While in the past doing a reprint of a book, movie or game was expensive and wasn’t worth if something wasn’t popular, now selling something on a digital store has only a small initial cost (writing descriptions and graphics) and after that there’s nothing more. So why publishers are giving up on free money?

I thought to those delisting reasons:

  1. Artificial scarcity. The publisher wants to artificially drive more sales by saying that’s a limited time sale. For example that collection that included sm64. super Mario Galaxy and super Mario sunshine on switch. The greedy publisher essentially said “you only have 6 months to get this game, act now” and people immediately acted like "wow, better pay $60 for this collection of 3 old games, otherwise they’ll be gone forever!” otherwise they would have been like “uhm, i liked super Mario sunshine but $60 for a 20 years old game? I’ll think about that”

  2. Rights issues. For books the translation rights are often granted for a limited time; same for music in games; or if it’s using a certain third party intellectual property. Publisher might decide that the cost for renewing the license is too high compared to projected sales, while the copyright owner instead still wants an unrealistic amount of money in a lump sum instead of just royalties. Example is Capcom DuckTales remastered, delisted because Disney is Disney.

  3. Not worth their time. Those sales need to be reported to governments to pay taxes and for a few sales, small publishers might prefer to close business rather to pay all the accounting overhead. Who’s going to buy Microsoft Encarta 99?

  4. Controversial content: there are many instances of something that was funny decades ago but now is unacceptable. Publisher doesn’t want to be associated with that anymore

  5. Compatibility issues. That game relied on a specific Windows XP quirk, assumed to always run as admin, writing their saves on system32, and doesn’t work on anything newer. The code has been lost and they fired all the devs two weeks after the launch, so they’re unable to patch it.

In all those cases (maybe except 5), the publisher and the copyright owners decided together to give up their product, so it should be legally allowed to pirate those products.

If I want to read a book that has been pulled from digital stores and is out of print, the only way to do is:

  1. Piracy (publisher gets $0 from me)
  2. Library (publisher gets $0 from me)
  3. Buying it from an ebay scalper that has a “near mint” edition for $100 (publisher gets $0 from me)

And say that I really want to play super Mario sunshine. Now the only way is to buy it used, even if they ported it to their latest game console and it would literally cost them nothing to continue selling it. But if I buy it used, Nintendo gets the exact same amount of money that they would if I downloaded it with an “illegal” torrent.

In short: they don’t want the money for their IP? Then people that want to enjoy that IP should be legally allowed to get it for free

  • onlinepersona@programming.devEnglish
    202·
    6 days ago

    I like the alternative better of “support or opensource it” as it can be expanded to nearly any product. You stop selling your game and thus don’t provide support to those that bought it? Better opensource that shit bud. You made some dropship product that sold 100k units but stop supporting it a year later because $reasons? Tough shit, opensource it bucko!

    Things like Amazon’s Astro business robots being bricked after a year would be much less interesting to companies. There are probably also a whole lot of devices out there that aren’t supported anymore and just junk, but could be serviced if they were opensource.

    Anti Commercial-AI license

    • tuhriel@infosec.pubEnglish
      8·
      5 days ago

      I really like the idea, Im currently struggling with the implementation. There are so many issues to cover:

      • who enforces the law? It needs to be worldwide (at least for some products)
      • how are mergers handled?
      • what to do if the company goes bancrupt or is closed otherwises? Who will outsource the code where? And who will be accountable
      • does that also count for private people? (e.g.: if I take a picture, I own the copyright for it, do I lose my copyright if I don’t sell the picture? Or does it only count if I sold it once? What if I sold it exclusively to someone?)
      • probably more

      There are so many loopholes which corps will use to get out of it :-(

      • Pup Biru@aussie.zoneEnglish
        6·
        5 days ago

        yeah the concept is great, but open sourcing often takes a lot of work. closed source code often relies on proprietary libraries etc and you can’t just publish them, or perhaps there are secrets embedded somewhere - even it source control history

        the concept is great, the implementation faces some pretty big logical challenges

        • onlinepersona@programming.devEnglish
          1·
          5 days ago

          yeah the concept is great, but open sourcing often takes a lot of work

          Why do you say that?

          closed source code often relies on proprietary libraries etc

          I don’t see how that matters. If you write code that depends on something and opensource it, your product might not be buildable/compilable/usable without it, but your code is still opensource, and that’s what matters. The same thing will go for the library: if the person/company that made the library stops supporting it, it has to become opensource as well.

          or perhaps there are secrets embedded somewhere - even it source control history

          That’s up to you to clean it up. It’s just like publishing any repository online.

          Anti Commercial-AI license

          • Pup Biru@aussie.zoneEnglish
            1·
            5 days ago

            yeah the concept is great, but open sourcing often takes a lot of work

            Why do you say that?

            because i’ve been involved in open sourcing products and libraries on many occasions

            closed source code often relies on proprietary libraries etc

            I don’t see how that matters. If you write code that depends on something and opensource it, your product might not be buildable/compilable/usable without it, but your code is still opensource, and that’s what matters.

            that’s not the way a lot of these things goes - especially when you start to talk about hardware. lots of times there are NDAs around even the interfaces to their libraries.

            or sometimes there’s things called “vendored” code, where the library is included with the source. sometimes that’s easy to pick apart, but sometimes it’s not, sometimes someone’s copied and changed code from the library and barely documented what’s been done

            code is often very messy. it’s easy to say ugh what shit devs! but that’s the reality, and we all write code sometimes that we look back on in a year and think it should have been a crime

            or perhaps there are secrets embedded somewhere - even it source control history

            That’s up to you to clean it up. It’s just like publishing any repository online.

            that’s what i’m saying - it’s not like open sourcing is free. open sourcing software has a cost. people asked above different questions about eg who does that when a company has gone bankrupt?

            i’ll add my own: how do you ensure a company doesn’t skimp on the dev time to open source, and accidentally release a secret that opens vulnerabilities in devices that people still use? like a signing key

      • onlinepersona@programming.devEnglish
        1·
        5 days ago

        who enforces the law?

        There are many ways to solve this, but you could have a regulatory body that does spot checks itself or where companies must register their products and their end of life / end of support dates with links (or whatever the law stipulates) to the source code, schematics, designs, etc. . Companies that don’t abide by it get slapped with a fine (if the law is well-written it’s a percentage of global revenue), repeatedly, until they are taken to court.

        It needs to be worldwide (at least for some products)

        Doesn’t have to. Any goods imported into a zone have to fulfill it, otherwise they are not allowed. There many regulations for products to be imported, so this would be one of them. If some small country introduced it, they might see their imports drop, but if the EU introduced it, even Apple would have to abide by it. See EU’s Digital Markets Act or the CE Marking.

        how are mergers handled?

        I’d assume the way they always are? If the end result is a product being discontinued or unsupported --> opensource.

        what to do if the company goes bancrupt or is closed otherwises? Who will outsource the code where? And who will be accountable

        Not sure why this would be different from current proceedings. When your company goes bankrupt it doesn’t wipe the slate clean, nor are you absolved of all laws. If that were the case then a company could kill people, wave the bankrupt “get out of jail free” card and move on.
        This is also where insurances come in. You’d have to be insured against the loss of your product designs, code, schematics, etc. as losing them would mean inability to abide by the law.

        does that also count for private people? (e.g.: if I take a picture, I own the copyright for it, do I lose my copyright if I don’t sell the picture? Or does it only count if I sold it once? What if I sold it exclusively to someone?)

        I would ask back: if you sell something on ebay that you designed and made, do you legally have provide support for it? If not, then this wouldn’t apply to you. If it does, then the law applies to you.

        Anti Commercial-AI license