5 ms·

A healthy chunk of media from the 80s to the 2000s is hard to get released because of the copyright thicket caused by the shows sampling other media. It sucks,

• MacsHeadroom 3y ago
  The answer is abolishing copyright. Not to save these shows. For other reasons. But saving these shows would be nice.
  • hnbad 3y ago
    Well, at the very least the answer would be softening copyright to the point where the kind of sampling that kind of media did is permissible again without clearing every single piece sampled. However that would effectively kill copyright because the only way those shows were able to do that was, in a way, what we now call "backroom deals".
  • _ph_ 3y ago
    I am not sure about abolishing, but it would already quite help if there was a clear, reasonably timed, copyright period. Like 50 years after publication.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  • woleium 3y ago
    Let’s see what the outcome of the generative AI law suits are. I am hopeful, but not very.
  • danaris 3y ago
    That's very much throwing the baby out with the bathwater. No; a much better answer is mandatory licensing, with set, reasonable fees.
• toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Pirating it and storing it on your own storage system. Copyright is unlikely to change materially in the next decade or two. Quality copies make their way into long term archival systems, for when copyright is possibly less insane. 50 years? 100 years? Doesn't matter, those copies will be safe for the future. It will take time for the electorate and the representatives they elect to turn over ("progress occurs one funeral at a time").
• treypitt 3y ago
  Take to the seas!
• Workaccount2 3y ago
  If there is no means to legally watch something after 10 years, then it shouldn't be illegal to pirate it.
• imglorp 3y ago
  I'm a little baffled by the sampling problem. Is a few second small clip of something really representing some sea of lost income damage for the original? Or is it more like femto-dollars per viewing and they want it accounted for?
  • kmeisthax 3y ago
    Neither. It's "the two corporations who own each half of the work want to dictate the conduct of the other half". Same reason why Nintendo and Microsoft couldn't agree on who gets Goldeneye back in the Wii/360 era.
  • mcphage 3y ago
    It's more like "we could show this on TV because we had a verbal agreement with the rights owner, but our lawyers won't let us put it on streaming because we probably don't have the actual rights to display that content, and so it's a legal liability we don't need". Do the rights holders actually care? Is it clear who the rights holders actually are? Maybe not, but nobody wants to find out.
  • jauntywundrkind 3y ago
    One of my favorite videos games Blur is unavailable because it came with a licensed sound-track, but the license was only for like ~10 years. Movies wouldn't be what they'd be without good music. It sets a vibe. So I understand that even short bits of music deserve some compensation. I do wish there was some kind of Fair Reasonable and Non-discrimindatory option available, that set standard rates & would prevent these kind of availability hangups, and expand access. I do kind of get that artists don't want their work associated with certain things though; certain notable politicians/parties for example seem to have gotten half-a-dizen artists telling them to stop using their music, saying they don't want anything to do with the politician. One could make some kind of horrible terrible slanted movie, and under (F)RAND the artist seemingly wouldn't have recourse from involuntarily becoming the title track. It's complicated. :/ What we have now is awful though. Maybe we just create some hoops to jump through for rights holders. Make it so content-owners have to renew their part of the deal or otherwise the license automatically extends. That way at least some media, rather than being lost, is released. This is vaguely like copyright pre-1976, where folks got 28 years & then could renew for another 28 years.
• al_borland 3y ago
  IMO companies should have 5 years to make money off what they produce. That should give them time for a theatrical release and a bulk of the at home sales and early streaming boost. For a TV series, maybe it’s 5 years after the show ends. After that, it enters the public domain to avoid media being lost to time and the mess we currently have. If a studio hasn’t made enough money to recoup their costs and generate some profit in 5 years, it is unlikely they ever will. I’m not sure how this would work with something like a soap opera that has been on air for 50+ years with no sign of stopping.
• kmeisthax 3y ago
  The answer is collective and compulsory licensing programs.
• jareklupinski 3y ago
  > I don't know what the answer is. my answer was to stop letting media own me i enjoy what i watch as art, and I look forward to enjoying new things as they come out (people will always be creating new things) but I have to consciously try my best not to let marketers try to influence my emotions to purchase branded merchandise