4 ms·

i think this is fair and we will likely see it extended further. the media works of today cost way more than they did before. some songs cost millions to produ

i think this is fair and we will likely see it extended further. the media works of today cost way more than they did before. some songs cost millions to produce. some movies hundreds of millions. some video games billions of dollars. and the longevity of media has increased over time. we may not watch much 1920s movies but we do watch movies from the 50s and 60s. and i think recent movies will last even longer since the production value is so high i think we will see this in video games the most. they will continue to be revenue sources in digital formats and companies will be defensive over losing them

aqme28 5y ago
Why is the cost of media a major factor on whether or not it is "fair"? Ostensibly, the point of these restrictions is to incentivize the people who make IP. But no one actually considers revenue 99 years into the future, so it doesn't work as an incentive.
mikepurvis 5y ago
Okay, but for all modern media at those price tags, the overwhelming majority of the revenue is seen within the first year, often within the first month or even first few days (consider pre-orders on video games— RDR2 reportedly made $725M in its first weekend). Why should this content be locked up for decades past the point where it has already made 90% of the money it's ever going to make? So the Disney company can have a century's worth of exclusive material ready to go when they launch D+, creating an absolutely impenetrable barrier to entry for an upstart?
criddell 5y ago
> some songs cost millions to produce Nobody is investing millions in a song that they think could take 95 years to earn enough to justify the investment. Copyright is there to incentivize creating new works. If the copyright was shortened to max(life of the artist, 50 years), how many artists do you think would stop creating? Frankly, there's an argument to be made that shortening the length of copyright to 25 years would encourage more new works simply because you can rest an your laurels.
kmeisthax 5y ago
I disagree wholeheartedly. The purpose of copyright is to shift money made from selling copies back into the production of new works; and anything else is just blatant rent-seeking at the expense of the larger economy. High-budget songs, movies, and video games will either make back their budgets immediately, or they will be written off as a loss. There are very few cases where a work's financial success is predicated on money made five or ten years out. Hell, for video games, ten years out and you need to port your game to a new platform, which costs money, since the industry's investment into emulation technology[0] is piss-poor. Furthermore, the production values of a work don't have much to do with it's longevity; you can't spend twice as much to get a work with twice the relevance decades down the line. In fact, most of the works from the past that still are relevant today were made on budgets that would be considered shoe-string today. If anything, I'd argue that longer terms make cheap cash-ins a safer bet than riskier experimental projects, even though the latter is more likely to be relevant. Do you really think that, say, Ghostbusters: Afterlife is going to last longer than the original Ghostbusters? [0] Counterexamples: PC gaming, Steam Proton, and Xbox Series/PS5 backwards compatibility. All of these rely upon having built their games on technologies with long-term compatibility support built-in (Windows, x86), or upon community re-implementation efforts (WINE). The game industry cannot ever seem to afford to write their own one-off emulators.
- foolfoolz 5y ago
  this is totally false. world of warcraft was released 15 years ago and is still generating real profit. because video games receive updates and have continued micro transactions they do not necessarily make the most of their revenue immediately upon release production value has a huge impact. why would rockstar spend billions developing gta 5 if it was public domain after 10 years? it’s still the cash machine that runs the business today and it’s 8 years old
  - kmeisthax 5y ago
    WoW and GTA5 both made back their costs shortly after launch. The fact that there is more profit to be made afterwards isn't an argument for or against longer copyright terms. The point of copyright is not to enable the author or publisher to capture 100% of the profit - otherwise, we'd just issue perpetual copyright title and call it a day. The point is to encourage the production of new works by giving people who create them a "bite at the apple", so to speak. So the length of copyright title needs to be calibrated to allow creators the chance to make a profit, but to not gate further creativity or re-use behind a paywall. This is, of course, very poorly bargained-for in present law.
BeFlatXIII 5y ago
> some songs cost millions to produce. some movies hundreds of millions. some video games billions of dollars Seems like the cultural ROI isn't there. The extra money may bring extra revenue but it doesn't improve the quality at all. Why not force a market correction?
Dylan16807 5y ago
> we may not watch much 1920s movies but we do watch movies from the 50s and 60s. When you take the time value of money into account, an expectation of big amounts of revenue multiple decades out is worth very little at the time of production. And on top of that, those old movies tend to be licensed at very cheap rates, so now it's a small amount of revenue getting exponentially discounted. Cutting copyright after a couple decades won't have a big impact on profits.

aqme28 5y ago

Why is the cost of media a major factor on whether or not it is "fair"? Ostensibly, the point of these restrictions is to incentivize the people who make IP. But no one actually considers revenue 99 years into the future, so it doesn't work as an incentive.

mikepurvis 5y ago

Okay, but for all modern media at those price tags, the overwhelming majority of the revenue is seen within the first year, often within the first month or even first few days (consider pre-orders on video games— RDR2 reportedly made $725M in its first weekend). Why should this content be locked up for decades past the point where it has already made 90% of the money it's ever going to make? So the Disney company can have a century's worth of exclusive material ready to go when they launch D+, creating an absolutely impenetrable barrier to entry for an upstart?

criddell 5y ago

> some songs cost millions to produce Nobody is investing millions in a song that they think could take 95 years to earn enough to justify the investment. Copyright is there to incentivize creating new works. If the copyright was shortened to max(life of the artist, 50 years), how many artists do you think would stop creating? Frankly, there's an argument to be made that shortening the length of copyright to 25 years would encourage more new works simply because you can rest an your laurels.

kmeisthax 5y ago

I disagree wholeheartedly. The purpose of copyright is to shift money made from selling copies back into the production of new works; and anything else is just blatant rent-seeking at the expense of the larger economy. High-budget songs, movies, and video games will either make back their budgets immediately, or they will be written off as a loss. There are very few cases where a work's financial success is predicated on money made five or ten years out. Hell, for video games, ten years out and you need to port your game to a new platform, which costs money, since the industry's investment into emulation technology[0] is piss-poor. Furthermore, the production values of a work don't have much to do with it's longevity; you can't spend twice as much to get a work with twice the relevance decades down the line. In fact, most of the works from the past that still are relevant today were made on budgets that would be considered shoe-string today. If anything, I'd argue that longer terms make cheap cash-ins a safer bet than riskier experimental projects, even though the latter is more likely to be relevant. Do you really think that, say, Ghostbusters: Afterlife is going to last longer than the original Ghostbusters? [0] Counterexamples: PC gaming, Steam Proton, and Xbox Series/PS5 backwards compatibility. All of these rely upon having built their games on technologies with long-term compatibility support built-in (Windows, x86), or upon community re-implementation efforts (WINE). The game industry cannot ever seem to afford to write their own one-off emulators.

foolfoolz 5y ago
this is totally false. world of warcraft was released 15 years ago and is still generating real profit. because video games receive updates and have continued micro transactions they do not necessarily make the most of their revenue immediately upon release production value has a huge impact. why would rockstar spend billions developing gta 5 if it was public domain after 10 years? it’s still the cash machine that runs the business today and it’s 8 years old
- kmeisthax 5y ago
  WoW and GTA5 both made back their costs shortly after launch. The fact that there is more profit to be made afterwards isn't an argument for or against longer copyright terms. The point of copyright is not to enable the author or publisher to capture 100% of the profit - otherwise, we'd just issue perpetual copyright title and call it a day. The point is to encourage the production of new works by giving people who create them a "bite at the apple", so to speak. So the length of copyright title needs to be calibrated to allow creators the chance to make a profit, but to not gate further creativity or re-use behind a paywall. This is, of course, very poorly bargained-for in present law.

BeFlatXIII 5y ago

> some songs cost millions to produce. some movies hundreds of millions. some video games billions of dollars Seems like the cultural ROI isn't there. The extra money may bring extra revenue but it doesn't improve the quality at all. Why not force a market correction?

Dylan16807 5y ago

> we may not watch much 1920s movies but we do watch movies from the 50s and 60s. When you take the time value of money into account, an expectation of big amounts of revenue multiple decades out is worth very little at the time of production. And on top of that, those old movies tend to be licensed at very cheap rates, so now it's a small amount of revenue getting exponentially discounted. Cutting copyright after a couple decades won't have a big impact on profits.