It seems The Terminator franchise is up for grabs, with some thinking it could sell for as much as $200 million. Halycon – the current owners – are filing chapter 11 after some bad investments. Still, having bought the franchise just two years ago for $25 million, selling it for $200 million isn’t exactly a poor return on their investment.

So some Terminator fans are wondering who is going to buy it and whether they can turn out anything on film that matches or even comes close to James Cameron’s Terminator 2. Others hope that the appreciated but ultimately canceled show Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles will enjoy a reappearance. Of course, for Hollywood, some things are simply too logical to occur, like making a sequel to insanely loved and successful film Serenity.

However, it’s far more likely that the same thing will happen to the Terminator franchise as happens to virtual all franchises where audiences are guaranteed: it will run even further downhill in a stream of campy, half-ass projects meant only to glean as much money from the success of the first two films as possible. In short, Cameron’s amazing success on T2 will mean that subsequent films only have to be half as good to make money. It’s hard to pinpoint what made the most recent iteration – Terminator: Salvation – fall short of the mark. But even with Christian Bale, excellent effects, and an interesting story, the film indeed lacks something special – whatever ingredient the first two films were able to tap into.

While no company – even one going through chapter 11 – is every going to risk a certain $200 million, I propose another path for the Terminator saga. Like a future ruled by Skynet and the machines, this path is also only a possibility, and not even one that we’re likely to see anytime soon.

How about if instead of selling off a storyline that has become an iconic imagine of our tech-obsessed world to the highest bidder, they give it to the fans. That means lifting all restrictions of copyright on future products. If anyone wants to write a story, make a movie, create an action figure, or code a game based on the Terminator series, then let them without any injunctions. But add one stipulation: that the company that owns the franchise can monetize those creations.

Imagine it: instead of a $250 million dollar piece of garbage being the next film to bear the Terminator name, it’s a series of fan-made shorts airing in theaters. Maybe live-action, maybe CGI, maybe animated. I have zero doubts that whatever fans produced would be far superior to what Hollywood would (not could) make in terms of story, content, and that all-too-allusive heart. Sure, major studies can pull big names, so blockbusters can (but often don’t) have solid acting and amazing effects.

But consider the difference between fan-made The Hunt for Gollum and billion-dollar Lord of the Rings by Peter Jackson, et al. Indeed, Jackson’s work is finer in terms of effects and the overall hotty factor of his elves, but these differences are in no way proportional to the difference in cost. In other words, the maker of The Hunt for Gollum came eerily close to Lord of the Rings without being in the same solar system so far as costs go. The same would indeed happen with Terminator.

Of course it would prove a huge gamble, but since so few fan-made projects have enjoyed big-budget advertising and buzz-making, it’s hard to tell how much money they would make. Then again, there simply wouldn’t be that much money you would have to make. When some 60% of films don’t make it into the black at theaterical release, you have to wonder how much money is too much when it comes to the production. You may create an amazing film in terms of set, effects, and cast, but if it cost you $300 million and the film itself lacks any real heart, then you’ve got a long way to go to realize gain. Distribute a shoestring budget production for fans by fans, and you’re only risking the cost of advertising.

Like I said, this is about as likely to happen as is the Skynet holocaust, but what a beautiful possibility.

In a bit of a blast from the past, Patent Arcade just posted some history about the Bleem! emulator and their David v Goliath case against Sony back in 2001.

It seems that Bleem! allowed users to user Playstation games on either the Sega Dreamcast or the PC. It had the same physical and digital copy protective measures as the Playstation. That is, it required the disks, and wouldn’t play backups or run without the proper disk in the drive. Certainly there were workarounds that could be exploited, but the same was true for the Playstation itself.

In case it’s news to you, console companies take a loss on each console sold. They hope to recoup that with game sales – where the real money is. This is why Dreamcast bit the dust: once everyone figured out how to bypass the simple copy-protection, no one bought the games, even though the consoles sold fine.

So, with that in mind, it might seen completely rational for Sony to do nothing at all to stop Bleem!. I mean, here’s a company ensuring that even those without the Playstation would still have cause to buy Playstation games. This would be like a burger joint selling nothing but their high profit margin items, like that 30 cent piece of cheese that costs them a penny.

Instead, Sony did what any copyright rich company would do: they litigated to the point of lunacy, losing in every possible way they could lose. However, the court costs were too much for little Bleem! and the company went bankrupt. I can hear notoriously Luddite Sony CEO Howard Stringer yelling: “That will teach you do try and sell our games!”

Once again, the gaming industry proves far more versatile than the music or movie industry in benefiting from forward thinking economics.

Covered by Slashdot, it seems the makers of the hit game World of Goo for Wii and PC have celebrated the close of their very successful year in an interesting way. They decided to make the game – which retails at $20 – available for whatever the buyer is willing to pay.

This is a great idea: make what money you can from initial launch at premium price, and then accept the fact that the game will lose value as both novelty and technology motor on. Then, in lieu of griping and moaning over the resell market and trying to circumvent the first-sale doctrine with install limitations and the like, you allow users to pay what they wish. This will likely be lower than you’d like in price per unit, but you’ll likely sell more than you’d hope for, as well. With intellectual property, this pans out just fine, particularly for digital delivery data like World of Goo, where you simply don’t have the same high overhead as you would for, say, the Thighmaster or the Sham-Wow.

The result: While the average sale price was about $2, more than 57,000 people purchased it. Quite certainly, these were customers who simply wouldn’t have bought the game otherwise or who – according to a 2D Boy poll – bought it again for another platform.

The developers were more than happy, and extended the special. Hopefully, this is an idea that others will follow. Surely, there are games out there that simply do not warrant the MSRP price tag, but that would garner slews of customers if they could pay what they wished. Such schemes have worked very well in the publishing industry, as well, though the industry at large is still very weary of taking that step – somehow convinced that ebooks should sell for the same as the physical book minus a buck or two.

A story covered in Slashdot refers to the eventual judgment (naturally) for the plaintiff – Wizards of the Coast – against defendant and popular ebook site Scribd. The charge was allowing a user to upload a copyrighted Dungeons & Dragons ebook, which was downloaded 2,600 times before Scribd pulled it from the site.

Wizards was awarded $125,000, which – par for course – was exorbitant considering that Scribd made no money from the ebook.

What’s worth noting here is that companies making ebooks should use the built-in abilities to market ebooks better than regular books to advertisers. Then, the economic backlash of the book being shared is largely or completely mitigated.

For example, there are various educational reports on all manner of subjects – from using Google AdSense to writing a killer blog. They make their money off affiliate marketing embedded in the links in the PDF, not off the sale of the report. Sure, these reports bear a price tag, but they are rife on p2p sites, and have long thrived without backlash.

Why? Because the bulk of their moneymaking model is about getting eyes on the product, not on the money generated from sales.

So couldn’t PDFs of WotC content operate in the same way? Instead, they waste time and effort trying to track down and sue companies such as Scribd for a consequence they didn’t intend.That’s not to say that Scribd shouldn’t be responsible for whatever is on their servers and site; it’s just a pretty poor model when the only way you’re going to address the inevitability of piracy is to file lawsuit after lawsuit. Instead, how about coming out with more innovative ways of selling your products?

After all, it’s very arguable that whoever would download an ebook of D&D is likely not going to and never would have bought the paper product. So how do you make money off of such potential customers? Perhaps in-book adverts aren’t the only answer, but I can tell you what certainly isn’t the answer: suing everyone and making yourself look like jerks.

A recent Ars Technica story covers a Web site that collects donations from people who feel guilty for the things they’ve pirated. I’m not making this up.

The site, which is more of a blog with a donation button, seeks to let the only mildly piratical among us to give money back to the industry they’ve ripped off in hopes of being able to sleep at night. Ironically, the benefactors of these donations remain unveiled for supposedly legal reasons (since admitting to taking pirate booty passively accepts digital piracy).

Donations cannot be tracked, and do nothing to mitigate potential lawsuits. Comments from site visitors notes that donating (via PayPal) is part and parcel to admitting guilt. While I seriously doubt that any company could use such information to effectively form a “hit list” of pirate targets, I wouldn’t put it past owner/operator Drew K from Australia to sell the list of donors to the highest bidder. I just don’t happen to think there’d be any bidders.

It’s amazing that we’ve been able to feel so guilty that someone’s job can be reconciling that guilt with money – certainly very little or none of which will reach the artists after passing through this company, the anonymous beneficiaries, and the legal bureaucrats in-between.

So what’s a more pragmatic answer? If you feel guilty and want to give back, why not purchase what you pirated? Then – according to the first sale doctrine – you can always resell or gift it after you’ve enjoyed it. Pirated products don’t sell well nor are they good gifts. Buy something you pirated and enjoyed, and you can give a good gift and feel better all at once. After all, you wouldn’t purchase something you pirated that sucked, would you? You would only buy something that you really enjoyed. So giving it to someone else to enjoy should free you from any residual guilt you feel from file-sharing it.

Or, you could always buy a derivative or sequel work. If you downloaded Firefly, go buy Serenity. If you downloaded both of them, buy the graphic novel (which is quite good, I might add).

But just sending this opportunist some money to feel better? Not so much.

Luckily, Drew K admits that the site hasn’t been too popular since its January 2009 launch. Doubtless, it will sink into the abyss before long. Despite big media propaganda perpetually trying to solidify the guilt we should all feel from copyright infringement, it just isn’t happening. Hmmm….I wonder why that is.

In a definitive victory, a judge ruled that ring tones do not count as a “public performance” and therefore necessitate a license via performance rights middleman such as ASCAP or BMI. Good thing, seeing as how that would mean the end of all licensed ring tones, since such a ludicrous idea would be impossible in practice without a blanket license from which only ASCAP would benefit.

There is a facet of the copyright statute regarding performances, however, that says that no performance necessitates licensing so long as no one paid to listen, had to pay to enter the place in which the music is being played, and that the person “playing” it is gaining no money. This is why you can play your portable boom box at the park or beach and not have to have a license, despite it being a “public performance”.

ASCAP certainly knows this, but leave it to middlemen to try and create a ruling in their favor when – logistically – there’s no difference in carrying a radio playing “Like a Prayer” and carrying a cell phone that rings with the same song.

Luckily, US District Judge Denise Cote was on her a-game and saw the erroneous and ultimately redundant nature of ASCAP’s decision. I have little doubt this will arise again, and we’ll just have to hope that folks like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others stay on the forefront of this battle, lest big media make humming subject to litigation.

The Business Software Alliance (BSA), which investigates copyright infringement and piracy for a slew of software clients, has been on the forefront of scare tactics for some time. As covered on Slashdot, they recently estimated that 41% of software on PCs is pirated, and attempt to make the corollary between piracy and malicious code.

This has been a scare tactic for some time now, and many people buy into the supposed direct relationship between piracy and malware, viruses, and other malicious code. BSA’s motivation is clear: if people believe that file-sharing is the culprit in “making their computer run really slow” then perhaps they’ll refuse pirated products. Though their stats on the growing percentage of pirated programs speaks differently.

All BSA’s assertions do is increase the fear that lay computer users feel regarding all things on their computers. They say: “I had a nephew visit for a weekend, and now I get warnings about viruses. I think he downloaded illegal stuff.” Or: “My son ripped a friend’s CD on my computer, and now I have windows popping up telling me I need an virus scan or I’ll lose my data!”

Alas, the only people benefiting from this paranoia are the companies selling “scareware” which gets computer greenhorns to buy completely superfluous security software. Such programs often don’t work at all, are universally overpriced, or do little more than further scare the buyer into getting the entire “suite ” of products and extorting even more money.

But who’s at fault here? Are pirated apps really full of viruses, or are p2p networks teaming with malware posing as pirated apps? And more importantly, who put it there to begin with?

The fact is, the only people suffering from this fear are those who don’t know how to navigate p2p apps appropriately, and who have no understanding of what constitutes copyright infringement. No such scare tactics deter pirates in the least. All malicious code is easily avoided with experience and – God forbid – with learning some general knowledge about computer science and your operating system, whether you share files or not.

I’m not condoning piracy, but I also do not condone BSA’s fear campaign that surreptitiously sidesteps the force that created the market for scareware to begin with – companies like BSA.

Slashdot just posted a story about a representative of Massive named JJ Richards vying for in-game advertisements as adding to a gamer’s experience. His argument is sound enough: if a game takes a player somewhere he should expect to see adverts (like Times Square) then it adds to the immersion to have those ads be current, realistic, and updated in real time. It would indeed be interesting to play a game you’d put down two years ago, only to find that all of the background noise like billboards, newspapers, televisions, and the like were updated to current times, but this is not without a very resounding caveat.

While in-game adverts as described above could prove valuable for game-play, they’re also making money. And anytime there’s a chance for media to make more money, there’s little stopping bad ideas from ruining good ones. In this case, my main fear is seeing in-game adverts where there shouldn’t be any at all – dated or current. After all, look at 3-D movies. Some treat 3-D technology as a twist and a draw to get you to see the film in theaters, but most of these films revolve around the technology, not a strong story, good acting, or solid directing. Films such as My Bloody Valentine are horrid movies without 3-D because that became the point of the movie, not an added feature to heighten immersion. Sound familiar? It’s the same thing that could happen with in-game adverts.

Too, this is the sort of thing that will add too little value to garner loyalty to the store-bought version of the game. Those who would pirate the game will be more than happy to bypass updated billboards or modern songs playing on the in-game radios. In fact, pirates might very well make it a point to avoid games which “phone home” – even if it’s only to upload more adverts. For many, it could smack of a privacy issue. It would – at the very least – communicate to someone how and how often you play your games. That alone is enough to make some gamers wary.

Last week began a case that could spell trouble not only for media owners, but for the resell market as well. It’s between Timothy Vernor and the software company Autodesk (who sells mostly drafting software). It seems Autodesk petitioned eBay to remove not only Vernor’s auctions of Autodesk products but to boot him off eBay for good.

Since eBay is akin to a chihuahua who rolls over at the first sign of dominance, they obliged. The only problem? Vernor wasn’t selling pirated copies of Autodesk: he was selling legally-owned, used copies.

This has long been protected by copyright law by what’s called the “first-sale doctrine”. However, Autodesk is trying to get around this by saying they merely lease the software, not sell a copy of it. Tomato, tomAto…

This debate is nothing new: the rights we have to resell products is the very reason that DRM and tricky EULAs about “leasing” software exist. But this is a slippery slope. The moment you control how someone can resell software – even something as expensive as Autodesk – what’s to stop the RIAA from using the case as precedent for outlawing the sale of secondhand CDs? How about DVDs or even VHS tapes?

This is the bread and butter of companies such as EB Games, but the industries have always loathed resell and have looked to ban it for years. It’s not because resale is illegal: it’s simply to make more money – nothing more. However, if I am not allowed to buy a secondhand copy of any media, and can’t afford the newest version, I’d be more prone to pirate, wouldn’t I?

Hopefully, the judge will see this as more industry hair-splitting rhetoric and semantic balderdash. It’s still a legal copy, and the guy has a right to sell it. Let Autodesk do what other companies such as Blizzard are doing, and limit the number of times it can be installed, suffer the inevitable consumer backlash, and then reverse their tactics like any other company trying to defy the after-market. Letting law interfere with something that is perfectly regulated by consumer spending would be a grave mistake. It would hurt consumers and many companies making a living off resale, and only make a handful of companies more wealthy than they already are.

Point of fact, I highly doubt there are media manufacturers out there closing their doors due to the resale market, but if such outfits are allowed to bypass the first-sale doctrine, you can expect to see plenty of other companies doing just that – hanging the going-out-of-business sign.

A story on Slashdot tells of a watershed moment in the fight between athletes and game manufacturers who use their likenesses. A district court judge considered the digital representations “expressive works” comparable to paintings and photos of celebrities and athletes, which are protected and require no payment to the athlete or celebrity.

On one hand, the game company playing defense in footballer Samuel Keller’s class action lawsuit is Electronic Arts, not some one-man band just trying to eek out a living writing games. While EA didn’t use the players’ names, other features such as style of play, haircut, skin color, and facial features so closely resembles the athletes that there’s little question it was intentional. This – in the long game – could persuade gamers who want to play with famous atheletes to opt for EA Sports’ titles, even though EA paid nothing for the celebrity status.

On the other hand, we’re not talking about a group of people that otherwise makes no money. Athletes are paid to play a sport, not build star power enough to market their likeness. They already get pretty substantial payouts for acting gigs, endorsements, and special appearances, on top of what is almost universally considered inordinately large salaries and signing bonuses.

Too, let’s not forget ’90s singer Deee-Lite, who tried suing Sega over her supposed likeness in Space Channel 5 for the Dreamcast, lost, and then had to pay $600,000 in court costs. Not an easy fiscal pill for a has-been to swallow. With older players such as Jim Brown hopping on Keller’s coattails, they’d better keep in mind that any lawsuit bears a chance of not only failure, but significant losses.

The rise of video game profits, popularity, and prestige means that this is a market for celebrities and athletes alike, and not one that should be ignored so that giants like EA can make money off another’s celebrity. However, I applaud the ruling because the line has to be drawn somewhere on how ridiculous lawsuits about likeness can be. After all, if all game manufacturers caved and settled in cases like this, you’d have everyone from Miley Cyrus to PDiddy looking for any chance to sue, claiming that any singer with extensions and cut off jean skirts must be Cyrus’ likeness, or that any character with cornrows and bling must be PDiddy.

In the end, this whole affair may not matter, since the moment that gamers realize that 99% of sports games are slapped together regurgitation of last year’s code, maybe they’ll pass for a decent game instead.