>> People will still buy from you by default > That’s an assumption that doesn’t stand up to a reality check, it’s rare for media that expires copyright and ha

>> People will still buy from you by default > That’s an assumption that doesn’t stand up to a reality check, it’s rare for media that expires copyright and has a revenue stream to continue providing that same revenue in the face of competition. This is exactly why Disney has asked for extensions. One interesting thing this reminds me of is the case where due to the publication technology of the day, the quality of the work as available to the general public is significantly inferior as compared to the master copy sitting in the vaults. If copyright was for example only twenty years and simultaneously releasing a higher quality version of the same work still wouldn't qualify for its own copyright term, would we have seen the various re-releases of older works as newer and better reproduction technology became available? Under that assumption for example, most of the Beatles' albums would have been already out of copyright by the time the first CD re-releases appeared in our timeline. This might admittedly only be a temporary problem because it can be argued that storage formats eventually will be (or already are) good enough that yet another higher quality re-release won't be necessary in the future (and at least for books without illustrations/pictures/special special typographic features it never really mattered anyway, because unless the print quality was truly dire, the original text can always perfectly be recovered), but at least for the past transitions we've had for audio from vinyl to CDs and generally digital music formats, as well as for video e.g. VHS to DVD to BluRay etc. I'd argue that there was a certain benefit to the public that the holders of the high-quality master copy were motivated (because of continuing copyright) to actually spend the money and do the work of re-releasing those works in a higher quality format.