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Re:Basilisk II Macintosh 68K emulator ported to iPadOS by Someone on Sunday October 09, 2022 @02:26AM (#33138693)
Not never. For the original Mac ROMs, we’re just over halfway the 75 year for copyright expiration (in the US). ‘Only’ 37 years to go.

(If I’m not mistaken, the first software for the ENIAC is out of copyright. I don’t know whether any of it still exists, though)

Re:Basilisk II Macintosh 68K emulator ported to iPadOS by Wowfunhappy on Sunday October 09, 2022 @03:20AM (#33138876)
Isn't it "75 years after the death of the author?" (Although I have no idea who the "author" would be in this case.)
Re:Basilisk II Macintosh 68K emulator ported to iPadOS by tempodox on Sunday October 09, 2022 @03:26AM (#33138900)
Nit: There was no “software” for the ENIAC, programming was done with plugboards and cables. The very concept of software would require a stored-program computer, which ENIAC was not.
Re:Basilisk II Macintosh 68K emulator ported to iPadOS by retrac on Sunday October 09, 2022 @04:47AM (#33139182)
American copyright law before 1976 was radically different from the current situation (which was largely implemented with the Copyright Act of 1976). Probably most importantly, unpublished works, and works without an explicit copyright mark (on paper!) were not under copyright. This is why nearly every single bit of software IBM wrote and provided to customers and users in the 50s to mid 70s is public domain; it was never copyright to begin with.

Anyway, the copyright term in the USA and elsewhere too, have been repeatedly extended. I say it's a distinct possibility that some works under copyright now, will still being under copyright another 100 or even 1000 years from now. That is, assuming anyone is still around to sue and be sued over such things.

Re:Basilisk II Macintosh 68K emulator ported to iPadOS by ben_w on Sunday October 09, 2022 @05:33AM (#33139391)
I suspect that AI generated content is (eventually, not the current versions) going to destroy copyright as a concept.

The generally-stated reason for copyright is to incentivise the creation of more works, but when those works can be made for less than the cost of the food needed to feed a human for long enough to ask a machine to make it[0], the economic value disappears and only tradition remains.

However, that's assuming it's purely economics; if art is humanity's version of peacock tails, then the effort is the point, and even an uploaded brain will be dismissed as "not capable of real art".

[0] I don't know how much power a genuinely human level creative AI would consume, but let's compare one of the current image generators:

For the human, 10 seconds to type in a prompt * minimum cost of keeping a human alive ($1.90 abject poverty threshold) = $0.00022

For the AI, maximum power draw of Mac mini M1 * 90 seconds to create an image = 3,510 joules; at $0.1/kWh[1] that's $0.0001

The cost of the AI doing the thing is about half the minimum possible cost of getting a human to ask the AI to do the thing.

[1] Close enough: https://www.energybot.com/electricity-rates-by-state.html