Outdated copyright laws

Of Glyn Moody

Physical books can be bought, shared and read in libraries very easily. Physical films, on the other hand, are difficult to acquire, share, or archive. Writing in the Guardian, the director Charlie Shackleton says 90% of the archive's collections consist of films that will never be shown again. Furthermore, he points out that as the streaming becomes the main way people watch movies, the situation is getting worse and it does not get better:

Such films [stored in archives] are at least well preserved, but only 10% of them are lucky and attract the attention of the public. Any movie "purchased" by Amazon Prime is yours for viewing only if Amazon retains the copyright holder's permission to show it to you. And if the copyright holders themselves could not trust the protection of our cultural heritage when movies were still natural things that could be organized and inventoried, it seems unlikely that they would trust the digital age.

Timothy B Lee provides some tough numbers to reveal how bad things are:

Fifteen years ago, you could find almost anything on Netflix, from the latest blockbusters to classic movies to popular TV series. In all, Netflix had about 60.000 titles.

Today, the service Netflix's streaming service only has about one-tenth as many titles available. While it has amazing original content, its overall catalog is unimpressive.

He also has an explanation for why this happens:

The streaming revolution provides consumers with an unprecedented convenience. But it had the side effect of leaving many consumers with a narrower range of options and a more fragmented market. And this is not due to technological or financial constraints - it is because the law gives copyright holders more control over the flow of older movies than DVD rentals.

The rest of Lee's post in Full Stack Economics explores ways to address this issue. Drawing from one interesting paper by Mark A. Lemley, which suggests using the concept of "fair use" to allow third parties to transmit material if it is not commercially available. Lee builds on this idea, suggesting that there should be a mandatory one system licensing for streaming video content that is no longer available for commercial use.

We definitely need some kind of solution.

Without this solution, film footage that should enter the public domain once their copyrights expire will never do so, because they will no longer exist digitally copies that we can share. It would be a tragic outcome if advances in technology combined with antiquated copyright laws led to the loss of large parts of film culture.

As Lemley says:

In the past we may have aspired to a world in which all the works of history would be available forever. Now this is a feasible goal. Copyright should not hinder him.

Indeed, it should not. Tear down these walls

Article Source: https://walledculture.org/

Translation: https://openstandards.ellak.gr