Board Thread:Off-Topic Discussion/@comment-6433273-20171231161124/@comment-53539-20180227075600

NoviStarsRule wrote: I've already started archiving pretty much as I can, if you want a full list ask me.

Also Angel could you help me find a source for updates costing more? Spoken once by Anders, PowerFX, Zero-G. Can't source it as it means going over 9 years of stuff, wouldn't know where to begin since some things got removed. Its often quoted as a reason for not updated Miriam, Leon and Lola though especially.

Re-newing licenses generally costs more, ditto copyright and so fourth... I remember when the BBC resurrected Doctor Who in the early 2000s, "Dalek" was £1 million alone to renew it. They almost didn't renew it, glad they did because Dr Who isn't the same without them. Its not just something related to Vocaloid, its a general problem if you want to copyright or license things it can cost money. And licensing copyright and all that grows over time as a product gets bigger.

Yet the copyright is valuable so some companies like to maintain them even if they don't do anything with them, as licensing is still a form of power and control over products you have made and renewing a unused license is harder then a new one. Hence why EA has a habit of grabbing gaming companies and when they produce a game that fails, they keep the licensing up, which annoys fans as they are sitting on 40 years worth of licenses. If you don't maintain these things, they can fall into the public domain after about 50 years. Licenses are power, ask the Scouts, they legally held a license for "Happy Birthday" song even though it was pointed out time and time again their claim was bogus, preventing anyone covering it without them being handed money. Fortunately their bogus claim to the song has run out.

Top it off, when a company like Yamaha has the ball in their court they will put a % each time on the licensing just to cover their own growing costs to maintain the "Vocaloid" name itself as well as development on it.

I do note though, recently Zero-G has switched to noting that the devs not wanting to do old vocals now. So I suspect Zero-G does want to update their older vocaloids (especially Miriam) and now has the cost versus licensing fees balanced to cover licensing costs, but their relying on 3rd party devs who don't want to do it this. With PowerFX out of the race too, there is only 1 company left, making things a lot more bottleneck in development.

As I write all this... I suddenly remembered... I think some of the early interviews do, however, perhaps mention some of the licensing issues over old Vocaloids. So I'd scout out the V2 Engloids reference sections and look for the old interviews and see if its mentioned.

@VO closure, they still get a decent amount of people visit. Its not forums are dying, because forum usage is still pretty high overall since forums are often better places to have long term conversations. Its that social networks attract more people. Forums always were for more specialised individuals to discuss things over and were a niche market. They were popular before the major raise of social media because the tweens and teens had no choice. Now they have choices, forums are now back to what they were in the 90s and are about nerds and geeks hanging out.

If Azure thinks his forum is dead, believe me I was there in the late 90s and early 2000s when forums could get 5 replies tops to a target and 100 members was considered a "good" healthy forum. He doesn't know what a "dead" forum looks like, I've seen them... Imagine 1 reply in 6 months.

In reality, Azure is likely loosing faith among people now that the story is out about him and people aren't so quick to support him. Even here some like Bunai said he should have used some of his money from NATA to support the forum. In fact, if you ask me money is likely the soul reason for the forum closing. IT costs to keep the forum running, when he asks for donations and nobody steps forward to give them, then he isn't earning enough. So with his own things gaining more money off the forum then the forum, he likely wants to close it now as it isn't brining him in anything. Yet without the forum, I have a funny idea that he likely will suffer from the lack of a spot to advertise.