Decompiling a Nintendo 64 Game in 84 Days

Re:Decompiling a Nintendo 64 Game in 84 Days by debugnik on Friday August 28, 2026 @03:58AM (#49475706)

Legal would remember to pay the fee for their abandoned works, just in case, while the rest of the company does nil with them. I'd rather address the issue directly and expire the copyright after X years since it was last published.

Then again Disney's old "vault" strategy would counter it, and Nintendo is already toying with it to sell through FOMO. How can it be this hard to make companies keep our digital culture available for sale? It's not even charity.

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Re:Decompiling a Nintendo 64 Game in 84 Days by quacked on Friday August 28, 2026 @08:42AM (#49477699)

We'll do it ourselves! People are natural hoarders and archivists, as should be effortlessly proven by custom wikis.

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Re:Decompiling a Nintendo 64 Game in 84 Days by glimshe on Friday August 28, 2026 @10:51AM (#49479397)

It's okay if Legal does that. The idea isn't to prevent companies from owning copyrighted works long-term, it's to prevent the waste of abandoned works. There are thousands, if not millions, of works that could be cleanly reused under my proposal.

I don't disagree with the spirit of your argument. I'm just saying that my proposal would be a lot easier to put in practice than anything that hurts companies. The strength of the proposal is exactly that companies will mostly shrug while creating a very clear legal separation of what's "active copyright" and what's an "abandoned work".

By the way, this would also apply to the GPL (and other copyleft licenses).

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