Re: Rocket Company IS Smilesoft
Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2012 3:33 am
There have been a few cases where communities have bought the rights of a defunct software company. The biggest example being Blender. It was originally a proprietary package developed by a company called NaN (Not a Number). NaN went bankrupt and their creditors offered copyright ownership in exchange for a one-time, 500k euro fee. The source code was purchased through a fundraising campaign and released under the GPL.
However, it's critical to note that NaN was already defunct and we got the code by way of their creditors. Creditors dealing with defunct companies generally seek to recover as much money from the failed company as quickly as possible. They aren't in the same business as the defunct company, so the business assets are only worth as much as they can sell them for. The community effort provided them an easy way to get their money back without too much hassle.
So, then, what is the worth of a copyright? To a publisher or developer it is the right to continue producing work. That is their job. Of course, creating works is expensive. So publishers seek to reduce their risk whenever they can. This generally means putting most of your money into things which are sure bets such as sequels and licensed properties. Consequently, since sequels and licensed properties are so valuable, insamuch as they -have- a known value, the ownership of those copyrights is also closely guarded.
Rocket Company is not in liquidation and copyrights are valuable company assets. Most likely they wouldn't want to sell them at -any- cost, because Telefang is an established brand which they could make a sequel to if they wanted. If they did actually bother to give a monetary cost, it would probably be more expensive than just buying Rocket out from Imagineer.
There's also huge logistical problems with a copyright transfer to anything that isn't another hierarchical corporation. We would have to establish an organization capable of taking donations and holding copyright. We would have to create by-laws which would allow for the fair and equitable control of the holding company by all donors. We would have to agree on what to do with the copyright. (Public domain is not an option because Japanese copyright law does not recognize the right of an author to commit a work to the public domain.) We would have to hire an army of bilingual lawyers to deal with Imagineer and Rocket Company's lawyers. We would also have to disclose the price, despite the fact that most copyright related agreements don't allow either party to disclose costs to the public. Then we'd have to hire a second army of bilingual tax lawyers to handle the kinds of tax liabilities we would have to deal with in both Japan and America.
The same problems exist if you change 'copyright transfer' to 'copyright license'. Actually, it gets worse, because licences are negotiated on a case by case basis and usually includes per-unit royalties. We can't charge per-unit royalties because there are no units.
There's also the underlying possibility that Telefang might not even be theirs to sell. Natsume developed the game and the original publishing contract for Telefang and Telefang 2 might not have included a full copyright transfer. They're also owned by Imagineer now which means that they probably don't have corporate approval to transfer copyrights at all. If any code development was outsourced, and there weren't full copyright transfers from the employees at the outsourcing company all the way to Smilesoft, then you may have a condition where some freelancer may or may not own part of the code. That would essentially mean tracking down another party who would most likely see an opportunity to demand even more money.
Doing a care package would be nice. (Starmen.net already did it with Shigesato Itoi)
However, it's critical to note that NaN was already defunct and we got the code by way of their creditors. Creditors dealing with defunct companies generally seek to recover as much money from the failed company as quickly as possible. They aren't in the same business as the defunct company, so the business assets are only worth as much as they can sell them for. The community effort provided them an easy way to get their money back without too much hassle.
So, then, what is the worth of a copyright? To a publisher or developer it is the right to continue producing work. That is their job. Of course, creating works is expensive. So publishers seek to reduce their risk whenever they can. This generally means putting most of your money into things which are sure bets such as sequels and licensed properties. Consequently, since sequels and licensed properties are so valuable, insamuch as they -have- a known value, the ownership of those copyrights is also closely guarded.
Rocket Company is not in liquidation and copyrights are valuable company assets. Most likely they wouldn't want to sell them at -any- cost, because Telefang is an established brand which they could make a sequel to if they wanted. If they did actually bother to give a monetary cost, it would probably be more expensive than just buying Rocket out from Imagineer.
There's also huge logistical problems with a copyright transfer to anything that isn't another hierarchical corporation. We would have to establish an organization capable of taking donations and holding copyright. We would have to create by-laws which would allow for the fair and equitable control of the holding company by all donors. We would have to agree on what to do with the copyright. (Public domain is not an option because Japanese copyright law does not recognize the right of an author to commit a work to the public domain.) We would have to hire an army of bilingual lawyers to deal with Imagineer and Rocket Company's lawyers. We would also have to disclose the price, despite the fact that most copyright related agreements don't allow either party to disclose costs to the public. Then we'd have to hire a second army of bilingual tax lawyers to handle the kinds of tax liabilities we would have to deal with in both Japan and America.
The same problems exist if you change 'copyright transfer' to 'copyright license'. Actually, it gets worse, because licences are negotiated on a case by case basis and usually includes per-unit royalties. We can't charge per-unit royalties because there are no units.
There's also the underlying possibility that Telefang might not even be theirs to sell. Natsume developed the game and the original publishing contract for Telefang and Telefang 2 might not have included a full copyright transfer. They're also owned by Imagineer now which means that they probably don't have corporate approval to transfer copyrights at all. If any code development was outsourced, and there weren't full copyright transfers from the employees at the outsourcing company all the way to Smilesoft, then you may have a condition where some freelancer may or may not own part of the code. That would essentially mean tracking down another party who would most likely see an opportunity to demand even more money.
Doing a care package would be nice. (Starmen.net already did it with Shigesato Itoi)