@secret goldfish -- Re: Re: Re: Do writers dream of electric royalties?
"Most of the time they're simply the organisations best positioned to both create and exploit the new law for their own gain under the guise of the new laws being 'for the benefit of the public"
Spot on, but being organisations they BUY effective lobbying which we citizens can't. Methinks, we citizens need an organisation that does the same/maintain balance.
"The ironic thing is that the studios behind this are the last people on earth who want their own 50 year old films to move quietly into the 'free' public domain and will fight to the death , etc...."
Only yesterday (as a similar issue came up in posts last week or so), I reread a book of mine titled 'Technicolor Movies - The History of Dye Transfer Printing' by Richard W. Haines, (1993), and you read how the movie studios and Kodak effectively 'colluded' by making films on film stock that was extremely prone to fade (Eastman color negative/positive stock). In some instances, a theatre release print would have faded so much that it was almost useless to do the circuit a second time. Moreover, the master colour negative stock also faded and many of the studios never took precautions to back up to B&W tri-separations (these are RGB separations made onto B&W silver-based prints that do not fade).
Essentially, the studios don't give a damn about old productions unless they can milk something out of them. Moreover, since 1948 when the fade-prone stock became available, literally hundreds of movies have deteriorated to the point where it hurts to watch them because the quality is so terribly bad. The studios don't really want this stuff but its copyright keeps it out of the public domain, thus ceasing to compete against new productions.
Keeping the pool of viewable material as small as is possible and under their control is the main aim of the studios--and it's copyright law (and the lack of cultural heritage laws) that enables them to do so.
In the meantime, old films continue to rot.
Fuck 'em!