Outdated copyright laws

Of Glyn Moody

Natural books can be purchased, shared and read in libraries very easily. Movies in physical form, on the other hand, are difficult to obtain, share or display in archives. Writing for the Guardian, director Charlie Shackleton says 90% of archive collections are made up of movies that will never be shown again. In addition, he points out that as streaming becomes the main way people watch movies, the situation is getting worse and it does not get better:

Such films [kept in archives] are at least well preserved, but only 10% of them are lucky enough to attract public attention. Every movie "purchased" from Amazon Prime is yours for projection μόνο εφόσον η Amazon διατηρεί την permission of the copyright holder to show it to you. And if copyright holders themselves couldn't be trusted to protect our cultural heritage when films were still physical things that could be organized and inventoried, they seem unlikely to be trusted in 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 total, Netflix had about 60.000 titles.

Today, Netflix streaming service has only about one-tenth of most titles available. While it has amazing original content, its overall list is not impressive.

He also has an explanation for why this happens:

The streaming revolution provides consumers with unprecedented convenience. But it had the side effect of leaving many consumers with a narrower range of choices and a more fragmented market. And that's not because of technological or financial limitations – it's because o law gives copyright holders more control over streaming 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 commercial available. Lee builds on this idea, suggesting that there should be a mandatory licensing system for streaming video content that is no longer available for commercial use.

We definitely need some kind of solution.

Without this solution, the film material that should enter the public sector once their copyright expires will never do so, because there will be no more digital copies that we can share. It would be a tragic result if advances in technology combined with outdated copyright laws led to the loss of large sections 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