I understand what you're saying, but I wonder how many software products, particularly those from the early days of personal computing, have been lost to history due to nobody copying them before the media got deteriorated or destroyed. Sure, there will always be copies of WordPerfect 5.1 and MS-DOS 6.22 floating around, legal and not-so-legal. However, there is some old software that is difficult to find, often in situations where not many copies were sold.

I wish our copyright laws (I'm in the United States) were more considerate of the needs of computer historians and retrocomputing enthusiasts. 95 years is much too long of a copyright term for software that gets obsolete after 10-20 years. I can understand lengthy copyrights for video games, since they are works of art and since there is a lot of commercial value in old games. However, would Mac OS 9 and Windows 98 being in the public domain threaten sales of modern Macs and Windows 11 licenses? Would WordPerfect 5.1 for MS-DOS being in the public domain hurt Corel's business? While I do believe it's possible to get licenses to old versions of Microsoft software through certain MSDN subscription programs, many software companies don't sell licenses of older software products.

While I'm on the topic, there used to be a museum in Seattle named The Living Computer Museum where visitors could actually use old computers. I went there in 2019 and had a wonderful time; it's sad that it didn't survive the COVID-19 pandemic. I wonder, though, how much work (if any) was done with securing legal licenses for the software on these old computers, since I'd imagine that a museum would have a liability problem if it was caught using pirated software. Given that the museum was founded by the late Paul Allen, it is likely that the museum may have worked out some agreements with the copyright holders of various software tools. After all, it's not like the museum was reselling the software or the hardware.

>I wish our copyright laws (I'm in the United States) were more considerate of the needs of computer historians and retrocomputing enthusiasts. 95 years is much too long of a copyright term for software that gets obsolete after 10-20 years.

Reposting my proposals regarding copyright:

Any content, once published/distributed/broadcast in the US, that is not made readily available to the public going forward loses copyright protection. This includes revisions.

* A film, TV show, sound recording, book, or any other copyrighted content must, once made available for public purchase, always remain available. If the only streaming service willing to pay to stream your movie has the smallest market share, too bad; the market has spoken on the value of your content. An ebook can fulfill this purpose for a print book; streaming can fulfill this purpose for a theatrical or physical-media film. But it must be available to maintain copyright.

* Compulsory licensing should apply; if Netflix wants to pay the same amount of money as the above-mentioned small market-share streaming service for the film, Netflix must be allowed to do so. The film's rights owner can demand more, raising the price for all, but if every outlet refuses, the film immediately goes into public domain. This process is reversible, but it would set a ceiling to prevent the owner from setting a ridiculously high price to prevent its availability.

* If a Blu-ray of a film or TV show has excised or modified scenes for whatever reason, and the original isn't also made available (whether on a different "theatrical cut" release, or as a different cut on the same disc), the entire original version immediately goes into public domain.

* If NBC posts Saturday Night Live skits on YouTube that have removed "problematic" scenes[1] without explaining the differences—a diff file, basically—the entire original skit loses copyright protection.

Separate issue, but also very worthwhile:

* Streaming services must make all data regarding their content available in some standardized format. Consumers should be able to use one application to access all content they have access to. The creator of SmartTube (a very nice YouTube-compatible player) should be able to add the appropriate API support to search for and play Netflix/Prime Video/Disney+/Paramount+ content.

The above applies to software, too. Legalize abandonware!

[1] Something I understand already happens

>While I'm on the topic, there used to be a museum in Seattle named The Living Computer Museum where visitors could actually use old computers. I went there in 2019 and had a wonderful time; it's sad that it didn't survive the COVID-19 pandemic.

The museum closed because of COVID-19, but the real reason it did not reopen is because Allen did not create a dedicated endowment, and his sister and only heir was uninterested in maintaining the museum.

So employees could leak all of a company's code and competitors could freely use it? Being able to keep works private is a useful part of copyright.

That falls under NDAs, which are different from copyright.

> So employees could leak all of a company's code and competitors could freely use it?

How you get that from my proposal, I don't know.

That said, I have no problem with source code being exempt from compulsory licensing.

>How you get that from my proposal, I don't know.

Because your proposal is that once a copyrighted work is distributed it has to be made public or the owner loses the right to control its distribution. People make sensitive documents and distribute them to other people, but don't want to make them available to the public.

> Because your proposal is that once a copyrighted work is distributed it has to be made public or the owner loses the right to control its distribution

No. I wrote

>A film, TV show, sound recording, book, or any other copyrighted content must, once made available for public purchase

(My emphasis)

>Any content, once published/distributed/broadcast in the US, that is not made readily available to the public going forward loses copyright protection. This includes revisions.

But your post also gave this rule for any content.

I wonder what the chance would be of getting a replacement ROM from Apple? For items of this age, even when the original vendor is still in business the distinction is typically moot.

(Maybe I'm wrong and they'd do it though! But I'd put a non-zero probability on them doing it starting by downloading the images from this guy's site.)

Apple almost certainly has both the raw ROM image and the source code in their archive. Remember, in the past they’ve shared things like the original QuickDraw, MacPaint, and Lisa operating system and Office System source code.

That's a good point, though it's not like they'd be able to release stuff that they'd lost.

(What the chances are of things getting lost - who knows. Apple may well be unusually well-organised. But my bet stands. There are a lot of non-zero values.)

I know some of the people involved in those releases; Apple has been extremely diligent about keeping all of those artifacts in perpetuity. They use geologically-stable offsite storage and so on, and keep that stuff for IP protection reasons.

They also seem to have continued using the same 7-digit part numbering system throughout; this ROM is 342-0441 and 342-0442, a 2014 iMac has 820-4668.

All the early Macintosh stuff is at an archive in Stanford.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33548131

Heresy! It should have ended up at Berkeley - Woz went there. Not that school down on the peninsula.

Where is it being non-publicly shared?