I'd argue so! The music producers made their money, the original company made their money. The game isn't sold or updated anymore. Music was part of the game, it stays part of the game. Noone is profiting from it (with this clause, ie: non-commercial is the main thing for community/public domain takeover). For the music and similar assets the clause is usually already clear even nowadys, as long as the music is being displayed alongside the game, it's fine (that's how 99% of the music copyright works nowadays with modern games re streaming, unless the music company is backwards because they are greedy).

We need to kill indefinite (or even long) copyright and the music industry has been one of the worst offenders.

If you are talking about music licensing deals for a specific game, usually they expire after a set amount of time, similar to certain assets like cars. Now if you are talking about the music itself, you have think about the composition rights and performance rights so to speak. The first is tied to the composer and the sheet music while the second could be tied to the people who performed in the actual recording . A particular performance could become abandonware if the master is lost, no reissues are made or the record company is acquired and its records get tangled in legal issues that prevent new reissues. For the second part, a musician can reconstruct the original composition sheet with enough time, but it would hard to replicate the original performance.

Once you start changing the rules you’re no longer constrained by the old rules. Abandonware going free inherently means all the IP used by the game is free to use as part of the game. It doesn’t require individual assets to be free independent of the game.

I don't have all the answers. IP rights are complete shit show. My point was that instead of trying to "fix it all" or "chuck it all" (which I don't think political reality will allow anytime soon), maybe we can start by slicing off a few less contentious, smaller wins (like non-commercial, out-of-print >20 years, code only).

Every sentence you wrote was a question. Do you have a solution to suggest to any of your questions? Or even an idea on how come up with or evaluate proposed solutions to any of them?

> the characters? does an abandoned ET game open up the franchise to public domain?

I'm confused. I specifically called those examples out and suggested one way they could maybe be carved out to avoid being shut down by that exact concern. Even if my suggested 'way to carve' is dumb, my point was that lack of granularity, prevents carving out anything at all. Do you agree more granularity of some kind in copyright would help?

> Isn't more creativity literally supposed to be the point of copyright?

Yes. The original idea of copyright was to encourage more original creation AND later modification by granting exclusivity for a limited time in exchange for making it non-exclusive forever after.

The Copyright Act of 1790 set the duration at 14 years, with a 14 year extension if the author was still living after the first 14. It's been extended 4 times and is now 70 years after the death of the author or 95 years after publication / 120 years after creation. I agree it's now a cruel mockery of the original intent.

I have no hope this is fixable in any major way because it's now a fully bi-partisan issue. For decades now, RIAA/MPAA/SPA lobbyists have demonstrated absolute, long-term control of both major party's IP-related votes (despite what any politician claims while campaigning). There are only a handful of politicians for whom this is a hill they're willing to shed political capital on. And, in an honest moment, they'll admit the congressional process is stage managed such that regardless which party is in power at the moment (or even a super-majority), meaningfully restricting copyright closer to its original intent will always lose by at least one vote as long as the two-party duopoly controls the U.S government.

Given that sad, disgusting reality, my post was trying to suggest a way to claw back the smallest, most limited win for non-commercial retro preservation that might: A.) Have the slightest chance of actually happening, and B.) Actually be the slightest bit better than the shit sandwich we have now. The ironic part of making any constructive suggestion to improve things even 1%, isn't that even THAT will almost certainly be killed by the RIAA/MPAA/SPA lobby anyway, it's that those who agree with me will bury it under objections it doesn't do enough (or doesn't abolish all IP rights).

>Shouldn't we want anyone to make all-new Need For Speed or Final Fantasy games?

We are currently seeing a microcosm of this in the indie space as we speak. I think the answer is a resounding "no". Not unless you can out-advertise all the fake or slop copies out there. The issue is less about the idea of building a moat and more about how it's clear that 99.999% of efforts will be anything but that.

>Or even if some random person wants to maintain an old piece of software that they didn't originally write: good!

Sure. That's pretty much done regardless of publisher intent. Modding is too much of a cat and mouse game to really bother with financially, and online games avoid it by owning the server to operate on.