[teddyh]

> Night of the Living Dead's copyright snafu ended up costing him untold amounts of money in both the short and long term.

This has strong vibes of “If only Linus Torvalds had charged for Linux, he would have been a rich man today.”. It does not work that way.

> Somewhat ironically though, it's Night of the Living Dead's freely available nature that helped it become the revered classic it is today, as easy access and constant TV airings ensured that more and more people saw the film.

It’s not “ironic”, it’s completely expected. If it was only an old black-and-white movie, still subject to copyright, today the movie would be a historical footnote at best.

[Ecgberht]

> If it was only an old black-and-white movie, still subject to copyright, today the movie would be a historical footnote at best.

That's a very ungenerous take. The film is very good and was revolutionary for it's time. Check out other horror films from the same era and the tone is completely different. Night of the Living Dead changed what horror films could be.

And there's plenty of old black and white movies still in copyright that are highly regarded as classics so I don't know what that has to do with anything.

[derbOac]

I share your perspective; my guess is if it was copyrighted it probably would have had the same status. My guess is it would have been distributed relatively cheaply with the same outcome.

However, I also think it's reasonable to posit it might not have attained the same status had it not gone out of copyright. Easy access can really affect awareness and buzz around films, especially in certain genres like horror.

Horror films were already shifting in tone by 1968. Psycho was a 1960 release, for example, and The Birds was released in 1963. Carnival of Souls has a similar aesthetic as Night of the Living Dead and was released in 1962.

[dfxm12]

The movie invented the zombie genre as we know it today, was made by George Romero, which is a credential in an of itself, and Duane Jones' performance as Ben would stand out today almost as much as it did back then. These points, along with the film being poignant and entertaining as hell would ensure that generation after generation would would keep coming back. Remember, lots of films are out of copyright. Not a lot of such films made as much money or have the staying power as Night of the Living Dead.

On top of this, genre films in general, and horror specifically, if anything, have rabid fans that go out of their way to watch movies because of their genre, regardless of accessibility or buzz. Again, George Romero's involvement alone would make sure that even a passing fan of horror (or budding cinephiles) would seek it out.

[teddyh]

> Night of the Living Dead changed what horror films could be.

And this would indeed merit the film a historical footnote. But it would be virtually unavailable, and nobody in a position to make it available would take the chance on an ancient black-and-white film. And it would therefore in all likelihood languish in obscurity.

[b112]

All older films do not sit dormant for decades, and then are suddenly rediscovered. That's not remotely so. Some are a cult classic when produced, thus no one is ever "taking a chance on it", because it's always been a profitable endevour to pump out on late night TV, or on a VHS, DVD, Bluray, or digital version.

It feels like so much history and reality is missing in this idea of an 'ancient film'.

There were so many films like this, yet under copyright, available on late night TV back in the day. Before most had cable, before most even had VHS machines, you'd turn on TV at night on a Saturday, or at 2am on a Tuesday, and see endless old movies.

Once VHS came out, you could get virtually anything older because the film -> VHS transfer process was cheap, and people wanted content. You'd pay a buck to rent old junk at the store, and the campier the better.

Put another way, it became a cult classic when it was released, and then was always available. Endless copyrighted works were in the same category.

There is no 'chance' taken, for it was always seen as chance-worthy.

But beyond this:

* This film is the first part of a trilogy, Night, Dawn, Day of the Living Dead. Anyone watching any of these films, wanted to see the whole set

* Even if under copyright, as others have stressed, this one is on the list. What list? A list you do clearly not share, which is fine, but horror fan films do.

EDIT:

I'm going to give a little more context here.

In this timescope, there was a show called "I Dream of Jeannie"... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Dream_of_Jeannie

In this show, Barbra Eden wears a 60's envisioned harem costume. There is one important aspect of this costume, and that is that her belly button is covered.

Why?

Because it was illegal.

There is a whole deep dive here, but the point is that Night of the Living Dead was an extremely gory and violent film in its day, immensely groundbreaking, and people desperately wanted to see it.

It didn't become a cult classic because it was easier to distribute. It became one because of what it was.

That's the point I think.

NOTE: This does not invalidate the concept that some films can follow your path, it's just that this one didn't.

[dublinben]

This is exactly the same way that It’s A Wonderful Life became a much-revered Christmas classic. If the copyright hadn’t expired allowing monthlong TV marathons, it would have faded into obscurity. How many people remember The Best Years of Our Lives, which beat it out for multiple Oscars in 1947?

[glimshe]

What is the middle ground? Everybody knows that "free" has a huge appeal. But so does low cost, which arguably vastly reduced piracy for older movies and music. It seems that content providers found ways to unlock content by paying creators fractions of a cent. It would be cool if there was a standard way to acquire license for older content for very little without dealing with the copyright headaches.

[rwmj]

Copyrighted and then falls into the public domain after 14 years. Plenty of time to monetize, then benefits the public after a relatively short people of time.

[conception]

Or you get 10-14 years for free and after that you pay for it and it gets more and more expensive the older it is. Disney can keep their mouse but after 90 years its 100M. 91? 105M. Etc. If it’s not worth the price, let it go.

[idle_zealot]

This makes sense from a purely economic perspective (if you scale the fee exponentially). It does not make sense from a "promote the arts" standpoint. Derivative works are a huge portion of human expression, and allowing the most valuable/influential ideas to be kept from the public would continue (albeit to a lesser degree) the creative harm of the current copyright regime.

[Andrex]

Giving large companies, but not the average Joe, the ability to retain copyright defeats the purpose of copyright being for artists.

[DrillShopper]

Copyright has been about corporations, not artists, for a long time.

[ndriscoll]

It shouldn't be completely free for the initial period. Require a nominal fee (and registration) to pay for escrow/archive storage so it can be properly released into the public domain when copyright expires.

[ghaff]

Registration basically benefits large corporations. There are good reasons why a lot of individual authors oppose orphan works legislation. Disney isn't going to forget or screw up copyright registration. You or your kids might.

Totally in favor of shorter copyright terms though even where there are edge cases where longer terms seemingly have made sense. (In terms of promoting progress of the arts, etc. or whatever the language is, I'm not sure that usually fairly small inheritances qualify.)

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

What if copyright expired in 18 months? Same thing.

14 years made sense when there were wooden printing presses and the fastest communication was a rider and a horse carrying a handwritten letter sealed in wax. They arguably need less time to monetize today than they did back then. Years-long (or, as it is now decades-long and centuries-long) periods are about giving someone the right to tax culture for many generations, not about incentivizing creativity. It undermines the public domain.

[Retric]

18 months runs into the problem of nobody being willing to buy something on month 17… I’d be tempted never to pay for another movie again and I suspect a large fraction of people would react similarly.

5 years is probably at the lower end of actually extracting a large fraction of total value on most works and yet not hampering cultural remixes.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

>18 months runs into the problem of nobody being willing to buy something on month 17

Well, that's one way to look at it. The other way is that it merely limits how much it can be sold for on month 17. When I was in high school, one of the big malls had a dollar-a-ticket movie theater. People would pay for things that are more easily/cheaply available soon, they just won't pay the premiums demanded now.

But there's a third way to look at it... the idea that they never owned the intellectual property anyway. It always belonged to the public domain, they had a temporary lease. And in that view, the idea that they'd have trouble extracting maximum dollars from it on the day before the lease ends is absurd. No one cares, nor should they care.

>I’d be tempted never to pay for another movie again a

Why aren't you tempted for that now? I gave in to that temptation, and it is the superior experience. I can do all the streaming I need, to any of my devices (or my friends' devices) anywhere in the world. Everything on demand, from every premium channel and streaming service, in the highest resolution. Every minute or every day. I read comments here and elsewhere about people complaining how they have to cancel Netflix, the show's over, but they have to resubscribe to Disney because the new show's on, etc. It's all bizarre. The stuff you guys are willing to put up with is mind-boggling.

>5 years is probably at the lower end of actually extracting a large fraction of total value

You should be concerned with whether they can extract their costs, plus modest profit. Not "value". The magnitude of the grift in the industry that gave us the term "Hollywood accounting" is beyond human imagination or capacity to comprehend. Stop enabling that.

[bluGill]

It takes more than 18 months for many good works to get through all the editing processes. You can tell when publishers skip on that time as the quality is worse.

[rakoo]

elevates*

Language has meaning, and the puplic domain is a better situation for society. It is more interesting to say it ascended

[rakoo]

Piracy is only bad if you want to earn money for each eye watching a minute of a movie. What we're doing right now is piracy, no one pays anyone anything for content

The question shouldn't be about how much it costs but why do things cost anything in the beginning, and if they have to what is the amount a specific piece should be retributed for its contribution to society minus how the non-zero cost impacts society.

AIs are being let off the hook with their massive copyright infringement but when a movie being open directly benefits everyone suddenly that's a problem.

[entropicdrifter]

>Piracy is only bad if you want to earn money for each eye watching a minute of a movie. What we're doing right now is piracy, no one pays anyone anything for content

This is utterly nonsensical. You've invented a new definition of piracy to try to claim that streaming services are piracy.

Specifically at this point:

>no one pays anyone anything for content

This is literally factually incorrect. Netflix pays billions per year to copyright holders. Just because it's indirect payment in the form of a subscription doesn't mean you're not paying for the right to view content.

[rakoo]

I was talking about comments on a discussion board.

[graemep]

The middle ground could be a lot of different things. One might be a reformed copyright system.

The economist I know of who calculated a socially optimal copyright duration, Rufus Pollock, came up with an estimate of 20 something years.

This makes sense from the point of view of finance because the NPV of extra years beyond this is very low. To put it in qualitative terms, no one is thinking about their grandchildren's pensions when they decide to create a work.

Personally I would also have different durations and rules for different types of work: a book, a video, and a piece of software are very different works and need diffferent incentives

[Finnucane]

I've seen The Best Years of Our Lives several times; it plays regularly on TCM.

[stuart78]

The Best Years of Our Lives is a genuine classic. Complex narrative, brilliant cinematography and performances. It is a much more difficult film than It's A Wonderful Life, and absolutely worth watching.

[drewcoo]

/me raises hook hand . . . Myrna Loy . . .

[joekrill]

> This has strong vibes of “If only Linus Torvalds had charged for Linux, he would have been a rich man today.”. It does not work that way.

Not at all similar. Linus explicitly made his software free. Romero didn't _intentionally_ exclude the copyright notice, and had no explicit intention of making it free.

> It’s not “ironic”, it’s completely expected. If it was only an old black-and-white movie, still subject to copyright, today the movie would be a historical footnote at best.

"completely expected" is quite a stretch. Simply making it public domain wouldn't be enough. It still has to be a good movie. I'm sure there are countless other public domain black-and-white movies that no one has ever heard of.

[entropicdrifter]

>I'm sure there are countless other public domain black-and-white movies that no one has ever heard of.

See: MST3K and RiffTrax

[ghaff]

We had (many) version of Unix that were superior to Linux for a very long time. We can reasonable debate what Sun (in particular) should have done differently with SunOS/Solaris and Java in particular, but a for-pay-only version of Linux would just have been a fairly mediocre Unix variant.