Quote:
Originally Posted by petrucci
One danger in limiting the term of copyrights is that when a work falls out of copyright its value drops, as a fee no longer must be paid to the copyright holder. Over time it can become increasingly difficult to reap financial rewards from creating a new work, as you have to compete with centuries of masterpieces.
In the TV industry, when old shows became more available, they opted to make lots of cheap reality junk. The music industry has done this for years.
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There's always a balance that needs to be struck in copyright. If you extend copyright too far (as many in this thread are suggesting has already been done), you provide an incentive for copyrightholders to rest on their laurels and rely on their old works rather than create new ones. You also prevent people from making use of that old work (at least for a longer time) in a transformative way and risk it falling into obscurity before the copyright period is up. Of course, if you limit copyright too much you risk not providing creators with enough incentive to create.
Regarding your comment about reality tv, I have to disagree; I don't think the rise of reality tv has anything to do with old works becoming more widely available. At least I've never read anything that indicates these things are related at all. People are always going to demand new shows and and tv execs just realized that reality shows were a cheap and easy way to pump out new content with minimal cost/effort.