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This is exactly the same way that It’s A Wonderful Life became a much-revered Christmas classic. If the copyright hadn’t expired allowing monthlong TV marathons

This is exactly the same way that It’s A Wonderful Life became a much-revered Christmas classic. If the copyright hadn’t expired allowing monthlong TV marathons, it would have faded into obscurity. How many people remember The Best Years of Our Lives, which beat it out for multiple Oscars in 1947?

glimshe 1y ago
What is the middle ground? Everybody knows that "free" has a huge appeal. But so does low cost, which arguably vastly reduced piracy for older movies and music. It seems that content providers found ways to unlock content by paying creators fractions of a cent. It would be cool if there was a standard way to acquire license for older content for very little without dealing with the copyright headaches.
- rwmj 1y ago
  Copyrighted and then falls into the public domain after 14 years. Plenty of time to monetize, then benefits the public after a relatively short people of time.
  - conception 1y ago
    Or you get 10-14 years for free and after that you pay for it and it gets more and more expensive the older it is. Disney can keep their mouse but after 90 years its 100M. 91? 105M. Etc. If it’s not worth the price, let it go.
    - idle_zealot 1y ago
      This makes sense from a purely economic perspective (if you scale the fee exponentially). It does not make sense from a "promote the arts" standpoint. Derivative works are a huge portion of human expression, and allowing the most valuable/influential ideas to be kept from the public would continue (albeit to a lesser degree) the creative harm of the current copyright regime.
    - ndriscoll 1y ago
      It shouldn't be completely free for the initial period. Require a nominal fee (and registration) to pay for escrow/archive storage so it can be properly released into the public domain when copyright expires.
      - ghaff 1y ago
        Registration basically benefits large corporations. There are good reasons why a lot of individual authors oppose orphan works legislation. Disney isn't going to forget or screw up copyright registration. You or your kids might. Totally in favor of shorter copyright terms though even where there are edge cases where longer terms seemingly have made sense. (In terms of promoting progress of the arts, etc. or whatever the language is, I'm not sure that usually fairly small inheritances qualify.)
        ndriscoll 1y ago
        Registration benefits the general public, who are the meant to be the beneficiaries of the whole scheme in the first place. The entire purpose is to generate a larger wealth of public domain material. Registration and escrow ensures this happens.
    - Andrex 1y ago
      Giving large companies, but not the average Joe, the ability to retain copyright defeats the purpose of copyright being for artists.
      - DrillShopper 1y ago
        Copyright has been about corporations, not artists, for a long time.
        JadeNB 1y ago
        > Copyright has been about corporations, not artists, for a long time. That doesn't mean that we should lean into it.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
    What if copyright expired in 18 months? Same thing. 14 years made sense when there were wooden printing presses and the fastest communication was a rider and a horse carrying a handwritten letter sealed in wax. They arguably need less time to monetize today than they did back then. Years-long (or, as it is now decades-long and centuries-long) periods are about giving someone the right to tax culture for many generations, not about incentivizing creativity. It undermines the public domain.
    - bluGill 1y ago
      It takes more than 18 months for many good works to get through all the editing processes. You can tell when publishers skip on that time as the quality is worse.
    - Retric 1y ago
      18 months runs into the problem of nobody being willing to buy something on month 17… I’d be tempted never to pay for another movie again and I suspect a large fraction of people would react similarly. 5 years is probably at the lower end of actually extracting a large fraction of total value on most works and yet not hampering cultural remixes.
      - NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
        >18 months runs into the problem of nobody being willing to buy something on month 17 Well, that's one way to look at it. The other way is that it merely limits how much it can be sold for on month 17. When I was in high school, one of the big malls had a dollar-a-ticket movie theater. People would pay for things that are more easily/cheaply available soon, they just won't pay the premiums demanded now. But there's a third way to look at it... the idea that they never owned the intellectual property anyway. It always belonged to the public domain, they had a temporary lease. And in that view, the idea that they'd have trouble extracting maximum dollars from it on the day before the lease ends is absurd. No one cares, nor should they care. >I’d be tempted never to pay for another movie again a Why aren't you tempted for that now? I gave in to that temptation, and it is the superior experience. I can do all the streaming I need, to any of my devices (or my friends' devices) anywhere in the world. Everything on demand, from every premium channel and streaming service, in the highest resolution. Every minute or every day. I read comments here and elsewhere about people complaining how they have to cancel Netflix, the show's over, but they have to resubscribe to Disney because the new show's on, etc. It's all bizarre. The stuff you guys are willing to put up with is mind-boggling. >5 years is probably at the lower end of actually extracting a large fraction of total value You should be concerned with whether they can extract their costs, plus modest profit. Not "value". The magnitude of the grift in the industry that gave us the term "Hollywood accounting" is beyond human imagination or capacity to comprehend. Stop enabling that.
  - rakoo 1y ago
    elevates* Language has meaning, and the puplic domain is a better situation for society. It is more interesting to say it ascended
- rakoo 1y ago
  Piracy is only bad if you want to earn money for each eye watching a minute of a movie. What we're doing right now is piracy, no one pays anyone anything for content The question shouldn't be about how much it costs but why do things cost anything in the beginning, and if they have to what is the amount a specific piece should be retributed for its contribution to society minus how the non-zero cost impacts society. AIs are being let off the hook with their massive copyright infringement but when a movie being open directly benefits everyone suddenly that's a problem.
  - entropicdrifter 1y ago
    >Piracy is only bad if you want to earn money for each eye watching a minute of a movie. What we're doing right now is piracy, no one pays anyone anything for content This is utterly nonsensical. You've invented a new definition of piracy to try to claim that streaming services are piracy. Specifically at this point: >no one pays anyone anything for content This is literally factually incorrect. Netflix pays billions per year to copyright holders. Just because it's indirect payment in the form of a subscription doesn't mean you're not paying for the right to view content.
    - rakoo 1y ago
      I was talking about comments on a discussion board.
- graemep 1y ago
  The middle ground could be a lot of different things. One might be a reformed copyright system. The economist I know of who calculated a socially optimal copyright duration, Rufus Pollock, came up with an estimate of 20 something years. This makes sense from the point of view of finance because the NPV of extra years beyond this is very low. To put it in qualitative terms, no one is thinking about their grandchildren's pensions when they decide to create a work. Personally I would also have different durations and rules for different types of work: a book, a video, and a piece of software are very different works and need diffferent incentives
drewcoo 1y ago
/me raises hook hand . . . Myrna Loy . . .
Finnucane 1y ago
I've seen The Best Years of Our Lives several times; it plays regularly on TCM.
stuart78 1y ago
The Best Years of Our Lives is a genuine classic. Complex narrative, brilliant cinematography and performances. It is a much more difficult film than It's A Wonderful Life, and absolutely worth watching.

glimshe 1y ago

What is the middle ground? Everybody knows that "free" has a huge appeal. But so does low cost, which arguably vastly reduced piracy for older movies and music. It seems that content providers found ways to unlock content by paying creators fractions of a cent. It would be cool if there was a standard way to acquire license for older content for very little without dealing with the copyright headaches.

rwmj 1y ago
Copyrighted and then falls into the public domain after 14 years. Plenty of time to monetize, then benefits the public after a relatively short people of time.
- conception 1y ago
  Or you get 10-14 years for free and after that you pay for it and it gets more and more expensive the older it is. Disney can keep their mouse but after 90 years its 100M. 91? 105M. Etc. If it’s not worth the price, let it go.
  - idle_zealot 1y ago
    This makes sense from a purely economic perspective (if you scale the fee exponentially). It does not make sense from a "promote the arts" standpoint. Derivative works are a huge portion of human expression, and allowing the most valuable/influential ideas to be kept from the public would continue (albeit to a lesser degree) the creative harm of the current copyright regime.
  - ndriscoll 1y ago
    It shouldn't be completely free for the initial period. Require a nominal fee (and registration) to pay for escrow/archive storage so it can be properly released into the public domain when copyright expires.
    - ghaff 1y ago
      Registration basically benefits large corporations. There are good reasons why a lot of individual authors oppose orphan works legislation. Disney isn't going to forget or screw up copyright registration. You or your kids might. Totally in favor of shorter copyright terms though even where there are edge cases where longer terms seemingly have made sense. (In terms of promoting progress of the arts, etc. or whatever the language is, I'm not sure that usually fairly small inheritances qualify.)
      - ndriscoll 1y ago
        Registration benefits the general public, who are the meant to be the beneficiaries of the whole scheme in the first place. The entire purpose is to generate a larger wealth of public domain material. Registration and escrow ensures this happens.
  - Andrex 1y ago
    Giving large companies, but not the average Joe, the ability to retain copyright defeats the purpose of copyright being for artists.
    - DrillShopper 1y ago
      Copyright has been about corporations, not artists, for a long time.
      - JadeNB 1y ago
        > Copyright has been about corporations, not artists, for a long time. That doesn't mean that we should lean into it.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
  What if copyright expired in 18 months? Same thing. 14 years made sense when there were wooden printing presses and the fastest communication was a rider and a horse carrying a handwritten letter sealed in wax. They arguably need less time to monetize today than they did back then. Years-long (or, as it is now decades-long and centuries-long) periods are about giving someone the right to tax culture for many generations, not about incentivizing creativity. It undermines the public domain.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    It takes more than 18 months for many good works to get through all the editing processes. You can tell when publishers skip on that time as the quality is worse.
  - Retric 1y ago
    18 months runs into the problem of nobody being willing to buy something on month 17… I’d be tempted never to pay for another movie again and I suspect a large fraction of people would react similarly. 5 years is probably at the lower end of actually extracting a large fraction of total value on most works and yet not hampering cultural remixes.
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
      >18 months runs into the problem of nobody being willing to buy something on month 17 Well, that's one way to look at it. The other way is that it merely limits how much it can be sold for on month 17. When I was in high school, one of the big malls had a dollar-a-ticket movie theater. People would pay for things that are more easily/cheaply available soon, they just won't pay the premiums demanded now. But there's a third way to look at it... the idea that they never owned the intellectual property anyway. It always belonged to the public domain, they had a temporary lease. And in that view, the idea that they'd have trouble extracting maximum dollars from it on the day before the lease ends is absurd. No one cares, nor should they care. >I’d be tempted never to pay for another movie again a Why aren't you tempted for that now? I gave in to that temptation, and it is the superior experience. I can do all the streaming I need, to any of my devices (or my friends' devices) anywhere in the world. Everything on demand, from every premium channel and streaming service, in the highest resolution. Every minute or every day. I read comments here and elsewhere about people complaining how they have to cancel Netflix, the show's over, but they have to resubscribe to Disney because the new show's on, etc. It's all bizarre. The stuff you guys are willing to put up with is mind-boggling. >5 years is probably at the lower end of actually extracting a large fraction of total value You should be concerned with whether they can extract their costs, plus modest profit. Not "value". The magnitude of the grift in the industry that gave us the term "Hollywood accounting" is beyond human imagination or capacity to comprehend. Stop enabling that.
- rakoo 1y ago
  elevates* Language has meaning, and the puplic domain is a better situation for society. It is more interesting to say it ascended
rakoo 1y ago
Piracy is only bad if you want to earn money for each eye watching a minute of a movie. What we're doing right now is piracy, no one pays anyone anything for content The question shouldn't be about how much it costs but why do things cost anything in the beginning, and if they have to what is the amount a specific piece should be retributed for its contribution to society minus how the non-zero cost impacts society. AIs are being let off the hook with their massive copyright infringement but when a movie being open directly benefits everyone suddenly that's a problem.
- entropicdrifter 1y ago
  >Piracy is only bad if you want to earn money for each eye watching a minute of a movie. What we're doing right now is piracy, no one pays anyone anything for content This is utterly nonsensical. You've invented a new definition of piracy to try to claim that streaming services are piracy. Specifically at this point: >no one pays anyone anything for content This is literally factually incorrect. Netflix pays billions per year to copyright holders. Just because it's indirect payment in the form of a subscription doesn't mean you're not paying for the right to view content.
  - rakoo 1y ago
    I was talking about comments on a discussion board.
graemep 1y ago
The middle ground could be a lot of different things. One might be a reformed copyright system. The economist I know of who calculated a socially optimal copyright duration, Rufus Pollock, came up with an estimate of 20 something years. This makes sense from the point of view of finance because the NPV of extra years beyond this is very low. To put it in qualitative terms, no one is thinking about their grandchildren's pensions when they decide to create a work. Personally I would also have different durations and rules for different types of work: a book, a video, and a piece of software are very different works and need diffferent incentives

drewcoo 1y ago

/me raises hook hand . . . Myrna Loy . . .

Finnucane 1y ago

I've seen The Best Years of Our Lives several times; it plays regularly on TCM.

stuart78 1y ago

The Best Years of Our Lives is a genuine classic. Complex narrative, brilliant cinematography and performances. It is a much more difficult film than It's A Wonderful Life, and absolutely worth watching.