[pbhjpbhj]

>Note I'm not talking about 'commercially successful', but enduring, historic/academic quality.

Thanks for giving us your position; I think I'm generally in agreement with you.

Here though it's good to note that [at least] one type of historic importance develops over time.

Die Hard, to take an arbitrary example, might not have been an important film as far as its art or technical quality [I don't know, it's not important to my point] but its enduring nature and position as an icon -- as a sort of mainstream but somehow counter-cultural part of Christmas for those of us of a certain age and certain bent -- makes it important when otherwise it would not be. It's not intrinsic to the artwork but emerges out of the societal response to the work.

In the UK we've been paying for the BBC to make culturally responsive TV for decades, yet somehow it all got tied back up in copyright when really it should be publicly owned and free-libre to anyone who will pay the download costs [and, perhaps, has a "TV License"].