7 ms·

It is unreasonable to deny the entire public of works of art that are culturally relevant.

dangus 7y ago
Who determines what is culturally relevant? You’re saying that if I make my own movie with my own funding and time/effort, if enough people like it and the culturally relevant switch gets flipped on they get to take it from me while I’m still alive and I don’t have any say on whether my work is duplicated or screened? What if I run a SaaS product, people have been using it for 30 years, and they’ve determined it to be culturally relevant. Do they get to copy my source code and run it for themselves? These are 70s and 80s movies. Many of those who contributed to them are still alive. It’s entirely reasonable for those people to determine how/whether to distribute their own art. If you believe in that level of public ownership I can respect that you hold that opinion, but I don’t agree with it. At the same time, I do believe that copyrights expiring a lifetime after the creator dies are unreasonable. To me, the right balance of copyright law is somewhere in between the extremes of Mickey Mouse ownership in perpetuity and complete public ownership.
- fourthark 7y ago
  I am pretty sure if you asked the creators of these films, they’d want them still shown. We’re talking about the actions of Disney, which wasn’t even the studio for the Fox films.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    The “creators” wouldn’t have been able to create anything without the financial backing of the studios. You have a few like Lucas and Spielberg who owned their own production companies.
    - mthoms 7y ago
      You're right, those uppity "creators" should be thankful. Joking aside- This will become less true as technology makes film-making and distribution more accessible. Studios know this, so they've switched focus to tightly controlling distribution. Hurray for cultural gate-keepers.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        How are they controlling the “distribution”? There are so many streaming services and cable channels hungry for exclusive content that if you make something halfway decent someone will buy it from you. On top of that, you can sell directly to consumers on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, Redbox VOD, etc.
        mthoms 7y ago
        > How are they controlling the “distribution”? What do you mean? The very article we've been discussing is about Disney's attempt to control distribution. I agree that for now there's a healthy ecosystem of distribution channels for newer, lower budget content - I said as much. What's happening is that the studios are countering that by tightly controlling valuable legacy content. The kind of stuff we see as part of the cultural zeitgeist of the last several decades (again, see the article for examples).
        scarface74 7y ago
        Disney is controlling access to their content not content you create yourself. Disney isn’t stopping any of the content distributors I named from distributing anyone else’s content.

Who determines what is culturally relevant? You’re saying that if I make my own movie with my own funding and time/effort, if enough people like it and the culturally relevant switch gets flipped on they get to take it from me while I’m still alive and I don’t have any say on whether my work is duplicated or screened? What if I run a SaaS product, people have been using it for 30 years, and they’ve determined it to be culturally relevant. Do they get to copy my source code and run it for themselves? These are 70s and 80s movies. Many of those who contributed to them are still alive. It’s entirely reasonable for those people to determine how/whether to distribute their own art. If you believe in that level of public ownership I can respect that you hold that opinion, but I don’t agree with it. At the same time, I do believe that copyrights expiring a lifetime after the creator dies are unreasonable. To me, the right balance of copyright law is somewhere in between the extremes of Mickey Mouse ownership in perpetuity and complete public ownership.

fourthark 7y ago
I am pretty sure if you asked the creators of these films, they’d want them still shown. We’re talking about the actions of Disney, which wasn’t even the studio for the Fox films.
- scarface74 7y ago
  The “creators” wouldn’t have been able to create anything without the financial backing of the studios. You have a few like Lucas and Spielberg who owned their own production companies.
  - mthoms 7y ago
    You're right, those uppity "creators" should be thankful. Joking aside- This will become less true as technology makes film-making and distribution more accessible. Studios know this, so they've switched focus to tightly controlling distribution. Hurray for cultural gate-keepers.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      How are they controlling the “distribution”? There are so many streaming services and cable channels hungry for exclusive content that if you make something halfway decent someone will buy it from you. On top of that, you can sell directly to consumers on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, Redbox VOD, etc.
      - mthoms 7y ago
        > How are they controlling the “distribution”? What do you mean? The very article we've been discussing is about Disney's attempt to control distribution. I agree that for now there's a healthy ecosystem of distribution channels for newer, lower budget content - I said as much. What's happening is that the studios are countering that by tightly controlling valuable legacy content. The kind of stuff we see as part of the cultural zeitgeist of the last several decades (again, see the article for examples).
        scarface74 7y ago
        Disney is controlling access to their content not content you create yourself. Disney isn’t stopping any of the content distributors I named from distributing anyone else’s content.