Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard hits a bump as FTC seeks to block it

Quoting: Comandante Ñoñardo

Quoting: Whitewolfe80

Quoting: Comandante ÑoñardoFinally, a sample of common sense!

Dont go that far nobody has stepped in yet to stop thq nordic from buying deep silver and whole slew of smaller studios and publishers including codemasters.

Where are those companies from?

Doesn't usually stop America

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualI disagree that regulation to prevent exclusivity is all that's needed. As I argued in my previous comment, this would overwhelmingly favor Disney, who owns multitudes more content than any other one company. They don't have an exclusive license with the content creators; they are the content creators. Copyright by its very intention created and preserves this monopoly. I point this out because outlawing exclusive licenses alone would ease but not solve this issue because Disney has an unassailable advantage. The only way it could work is if, as you say, compulsory licensing was implemented.

This in turn raises the question: Should corporations actually be able to hold copyrights? It's not like "The Disney Corporation" ever wrote a song, after all.

That's an interesting question that I don't have a single answer to. With regard to your 'kickstarter-like platform' idea, I meant to link you to this video because it describes something very similar (and heavy influenced my previous arguments): https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=mnnYCJNhw7w. It's long, but interesting.

Now, should corporations hold copyrights? My feeling is that because corporations are legal entities and this touches many branches of law, not allowing corporations to hold copyrights would have undesirable knock-on effects elsewhere. But completely ignoring that, not having ownership over the work just makes life a lot harder for corporations—and small businesses. Do they have to get the permission of the employee who created the work to do anything with it? What if they go to a competitor, or start their own competitor? Despite being the primary significant investor in the work, they don't have any ownership in it, which seems rather imbalanced.

Of course, I understand why it's tempting we do things the way you suggest, with only individuals being able to hold copyrights. It's how the GPL works, after all. It certainly would have made people more hesitant to kick Steve Jobs out of Apple if he were the one who held the copyrights to the operating system (well, more likely it would have been Steve Wozniak, but I can imagine a scenario where Steve transfers ownership to Steve for a fee).

Ultimately, we all know that copyright is intellectually bankrupt, but this artificial monopoly is of benefit to many people. Disney has moved on from extending the Micky Mouse Protection Act and simply started trademarking popular characters. It's a much better solution because trademarks never expire (though it protects less, I can imagine companies being hesitant to needle a trillion-dollar corporation; the latest and most successful strategy in reducing the worth of our public domain over time.

This is all so tangled that it reminds me of why I use so much free software in the first place.