Extending copyright long after the life of an artist is bad economics. Because of the value of future money any revenue from future sales 30+ is essentially worthless now. So it doesn’t induce people to create more works of art and entertainment.
> So it doesn’t induce people to create more works of art and entertainment.
Promoting artists to create art has long been sidelined as a goal of copyright. Now, copyright is there to make sure already copy written works are profitable forever. I mean think about it. All they have to do is take old music and movies and repackage it as new media. Disney movies from the 30s can be remade today with CGI. Pop music from the 80s can be remixed in 2040, and a whole new generation of people will buy it up, without any artists involved. Copyright has lost its purpose.
I'm not a lawyer, but retroactive copyright extensions seem to me like they should be unconstitutional. It's logically impossible to "promote the progress of science and useful arts" by dead creators after their works have already been published by extending their copyrights. These laws should only be able to apply to new works going forward.
I agree it's bad economics, but not for the same reason. I think it's bad economics because it prevents cheap/free access to a huge corpus of media. This provides a barrier to entry for startups and entrepreneurs.
I've heard it claimed that Google could have never been started in Europe due to their copyrights laws being so onerous.
Is that if the price is constant over that time? Couldn't you just price the product to reflect roughly constant value, giving you linear return over time?
The demand for classic opera recordings is constant. Year after year people will buy the 1966 recording of Tristan & Isolde at the Bayreuther Festspiele with Wolfgang Windgassen singing Tristan. These are reliable moneyspinners for the record companies, you'd expect to see initiatives to extend copyright.
Well... the Bambi film came out in 1942. You can buy the Signature Edition DVD+BR for $30, but you can also buy a 2 disc special edition for $7.49, the Anniversary Edition for $15.96, and a Blu-Ray for $14.27. We haven't reached the used market, where eBay can get you a copy for $5, most of which will go to shipping it to you.
There won't be a "used market" for media in the future, because media won't be delivered on physical substrate. The publishing interests have been working to eliminate it for years. Between DRM and streaming I think they'll manage to kill used markets.
Generally you imagine that future money decreases in value (in real terms). For example, you need to at least beat inflation-protected bonds! So in order to get constant real terms over the life of a piece of art, the actual price to consume has to increase exponentially over time. But in fact we get the sense that most art drops in consumer value over time (how many times have you listened to Gangnam Style in the last month?) so exponentially increasing price would not bring linear return.
