Talking about works of art that have no copyright last week reminded me of a situation that I sometimes run across on the internet; that is orphaned work. The company KID used to be a maker of some of the best and most original stories visual novels had to offer. A visual novel is essentially a PC game where you read text and click to advance, sometimes making choices choose-your-own-adventure style. It's basically an interactive book with illustration and music. Well anyway the company went bankrupt and another company that didn't really do much of anything with the property it acquired. The sad part is that one of the best visual novels of all time,
Ever 17: The Out of Infinity is now stuck in distribution limbo probably for a long time.
Since the makers are no longer selling, and buying a used copy on Ebay for $150 isn't going to support the makers in any way, the only reasonable option to enjoy this classic is to pirate it. This is the sad fate of many works that have a huge fan following, yet nobody seems to be selling copies anytime soon. So are is piracy bad no matter what, or does rescuing lost classics from copyright hell take priority?
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