> There are so many excellent films made in the second half of the twentieth century that most people will only encounter when, ironically, a broadcaster shows

> There are so many excellent films made in the second half of the twentieth century that most people will only encounter when, ironically, a broadcaster shows it on classical linear television. Yep, I would have never discovers Jeremiah Johnson without TMC. > Here is a radical though: reduce copyright to 28 years, and let the Netflixes and HBO's compete against that! Not going to happen of course — the best some of us can do in the meantime is pretend copyright did end after such a term, or just meekly submit to whatever is made available, DRM-shackles and all. This is the real root of this issue. You're completely on the right track. Originally, copyright only protected an idea for a very short amount of time. Basically the amount of time required to go to market with an idea. Copyright was intended to protect the little guy entering the industry so larger competitors couldn't steal their ideas until after the little guy entered the market. Now, on the other hand, copyright accomplishes the exact opposite. It protects the big guys by ensuring that no-one can ever use or improve upon their ideas/products without their express consent for what seems like an eternity(see Disney constantly requesting copyright extensions on Mickey Mouse). There should be a hard limit on copyright of 5 years, maybe 10 for IP. As you said above, this will never happen as there are too many people and companies feeding off the current system. Disrupting the status quo would result in an eruption of outcry from studios, record labels, and publishers. That said, I think we can all agree that is absolutely absurd that record labels are still profiting off of albums where every person who worked on them is now dead for an example. Let's also be real here and address the issue that artists don't really benefit from signing on to contracts with large corporations outside of maybe better publicity. 90% of the proceeds from listens on spotify or shows on Netflix are going to the companies that own the rights and not the musicians/actors. That's why most non-mainstream music is moving into self publishing/independent labels.