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All sound recordings prior to 1923 will enter the US public domain in 2022

publicdomainreview.org

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Re: All sound recordings prior to 1923 will enter the US public domain in 2022

#171

Post by Dylan16807 »

foolfoolz wrote: post #105
kmeisthax wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 predicat…

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 ru…

If world of warcraft hadn't added any content in 15 years it wouldn't be making much money.

> why would rockstar spend billions developing gta 5 if it was public domain after 10 years?

Because that's still a ton of money. Also every time they update the game with more content, that's something you can only get if you buy or wait even longer. And it's easy for them to require payment to use GTA Online.

> it’s still the cash machine that runs the business today and it’s 8 years old

I don't think it would be a tragedy if they had to put out a new game at some point in the next few years to keep making as much money.

Also the game was already completely free for a week in 2020.

Re: All sound recordings prior to 1923 will enter the US public domain in 2022

#172

Post by lapetitejort »

filoeleven wrote: post #93
odiroot wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing Edison, he can get up from the grave any day, to sue you into bankruptcy.

Alternatively, with a reinforced casket mounted on a turbine, his grave-spinning could be a viable and fitting alternative to fossil fuels.

Grave spinning? Sounds like that dangerous Alternating Current malarky. Don't you know that AC can kill an elephant??

Re: All sound recordings prior to 1923 will enter the US public domain in 2022

#173

Post by Dylan16807 »

foolfoolz wrote: post #19
marcodiego wrote: post #2

99 years to enter public domain... I don't think this is fair.

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…

> 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.

Re: All sound recordings prior to 1923 will enter the US public domain in 2022

#174

Post by andymockli »

kragen wrote: post #135
marcodiego wrote: post #2

99 years to enter public domain... I don't think this is fair.

We should eliminate copyright. Zero years. Copyright was a reasonable bargain when printing a book involved a large up-front investment of typesetting it and then printing all the copies that would ever be printed from that setup. It didn't affect most people, just printers. And it enabled authors to make a living from writing. This held a fortiori for phonograph records. It became fairly dubious in the age of photoc…

To add to your point, the futility of copyright enforcement in the digital age created a new industry in the form of DRM and YouTube auto-takedown algorithms.

Re: All sound recordings prior to 1923 will enter the US public domain in 2022

#175

Post by chrisco255 »

cma wrote: post #126
chrisco255 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disney was founded on Mickey Mouse. Yes, they made major motion pictures out of old myths and legends, like Cinderella and Robin Hood, but those stories have always been public domain and you can write a book or movie about them with no problem.

Original style Mickey himself is mostly just a traceover of Oswald with different ears.

Right, but Oswald was created by Walt. He did it under contract for Universal.

Re: All sound recordings prior to 1923 will enter the US public domain in 2022

#176

Post by grishka »

californical wrote: post #167
grishka wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> almost any organization would attempt to preserve profits. Often at the expense of everything else, including common sense. Despite their current revenues already covering their expenses, many times over. > But the idea people can't get together and make movies, that's a new one. They can, but they will own shares in them, either split equally or proportionally to their contribution.

How are there shares if there’s no copyright? Do you own 10% of a movie that’s worth $0 since anyone can copy and distribute it for no cost?

There is copyright, but it's non-transferable and only lasts for 2-3 years. After that time, yes, anyone can copy and distribute it.

My idea here is that you would have the option of either paying right now, or waiting when the copyright expires and getting it legally for free. In our current system people don't even consider that copyrights have an expiry date, they operate as if they're effectively indefinite. And the current system doesn't work anyway — the majority of the society just isn't having it. Everyone has pirated something at some point.

Re: All sound recordings prior to 1923 will enter the US public domain in 2022

#177

Post by t-writescode »

grishka wrote: post #176
californical wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are there shares if there’s no copyright? Do you own 10% of a movie that’s worth $0 since anyone can copy and distribute it for no cost?

There is copyright, but it's non-transferable and only lasts for 2-3 years. After that time, yes, anyone can copy and distribute it. My idea here is that you would have the option of either paying right now, or waiting when the copyright expires and getting it legally for free. In our current system people don't even consider that copyrights have an expiry date, they operate as if they're effectively indefinite. And…

I think the big problem here is that 2-3 years is almost no time at all. With 2-3 years, basically everyone will wait for the next book in the Game of Thrones series to come out of costing money.

Covid has been nearly 2 years, and for many of us it feels both like yesterday and also like forever ago, for example.

And then you'll have people that want to watch the movie of something, so they're willing to pay the video company for instant access, but the movie is based off a script someone wrote, or a book someone wrote, and that book is at least 2 years old.

RR Martin would make zero dollars from Game of Thrones, for example.

Re: All sound recordings prior to 1923 will enter the US public domain in 2022

#178

Post by sneak »

chrisco255 wrote: post #81
Hokusai wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, anyone that had a personal attachment to that music is dead. The current goal of copyright is to let companies own the culture you grew with. All the movies, music, books and games that defined who you are will not enter the public domain until you are dead or very old. Companies like Disney were founded on well known stories. They will not allow anybody else too accomplish the same.

Disney was founded on Mickey Mouse. Yes, they made major motion pictures out of old myths and legends, like Cinderella and Robin Hood, but those stories have always been public domain and you can write a book or movie about them with no problem.

May the force be with you.

Re: All sound recordings prior to 1923 will enter the US public domain in 2022

#179

Post by KarlKemp »

Retric wrote: post #89
KarlKemp wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is mostly an urban legend. Yes, some amount of the increase in life expectancy is due to reduced infant mortality. But it’s nowhere near the bulk of it.

In 1920 at birth a males life expectancy was ~54, at 40 a man could be expected to live to ~70. Current estimates are almost unchanged between birth and 40 at 76.23 vs 78.75. That’s a 25% increase in life expectancy at 40, but that a long way from the 41% increase from birth. I chose 40 because it wasn’t medicine that made the biggest difference for 20 to 40 year olds but war. And actuarial tables can’t predict wars…

Yes, your original post was indeed correct by hedging a bit, speaking of "adult life expectancy" vs. "infant/child mortality".

People read that and it registers as infants dying within days after birth. But life expectancy for 10-year-olds has doubled: https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy. I doubt that your comment makes people think of dead teenagers, even though your post doesn't contradict that interpretation.

Even for the 40-year-olds, life expectancy increasing from 68 to 82 years means a >50% increase in "time remaining" which isn't something to sneeze (cough?) at, although I have to reluctantly acknowledge that I remembered it being even larger than that.

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