Zippy has been nawing on the main site yet again :P
[url]http://gamepolitics.com/2008/03/03/esa-boss-talks-politics-prez-candidates-piracy/[/url]

“Sprit of fair use” protects the consumer from blatant corporate greed and abuse at least so IMO, at the same time it should not protect blatant IP/CP infringement (for profit operations and meaning they can go after all the nonprofit registered donation trackers and web sites ,ads count as profit I suppose a new ad system could be put in place to let sites share abandoned media in the light of day and a percentage of it and donations handled by the ad sever 10% could go to the media industry).

This is how I would like things to work after something falls out of publication(games/books/film/music) or 5 years from when it was publicized (as long as it’s out of publication by then ) it falls into the fair trade spectrum, fair trade means in a non profit setting we can trade media freely.

Now in order to protect both business and consumer we create a recode/revision rule let’s say Bionic command for the NES is out of publication but is on the VC stores the old code falls to fair use the newer port is fully protected as long as they publish it, if they clean up the code but it visually the same its still protected, now let’s say they make a enhanced version with new graphics and acouple new gameplay mechanics the “classic” version is only protected as long as they still publish it.

For film and music you can go by bit rate and quality and added content to it, let’s say star wars the original VHS release falls under fair trade a cleaned and repacked version dose not as long as the publish it, because a old item was published it falls under fair trade keeping it out of fair trade means publisher has to keep that IP/CP current or lose the consumer side protections given to them by owning the IP/CP.

Now as you know publishers are going to keep up to date what they think can sell and older stuff falls out of favor with the industries main consumers thus no harm is done here because of the ratios of buyers and the own willingness of the industry to keep current on things.

By forcing 100+ year draconian systems you will do far more damage to the industries you seek to protect.

I think both sides that are not for absoluteness are willing to give alil to find whats best for both.

Also I would be willing to spend 10% more on a game if I am given my right of retuning it for a refund back... you could return media for most of the 90s then one day it ended probably alil after the RIAA failed to stop the sale of used CDs.... I would not be opposed to a recording media/hardware tax the RIAA gets a piece why not all meida?