Yes, or parts of the game owned by different individuals. They can have a contract to use their intellectual property only for Bethesda’s uses.
Even if it was owned by one person at the company, that’s no different than the company owning it. But since it’s owned by a finite being instead of an eternal entity, so it makes it clearer that copyright should also be finite.
Copyright initially held by a company expires 95 years from the year of its first publication or 120 years from the year of its creation, whichever comes first.
Copyright initially held by an individual expires 70 years after the individual dies. That could easily be a longer period than company-held copyright.
That would certainly benefit companies developing generative AI. The sooner something loses copyright protection, the easier it is to use it as training data.
So when Bethesda makes a new Skyrim, Todd Howard should personally own the whole thing?
Yes, or parts of the game owned by different individuals. They can have a contract to use their intellectual property only for Bethesda’s uses.
Even if it was owned by one person at the company, that’s no different than the company owning it. But since it’s owned by a finite being instead of an eternal entity, so it makes it clearer that copyright should also be finite.
Copyright is already finite.
Copyright initially held by a company expires 95 years from the year of its first publication or 120 years from the year of its creation, whichever comes first.
Copyright initially held by an individual expires 70 years after the individual dies. That could easily be a longer period than company-held copyright.
I say, just reducing that time, or make it case dependent would be a great start
That would certainly benefit companies developing generative AI. The sooner something loses copyright protection, the easier it is to use it as training data.
Big AI companies already have that data used, and copyright is mostly a concern for the openSource models.
AI companies that used copyrighted data without paying are facing multiple lawsuits. Those lawsuits would go away if copyright went away.
There’s no limit on lengthening copyright. Currently it’s 95/120 years, but that can always change (and did for many years of lengthening).