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Welcome to the age of zombie copyright holding companies. National Geographic also went out of business last year, in that they now employ zero writers (Disney
by hedora 3y ago
Welcome to the age of zombie copyright holding companies.
National Geographic also went out of business last year, in that they now employ zero writers (Disney is the majority owner).
Warner Brothers Discovery Corp is performing a similar wind-down of the operations they own (they cut $3B from production budgets last year), and is hoping to apply the same thing to Paramount's holdings after their proposed acquisition is approved.
In particular, CNN and CBS will be owned by the resulting company, and there will be plenty more journalists to fire at the resulting conglomerate (WBD laid off a bunch of reporters at CNN last year as part of a pivot to cater to the Fox News audience).
The above is an obvious-in-hindsight side effect of having copyrights that basically never expire. Maybe after they've all burned themselves to ash (and stop bribing congress) we'll be able to repeal the Sonny Bono / Micky Mouse Protection Act.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago> The above is an obvious-in-hindsight side effect of having copyrights that basically never expire. Shorter copyright was not going to save CNN/CBS’s video news model. It’s an enormously inefficient way to get information.
- dirtyhippiefree 3y agoNews aggregators using video as news is actually on the rise, not the decline…
- lotsofpulp 3y agoThat might be true, but is the revenue from that use offsetting loss of revenue from linear TV advertising (from pre smartphone years)? I doubt it, but I would be interesting in being shown that I’m wrong.
- ProjectArcturis 3y agoThe names of businesses are trademarks, not copyrights. They never expire as long as the business keeps operating. Which is as it should be -- should I be able to open a restaurant called McDonald's just because the real McDonald's has been in business for 75 years?
- pjlegato 3y agoCopyright does not last forever (even if it lasts longer than you may like.) Mickey Mouse entered the public domain a few weeks ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/01/arts/public-domain-mickey-mouse.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/01/arts/public-domain-mickey...