That’s a good idea.

One of the things I think they missed out on with copyright is that we should have set it up such that you only get copyright if you maintain the availability of your product at a reasonable price. If I can’t buy a new copy of a book for what it sold for originally, then the copyright should lapse automatically. The rationale behind copyright has been forgotten, and hijacked by the rent-seekers who took over the publishing, music, and movie industries.

Hell, take a look at the whole “Hollywood Accounting Practices” world, and the entire legal justification for copyright goes away. According to Hollywood, even blockbusters like Titanic haven’t made a dime’s worth of profit. Ever. Which is how they screw naive actors, writers, and other creative types–”You’ll get a share of the profits…” “Oh, we never made a profit, after we skimmed off all our “costs”…”.

The whole thing is immoral as hell. It’s no damn wonder that parasites like Harvey Weinstein grew up in that industry, and thrived in it.

If new movies were better, none of this would matter so much. If new movies were cheaper, and old-but-good movies were sold, that would also help. It’s frustrating to pay good money for what turns out to be garbage. You feel like a chump.

Market forces won’t help. Few will press for release of the more obscure classics, for the simple reason that they don’t know the classics even exist. Every other market is driven by information, but IP actually controls the information. It actively prevents an informed consumer.

I am familiar with the music rights issue from the legendary case of WKRP in Cincinnati, a tv show first held up for years by music rights and then, as far as I can tell, only ever released with dubbed synthemusic in place of real songs. Surprising how distasteful I find that once I know about it. You wouldn’t think it that big a deal for a sitcom.

I had not heard that DVD required separate deals from VHS. That’s legal cheeseparing at it’s finest. I suppose if the original home video deals were very specific and limited to VHS/Beta or to “tape”. Otherwise as a judge I’d have ruled DVD a subset of “home video” and any deal that said anything like “home video” would implicitly include them.

At some point in my life, I’ve seen a really lengthy and detailed explanation for all this, with a heavy helping of “Hollywood Accounting Practices” that explained a lot of the inner workings of this stuff. I wish I remember where the hell I saw it, so I could share it.

This is what you’d think. But having worked in pay tv for many years, I can tell you the rights situation is even more complicated than it is presented in the post above. Netflix, HBO or Amazon don’t show the films they or their audience WANT, they show the films they can GET. And that business is full of smart legal and financial people who play a long game.

I’ve seen all of them. CASABLANCA is the only one I’ve seen more than once. Some like CITIZEN KANE and WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINA WOOLF, I really didn’t like and would not recommend to anyone. And I’m not a fan of Orson Welles or Kubrick.

If Netflix and Redbox, et al., are serving their shareholders, they are tracking what their customers want to see and giving it to them.

This whole article is typical lefty puritanical nonsense. We know what you need, you are bad not to want it, and we are going to give it to you good and hard. Shut up peasants.