Recently I was looking for an old movie with Elliott Gould in it. I remember seeing it as a kid and I wanted to see it again.
Do you think I could find anyone online to rent or sell it to me? No!
Movie distributors spend millions fighting piracy but they’re only interested in selling a small portion of their catalog to people who actually want to pay for it.
It doesn’t make sense to me.
I fully agree. The BBC in particular seem to have a problem with this. They bleat about not getting enough money from the UK taxpayer, while neglecting to market the assets in their archives. In particular I am thinking of two excellent mini series from not too long ago, ‘Rebel Heart’ and ‘Christabel’.
There’s a strong case to be made that, where the holder of “Intellectual Property” rights in a work fails to ensure that it’s available, the work should be declared Public Domain. It would then be legal to make such works freely available.
Automatic, unconditional rights don’t really make sense. If the owner isn’t using the privileges, then they should lose them.
