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[–] 0 pt

Does software copyright expire? I never thought about that. I only ever thought about art and media. Good point.

I have recently been applying the "do I respect that persons private property rights" as a way to test how to think about problem resolution when dealing with other human beings. It has really been a clarifying filter for me. I know why copyright for art and media is supposed to expire but I am starting to wonder if that makes any sense.

I forgot software is copyrighted, which means in the states it expires after the authors lifetime + 70 years. Chances are those copyrights are not public domain yet.

Still great point.

Corporate copyright protections are shorter than those for individuals, between 95 and 120 years. Also I doubt the individuals who produced this work are receiving many, if any, royalties from the company especially since the company simply won't sell the product anymore. I see why they are suing for damages because if they don't protect their copyrights they could be argued that they have abandoned them. If another major software developer thought they could get away with it they would because why wouldn't you.

Corporations could do a lot better job in monetizing their IP that they've already published. In writing this reply I looked up an old TV show that I'd been trying to track down for over a decade to find that it finally got put on DVD in January 2020, which was 18.5 years after it stopped airing. For $40 for 66 episodes it was an instant fucking buy. If their copyright were infringed the 'statutory damages' for the same volume of media would be 50k to 2.3M. There certainly could be a better line between 'property rights' and 'applying up to a 5.8 million percent markup in damages' for something that they stopped monetizing decades ago. And that markup doesn't account for the squeeze applied by the entity that printed the DVD for the corporation who was the IP holder.

[–] 1 pt

Thanks for the clarification. And agreed on the valuation of potential damages.