Copyright law gives authors the sole right to benefit from their creative works for a limited time. Most players agree this function is valuable. The sticky part is: how long is limited? That was the central question of the fascinating Eldred v. Ashcroft case before the Supreme Court.

Now comes an analysis that finds (using IMDb Pro) just 6.3% of the movies released between 1927-1946 are available for purchase today. (See the e-mail linked at the bottom of Lessig‘s entry for the figures.)

Even through the use of the most generous figures (which makes the entirely unlikely assumption that those films available on DVD don’t overlap with those titles on VHS), just 9.6% are on the market.

It’s tough to make the argument that an additional 20 years of protection (bringing works-for-hire copyright to 95 years) is a necessary trade-off to motivate studios to continue this sorry record. But of course the MPAA will try.

(Note the writer’s analysis omits data on licensing agreements, but that’s likely because there’s no comprehensive public site to cull that information from.)

This entry was posted on Friday, December 6th, 2002 at 3:27 pm and is filed under Film, Law & Politics.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.