If we allowed this to happen, we'd have major motion picture Star Wars blockbusters that were basically fan fiction levels of quality. Can you imagine?
There still are a huge number of fan fiction movie projects. They just end up on YouTube now rather than going to Cinemas.
If we're we're inundated with low quality fan films, Cinemas simply wouldn't screen them. At the very least, we'd have a chance to see alternative interpretations and tellings of stories involving some of our favorite characters.
I'd rather see a passion project set in the Star Wars IP than any of the recent multi-million dollar films.
I was quite sure that they did mean that that was what happened, but looking at the number of other replies I'm starting to think that I'm the one that misunderstood.
The duration of copyright protection was much shorter when I bound childhood expectations. It was a copyright extension act of congress that monetized all the commercial art in my childhood into my adulthood. My parents did not suffer this legal abuse.
Perhaps you are making assumptions about my age. The extension from reasonable to unreasonable affected many works from my childhood on schedule to enter the public domain during my 30s and 40s.
Before globalization and huge logistical advances there was barely any way to capitalize on works in the public domain... your parents probably didn't benefit nearly as much as you may think. Also, calling this "legal abuse" in any way is just insulting to true abuse and detracts significantly from your comment.
Ah, yes, it was so hard for authors to benefit from their works 95 years after their death. Now it's so easy, and inspires authors to produce great new works even in afterlife.
> Ah, yes, it was so hard for authors to benefit from their works 95 years after their death. Now it's so easy, and inspires authors to produce great new works even in afterlife.
There are a few near-future scenarios that intersect in interesting ways:
The possibility of life extending interventions such that average life expectancy climbs first toward, and then perhaps past, the century mark (life-of-the-author plus anything starts to look ridiculous).
The possibility of uploading whether it is a true digitization/emulation or 'just' a simulation of a particular consciousness given enough data.
Cryogenic preservation and revivification.
Legal decisions on whether such events count as 'death' for purposes of copyright, debt, inheritance, etc.
Legal decisions on the personhood and potential emancipation of digitizations, simulations, emulations, etc.
Legal decisions on the criminal and civil culpability of such simulations etc. (if considered persons, or their owners if not) for their originals' acts (such as copyright infringement).
The copyright status of works created post-mortem by such entities, whether they are considered persons or not (such works might simply be considered or passed-off as 'unpublished', for example)
If nothing else, I'm pretty sure that there will be attempts to hack around any legal uncertainty with various permutations and combinations of corporate personhood, copyright assignment, work-for-hire agreements, and smart contracts to get to some desired result regardless of how the legal environment changes, but those still might fail in 'interesting' ways.
All of which is to say that we might very well get in
to a situation where it is possible to provide incentives for the creation of new works by dead authors, legally speaking. At which point the public, and the public domain, will be well and truly screwed over.
There's an amazing story by Spyder Robinson that expolres exactly that: Melancholy Elephants, http://www.spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html It was published in 1983 and won Hugo Award for Best Short Story. It's as relvant today, as then. Even more relevant.
Melancholy Elephants is about how eventually every possible permutation of content will have been created and recorded because they belong to somebody and it will become impossible to create anything new (the story is less concerned with the ability to create anything non-infringing). Frankly, I think that particular worry is overblown as it presupposes that no knowledge will ever be lost.
Personally, I'm rather more concerned about the works that will be lost because they are owned.
BTW, would it surprise you to learn that Spider Robinson is a copyright maximalist?
> barely any way to capitalize on works in the public domain
I think this wrongful take on what capitalism should and shouldn't be allowed to take from the public domain, and why to detract from your comment. However, not as much as the incorrect take on history: Many people capitalized on works in the public domain before the Mickey Mouse taking laws. Please grace us with better research the future. This has been too typical.
