matter, it's much cheaper and easier to spend $5 once instead of spending much more for the rights but I wouldn't be surprised if I found news that all Commander Keen games are now officially free except to Commander Keen 6.

Do I want this to happen? If I found such poll I'd say "yes".

And now good news for you all - If I ever find any possibility rights for any Commander Keen for some tiny symbolic price, say $20 for all non-free Commander Keen games together I will buy it and declare as GPL. I know you'll thank me for it.
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lemm
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Post by lemm »

Okay, but I think the rights to the original Keen games would cost more than $20.
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Post by SupFanat »

I think so, too. But it's only an example of symbolic price.
So if the price of these rights was negligible compared to my wealth (only the relation matters, not the absolute value), I'd do it in order to counteract the perceived perpetual copyright issue which I don't like.

I think there's too little public domain. While it doesn't matter practically, theoretically I think there should be more public domain and not less.
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Post by SupFanat »

So... at last I could sleep a bitt so now I'm writing some details.
The reason for my idea "purchase the rights and free it from copyright completely is not because I want the price of Commander Keen on Steam to fall from $4.99 to $0.00 if Steam allows free games at all. These $5 don't matter because of many reasons
- you can only pay once and then use it forever completely offline and free DRM
- the fun from Commander Keen is worth these $5. (I personally feel that it's worth about $20 - $30)
- and the most important point. Seriously, I even doubt very much that this Steam pack is the standard way to get Commander Keen. I think that the most users simply pirate Commander Keen 2, 3 and 5 but no one admits it because it's considered a shame on this forum. Also I doubt very much that anyone is ever going to enforce the copyright of any Commander Keen game, even still sold episodes 2, 3 and 5. At most they could ask some site owner to take it down and only sue him if he aggressively refuses. But I think that no one is going to sue the users who just download these games for personal use
Last edited by SupFanat on Sat Sep 26, 2015 3:22, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by Lunick »

Do you think Zenimax would actually want to give up the rights to Commander Keen? lol

Go find Commander Keen 6 first.
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Post by SupFanat »

Why not? The rights are only commercial good and not something sacres. They will sell it if someone is going to pay them enough money for it. The only question is "how much money?". Surely if Mark Zuckerberg offered them $1.000.000 they would be glad to sell these right.
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Post by SupFanat »

Why not? The rights are only commercicial good. They will sell it if someone is going to pay them enough money for it. The only question is "how much money". I use absurd example to make it.

Commander Keen 6? It would be funny as well but again only for those who care about formalities. Most users agree openly that Commander Keen 6 should be pirated because there's really no other way to get it. And ethically I think that perceived perpetual copyright is a problem. Copyright should exist but it should be considered as something temporary. Unfortunatety today's extemely long copyright expiration terms are designed to depopularize the feel that copyright for any given object is temporary. :(

PS. I'm not nervous at all while writing this post. The opposite is true - I wrote this post only to stop being nervous.
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Re: Purchase rights to commercicial episodes and make them G

Post by troublesomekeen »

SupFanat wrote:And now good news for you all - If I ever find any possibility rights for any Commander Keen for some tiny symbolic price, say $20 for all non-free Commander Keen games together I will buy it and declare as GPL. I know you'll thank me for it.
That makes my day. Best post I ever read. :lol
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Commander Keen in... Canteloupe Quest!
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Post by SupFanat »

There are two very different ways to estimate the value of Commander Keen.
Based on the fun Commander Keen deserves some price, IMHO it's about $20 to $30.
But based on the ideology that perpetual copyright shouldn't be allowed, all Commander Keen games should be GPL. I have no problem if Keen can be bought on Steam for $4.99 but this money is used for other purposes - everything you sant - but please not to support perpetual copyright.
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Post by Paramultart »

There should be some law prohibiting big corporations from owning copyrights.

All they do is ruin art.

Tom Hall created Keen's entire premise, yet has zero rights to its usage.

That's bullcrap.

Heck, I heard even the "Happy Birthday Song" is copyrighted, despite the fact
that whoever came up with it is long since passed.

Companies are so obsessed with money that they cling on to every last
IP in their possession, at the expense of the entire fanbase keeping that IP alive.

Then, they don't even do anything with the IP, because obviously a new Keen game
wouldn't be profitable enough.

UGGHHH!!! Stupid butthole Carmack should have relinquished the rights to
Keen while he was still in a position of authority.

Now that yellow-fevered rocket loving nerd is having gay orgies with
Mark Zuckerturd and working on useless VR technology, while eating
his stupid Domino's pizza in an "I don't believe in God, but I play blackjack
and alienate my friends" manner.

RUMPLE STILTSKIN!!!!!
"Father Mabeuf was surveying his plants"
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Post by SupFanat »

So I have no problem if $4.99 was used to support the community. If it was so I wouldn't have any problem with $5. As soon as I get somewhat more money I'm even willing to donate a bit for authors of best ever mods - Terror of Outer Space and The Eight Accumulators as sign of thank for fun - same with some fangame - I don't remember how it's called but it's like Keen 6 with broken moving platforms.

Benefits of official Steam Commander Keen pack compared to piracy:
- feeling of "honesty" to the copyright holder
- dealing with fear of lawsuits
- there's no risk to confuse between version

An important drawback:
- the renevue is used for destructive purpose. If you decide to buy Commander Keen Steam pack you're financing the evil perceived perpetual copyright system. I don't want to support this system with my money so I decided for pirated version. If I ever decide to spend $5 for Commander Keen, I'd prefer to thank the creator of mod Terror of Outer Space personally!
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Post by SupFanat »

Initially as the games are new, ID Software had paid Tom Hall and others for crrating Commander Keen. Then they hope that renevue from sold copies exceeds the money which ID paid to programmers for making Commander Keen in order to get profit. But it's only hope - there's no legal right to profit. However by making such awesome games they typically do manage to get profit. For some time the copyright is reasonable thing to expect. But then there's a problem. By making copyright term so long the lawmakers managed to create the "normal" situation that copyright expiration is something theoretically possible but practically so rare that only very few experts ever have thoughts of copyright expiration.

In fact the copyright terms are intentionally made longer and longer to prevent copyright expiration. And this is an error. I think differently.

I love some amount of copyright expiration. Here's a list of good old items which I explicitly want to undergo
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Post by Roobar »

Wow! Haven't red so much mumbo-jumbo here lately.
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Post by Lava89 »

Paramultart wrote:There should be some law prohibiting big corporations from owning copyrights.
I see what you mean, but if you're a creator of something and owner of a "corporation", copyrights can be a very good thing. For instance, there's a big issue with game developers and them losing their IP rights to publishers. That's why devs like insomniac went to Microsoft with Sunset Overdrive, rather than Sony; which makes me glad that copyrights are there to help creators keep their stuff.

Now we are in a unique situation with Tom Hall and Keen. The problem with this doesn't lie within how copyrights work, rather a lack of foresight on Tom Hall's part-- he should've tried to get the IP rights to Keen before leaving ID, if the rest of the team had no intention of making more games. Back then he had more clout within the company. I also agree with you that Carmack is a major jerk for never giving them up when being CEO of ID.

I do realize that the past is the past and I'm not trying to bash Tom Hall for not getting the rights back then. I'm just trying to give an argument as to why copyrights can be a very good thing and that the issue with Keen doesn't mean that copyrights themselves are bad. There's also the issue about enforcing copyrights, i.e. whether people can be allowed to sing Happy Birthday or not.
SupFanat wrote:And now good news for you all - If I ever find any possibility rights for any Commander Keen for some tiny symbolic price, say $20 for all non-free Commander Keen games together I will buy it and declare as GPL. I know you'll thank me for it.
This sounds very good on paper. However there's one problem with this-- Commander Keen doesn't have a price tag-- at least according to Tom Hall. I recently had a conversation with him on Twitter about this.
Last edited by Lava89 on Sun Sep 27, 2015 5:20, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by SupFanat »

If I was Bill Gates I'd admit that Windows 8 is simply a fail for it's original purpose and since it's a fail instantly stop caring if it's pirated or not. I'd redefine it as historical document and set the price to zero to encourage people to use it as historical document. First fail since 27 years is acceptable loss. Ideally a law snould exist that fail products can't be copyrighted - it would encourage companies to stop trying to use fail products as source of renevue.
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