Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
In general, I don't think it's the publishers pressuring lawmakers, but rather the copyright holders. Publishers have a contract with the copyright holder. Long copyrights simply aren't in their interest. For the most part, copyright is driven by movies and music, not by books. Top box office movies make a heck of a lot more than best selling books.
The book publishing business is quite different than the music industry or movie industry. The customer base for books is much lower than music or movies.
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Ah, but what about all those movies that began as books? Treasure Island, Moby Dick, The Time Machine, and many more. And different movie studios may base movies on the same book and yet copyright other aspects such as the makeups. For example both Universal Pictures and Hammer Studios have made movies based on Frankenstein but Hammer had to come up with its own look for the creature since Universal owned the rights to their adaptation starring Boris Karloff. If Frankenstein were still in copyright there wouldn't have been so many movies (starting with Tom Edison's short) based on the story. First came the book, then a stage play and then finally the first movie.