With 20 year expirations on copyright, Nintendo loses control over Pokemon in 2 years. And any jackass could start printing Pokemon cards, making Pokemon movies, releasing Pokemon games and books.
And this is bad, why? (Other than that the world probably has more pokemon now than it ever needed) Besides, there are already loads of Poke-knockoffs. Is it so terrible that they exist?
Meanwhile copyright on Magic the Gathering would already be up. Not the new cards of course, but some chinese outfit could now legally distribute Black Lotus in original Alpha style. That somehow seems wrong to me. And the "Magic the Gathering" movies would be heading straight to video near you. Seems odd that WotC (Hasbro) wouldn't have any control over it.
Well, this is a somewhat more special case, actually.
Copyright doesn't protect processes, procedures, systems, or methods of operation. Such as the rules for a card game. (The classic example is a method of double entry bookkeeping, if you're curious)
Rules can be patented, OTOH, if they meet the usual rules for utility patents, such as novelty and nonobviousness. The 'tap' rule in Magic is patented. Once that expires, next year, IIRC, anyone can make and sell Magic cards. They'll have to watch the trademark -- so they might be sold as, oh, let's say MERRORMY brand playing cards, with a note that says they're compatible with Magic the Gathering, but not authorized by Hasbro. With new art and wording, but identical point scores and... I don't know how Magic actually works... suits?
Hasbro might sponsor official tournaments which only allow for official Hasbro cards to be used, but that's like having Goodyear sponsor a car race where only Goodyear tires can be used. It doesn't stop other people from doing their own thing.
It doesn't have to be a shady Chinese outfit. You can do it. I might, if I didn't think that Magic was cardboard crack, and best avoided.
Trademark law would come into play since everybody is trademarking everything related to IP these days.. but if we're going to do copyright reform to limit terms to 20 years I'm assuming we aren't going to let Warner Brothers own the trademark on the name "Ron Weasley" in perpetuity either...
See my other post in this thread re: trademarks not having great odds of survival when applicable copyrights expire.
Its not JUST about the money. Maybe the author doesn't want some shitty Hollywood hack job done to his book directed by McG starring Justin Bieber. Or a no budget straight to DVD release put out by one of those crappy TV movie-mills. I'm willing to give the author the right not to see that done to his work while he's alive, if that's what he wants.
Its not JUST about the money. Maybe the author doesn't want some shitty Hollywood hack job done to his book directed by McG starring Justin Bieber. Or a no budget straight to DVD release put out by one of those crappy TV movie-mills. I'm willing to give the author the right not to see that done to his work while he's alive, if that's what he wants.
Why? I'm willing to give the author just about any sort of thing if it ultimately provides a greater benefit for the public than it causes harm to the public. But otherwise, I couldn't give a rat's ass what the author wants.
After all, what I want -- what we all want -- are works. We want the author's output. If it just magically appeared, or was retrieved out of Borges' library, we wouldn't even need the authors to begin with.
Authors are like dairy cows. They're a necessary evil in order to get the milk, and should be treated however we need to treat them to get the most milk at the least cost. But we don't otherwise care what the cow wants, and we'd love to cut the cow out of the equation altogether somehow.
I believe this also answers your question about fans. Of course the fans should be in charge. They outnumber the authors. But they're not well organized, and can be a bit romantic, so we end up with authors exploiting fans when it ought to be the other way 'round.