I once worked for a good employer who one day decided to change his management. I do not know if that was the best thing to do though. It happened that I felt the need to part. Soon a letter of my former employer arrived asking me to not use the database I had created.
As it happens I had done a lot of the work at home and in my own time. It even happened that my contract of works did not mention the creation of a database. It turned out that the law is pretty clear and I as the creator of the database are in full possession of it and had to send my former employer a letter making him aware that without licensing it I can not permit him further use of the database and front end.
I do not know if that is applicable to the ex-Slysoft employees, provided that there are even proper (legal) contracts existing,
and payments being suitable to be used as proof of employment.
Though a Copyright in the name of a single person could turn out as a bad move as the person could get easily targeted.
Best could be various Copyrights and the partial use of common licenses.
As for the payments one possible vehicle could be the use of a number of small service providers set up to process payments to cover the costs of perfectly legal things like forums. If that is even a payment or if the vehicles are non-profit organisations accepting donations towards the running costs could be another question. Of course a potentially required full time administrator / mod may need to receive some payment to cover his efforts.
My next thought would be, how much has to be extracted from the software to make it a legal software for example to make it possible to watch damaged DVDs on a PC. Which is at the moment not anywhere as easy as with standalone devices. And just hope, nobody makes/uses drivers that extend the abilities of the software.
Another upcoming problem has already been mentioned by James. Windows 10 and its driver signing requirements. I can not see any way to keep the current pace of updates being somehow manageable without the requirement for regular payments, making lifetime versions economically impossible. And even worse I noticed a recent trend of Microsoft being overprotective and barring content that could be potentially illegal in some countries.
As for the movie industries I have to admit to a grudge. I am constantly told that I am not permitted to watch films. Not legally for money anyway. I speak two languages and have two places I call 'home'. Watching a series in my mother tongue is not possible most of the time as for the country I am in nobody holds a license to broadcast legally. Watching something in English leads at some point to the reversed situation. Listening to Bruce Willis in English hurts me almost physically, sorry. Watching House in German is borderline funny at best.
For my music I have Amazon now. Though I may not be able to purchase my music in the other country I can still use my purchased music everywhere. As for movies in 99% I just get a message that my IP is from within a country where streaming of the content is not permitted.
As much as this prevents me from making use of the usual streaming portals it as well would require me to take out one account per country I am at just for still not being able to watch what I paid for. I wonder what some person in Florida would say if he/she would get told that they only stream to Missouri and being elsewhere makes use of their account illegal. I could see some interesting court cases being raised. But for example within EU it is perfectly fine and legal to tell people that they cannot use their accounts as soon as being in an other EU member country. This sounds not right to me and I am sure that either the current legal structures within EU are getting abused or are simply wrong.
Already getting DVDs that contain both languages is not easy. Travelling with a suitcase full of DVDs is neither sensible nor suitable.
At the very moment I can not even watch my next door neighbours DVD, he has lend me, without the use of AnyDVD as I am as usual having the wrong country code on my DVD drive.
As it happens I had done a lot of the work at home and in my own time. It even happened that my contract of works did not mention the creation of a database. It turned out that the law is pretty clear and I as the creator of the database are in full possession of it and had to send my former employer a letter making him aware that without licensing it I can not permit him further use of the database and front end.
I do not know if that is applicable to the ex-Slysoft employees, provided that there are even proper (legal) contracts existing,
and payments being suitable to be used as proof of employment.
Though a Copyright in the name of a single person could turn out as a bad move as the person could get easily targeted.
Best could be various Copyrights and the partial use of common licenses.
As for the payments one possible vehicle could be the use of a number of small service providers set up to process payments to cover the costs of perfectly legal things like forums. If that is even a payment or if the vehicles are non-profit organisations accepting donations towards the running costs could be another question. Of course a potentially required full time administrator / mod may need to receive some payment to cover his efforts.
My next thought would be, how much has to be extracted from the software to make it a legal software for example to make it possible to watch damaged DVDs on a PC. Which is at the moment not anywhere as easy as with standalone devices. And just hope, nobody makes/uses drivers that extend the abilities of the software.
Another upcoming problem has already been mentioned by James. Windows 10 and its driver signing requirements. I can not see any way to keep the current pace of updates being somehow manageable without the requirement for regular payments, making lifetime versions economically impossible. And even worse I noticed a recent trend of Microsoft being overprotective and barring content that could be potentially illegal in some countries.
As for the movie industries I have to admit to a grudge. I am constantly told that I am not permitted to watch films. Not legally for money anyway. I speak two languages and have two places I call 'home'. Watching a series in my mother tongue is not possible most of the time as for the country I am in nobody holds a license to broadcast legally. Watching something in English leads at some point to the reversed situation. Listening to Bruce Willis in English hurts me almost physically, sorry. Watching House in German is borderline funny at best.
For my music I have Amazon now. Though I may not be able to purchase my music in the other country I can still use my purchased music everywhere. As for movies in 99% I just get a message that my IP is from within a country where streaming of the content is not permitted.
As much as this prevents me from making use of the usual streaming portals it as well would require me to take out one account per country I am at just for still not being able to watch what I paid for. I wonder what some person in Florida would say if he/she would get told that they only stream to Missouri and being elsewhere makes use of their account illegal. I could see some interesting court cases being raised. But for example within EU it is perfectly fine and legal to tell people that they cannot use their accounts as soon as being in an other EU member country. This sounds not right to me and I am sure that either the current legal structures within EU are getting abused or are simply wrong.
Already getting DVDs that contain both languages is not easy. Travelling with a suitcase full of DVDs is neither sensible nor suitable.
At the very moment I can not even watch my next door neighbours DVD, he has lend me, without the use of AnyDVD as I am as usual having the wrong country code on my DVD drive.
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