HBO Max’s Great Looney Tunes Purge

Re:HBO Max’s Great Looney Tunes Purge by mopsi on Sunday January 15, 2023 @04:03PM (#34393367)

It doesn't, because nobody knows what works have commercial value 70+ years into the future and thus current business is not conducted on that basis. That's how many popular works end up in random hands in the first place, like in the case of Ravel - they aren't seen as particularly valuable at the time, but become sleeper hits when they earn a special nostalgia or new technologies emerge (television, internet, etc).

Good luck selling a movie to Warner Bros on the premise that it'll be a real money-maker in 2090s on telekinesis-vision platform.

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Re:HBO Max’s Great Looney Tunes Purge by tptacek on Sunday January 15, 2023 @04:05PM (#34393380)

This argument requires me to believe that Warner Bros would see no difference in value between a property that becomes public the moment the author dies and a property that has 70 years of exclusivity after that point. Obviously, the difference in value between those two properties is immense, and that value is realized during the author's lifetime.

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Re:HBO Max’s Great Looney Tunes Purge by mopsi on Sunday January 15, 2023 @04:26PM (#34393621)

Only the first few years after publication matter, because that's when virtually all of lifetime revenue is earned. Revenue earned beyond that is usually not enough to even justify proper preservation, leaving huge archives to rot away.

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Re:HBO Max’s Great Looney Tunes Purge by greysphere on Sunday January 15, 2023 @10:18PM (#34396415)

I can make you a list. Cinderella, Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, Superman, Batman, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Marvel, Game of Thrones... You could sell WB the 2090 rights to any one of these, except the ones that are going into the public domain (and those they already own of course). Look at that, the system is 'working'.

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