Re:Need for Speed Underground 2 online in the browser
by miki123211 on Sunday November 08, 2026 @04:51AM
(#50411804)
I think this basically happened because the cost of creation (of what people want to consume, regardless of how you feel about it) went up significantly.
When copyright was invented, it was mostly applied to books (not even book series / franchises), which don't cost that much to write, even if you take printing into account, and are usually written by a single author or a small team.
Nowadays, copyright is applied to huge cinematic and video game universes, which cost hundreds of billions of dollars to make, and don't have a single "author" behind them. It's a very different law for a very different reality.
When Moby Dick was written, Moby Dick was all it was. Nowadays, every new movie in a given universe is intended to bring profits on its own, but, by making that universe more popular, it increases future profits for other things in the franchise too. This is all reflected in the accounting, and requires copyright to be much longer than it once was.
When copyright was invented, it was mostly applied to books (not even book series / franchises), which don't cost that much to write, even if you take printing into account, and are usually written by a single author or a small team.
Nowadays, copyright is applied to huge cinematic and video game universes, which cost hundreds of billions of dollars to make, and don't have a single "author" behind them. It's a very different law for a very different reality.
When Moby Dick was written, Moby Dick was all it was. Nowadays, every new movie in a given universe is intended to bring profits on its own, but, by making that universe more popular, it increases future profits for other things in the franchise too. This is all reflected in the accounting, and requires copyright to be much longer than it once was.