Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
Abuse of the provisions is indeed a problem (and one that has absolutely nothing to do with the terminology). The issues surrounding patents in the software industry make an interesting example, although it is not really appropriate to that discuss here. But abuse of the provisions does not necessarily mean we have to throw out the whole lot and start again - at least with the current systems we have some experience with what problems exist and can work toward solutions.
Yes, I think this makes sense*. The global impact of the Internet does seem likely to make it fairly pointless to extend the US copyright beyond that in the rest of the world.
You can see a possible example of the effect already with Agatha Christie: the first two books are not public domain anywhere except the US, but still I see editions on Australian sites that are priced so you can be pretty sure the copyright holder isn't getting their share. These are legit' sites, so I can only assume the copyright holder is not spending much effort on these books any more. Maybe they try harder in bigger markets, I don't know.
We might suppose Disney (etc.) would find the US market large enough to try and actively protect their interests, but with so much being hosted offshore it will be next to impossible to stop without asking China for some help in developing national firewalls.
* Except the bit that implies "is property" has anything to do with the "belongs to the artist forever" argument. The two aspects of this are unrelated. Those that believe copyright should stay with with the artist forever will still believe that even if you change the words. A rose by any other name etc.
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In addition, the whole reason for joining the Berne convention treaty was because foreign rights for movies were become so lucrative. The foreign sales actually is much higher than local for a few movie genres. Probably not the case for Disney, but Disney makes a ton on foreign sales. For example, Frozen made $400 M in the domestic market and $873 M in the international market, for a total of $1.2 B (dang!). That's 31% domestic and 69% international. That's the box office, no idea what the DVD/stream brought. Some B grade action flicks get most of their box office from international, many are just release international and DVD.