3 ms·
There are different reasons that get out forward for copyrights, but the main one is generally money, incentivizing and compensating creative works. That reason
by netcan 8y ago
There are different reasons that get out forward for copyrights, but the main one is generally money, incentivizing and compensating creative works. That reason can't credibly (imo) support these long timespans.
Few works produce revenue 50 or 100 years after publication. But even assuming a work dies, once you discount for time, revenue in 100 years is basically worth nothing now. Reducing or increasing copyright length by a decade would have almost no effect on working authors and can't financially incentivize their work.
- bediger4000 8y agoAgreed: the ridiculously long copyright we've got now can't financially incentivize authors' work. Therefore, something else is motivating arbitrarily long copyrights. What is that motivation? I would suggest just plain control freakery. Even in USA, control over employees and resources, even to the detriment of the corporation, seems to be prized.
- nybble41 8y agoI would guess that the main financial motive for ever-increasing copyright terms is strictly anti-competitive, in the sense that the studios are attempting to avoid competing with their own back-catalogs. There is more decent entertainment out there already than any one person could properly appreciate in their lifetime; the only way the studios can ensure a market for their more recent works is by banning all the older ones.