That is solved with different degrees of copyright. If done right, the author’s works will never stop being theirs, but people will be able to make fanfiction without fear of a bloodthirsty copyright lawyer biting at their necks. They’d just have to clearly indicate it’s fanfic, and the original author could get a cut of any earnings past a threshold.
Create a great work that inspires another great work; both authors benefit.
I would go even further, for any media.
The moment a company ends access to a piece of media, it should almost automatically become public domain. With just a reasonable window of time to bring it back once inaccessible, just in case there are things like downtime, blackouts, or restructuring of services.
Disney decides they will no longer let you rent the original Snow White for a local movie theater in your city, or take it out from their streaming services, or creates an alternate edited version with any significant alteration other than a disclaimer or warning at the start but removes access to the original, and no one else has the rights on lease that gives that access instead, boom, public domain. You no longer have to wait until 2032 to make an exploitative low-budget horror movie version of it.
If they make a remaster of a game, they must keep access to the original. Sell only the remaster; the original becomes public domain for use, not the IP, within reason.
Any associated proprietary technologies, like a physics engine, get a limited lease of use with no cost for the original as it was, excepting modifications to allow it to run on other devices and newer devices.
So it wouldn’t be all of it becomes public domain, but it becomes something usable and maintainable by the public domain.
Remove access to the game and all versions and remasters, and the IP of that game goes fully public domain.
Prodigy was a series for kids that adults could watch. I like to think this is a series for teens and young adults that adults can watch.
Lemmy is arguably more Star Trek than Reddit. It only makes sense.
Wait. Is there an LCARS lemmy frontend? We could really use that.
It’s conservation. Archeology is digging up what was once lost.
So finding a lost video game is archeology. Keeping it safe is conservation.
Ensuring games can’t be lost in the first place and that they continue to work in the future is preservation.
All needed, but different things.
Energy is cheaper where the government has a public alternative. That goes for all utilities and services.