Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
Patents last 14 to 20 years.
I've got no problem with a 30-year copyright length. That's long enough to make a profit on the initial book run, wait a couple of years to decide if it's still interesting, get a movie produced (that's often several years), wait to see if it wins any awards, a year for it to come out on DVD and so on, another few years to see if it's worth picking up as a tv series. |
Interesting proposal, but I imagine the studios would mine the 30-year-old stuff for all it's worth, and then have a copyright for 30 years on the movie with no obligations to the author. Sort of like what Disney did with Snow White and Cinderella. Although I am sure a lot of newer authors would get deals as well, probably most movies would continue to be written by scriptwriters, updating 30-year-old stories with robots and global warming and whatnot.
The 30-year-limit sounds like an idea that the movie studios would do well with - a huge backlog of stories to choose from, no royalties, and 30 years to exploit a movie. But I imagine they wouldn't consider it a good deal, because the price they pay for film rights is probably nothing compared to the "long tail" of endless copyrights (sorry, talking to myself here).