At some level it happens due to people wanting stuff for free… but if it’s the consequence of that is that works are preserved and disseminated, that’s more valuable for our culture than when companies vault them and lose them, or when they never release them at all, like Warner has been doing lately.
One might say that these companies have all the right to make these works unavailable, but this is clearly a situation where the “proper” is more detrimental than the “clandestine”. After all, the way these companies handle it, when the ridiculously excessive copyright length is over and the works are supposed to cease their artificial monopoly and be returned to the Public Domain from which everyone takes inspiration, there might be nothing left. A DVD is unlikely to last 100 years.
This is not a matter of life and death but culture has its value.
Most people don’t have the understanding to fully appreciate the consequences of the current system of “free” services. That’s why it’s the job of governments to put robust consumer protections in place. The Europeans have been making some moves in the right direction, lately. Unfortunately, they also increasingly have been veering towards totalitarianism in their moves to enforce mandatory trusted certificates, weakening of encryption and other hare-brained schemes.
At some level it happens due to people wanting stuff for free… but if it’s the consequence of that is that works are preserved and disseminated, that’s more valuable for our culture than when companies vault them and lose them, or when they never release them at all, like Warner has been doing lately.
One might say that these companies have all the right to make these works unavailable, but this is clearly a situation where the “proper” is more detrimental than the “clandestine”. After all, the way these companies handle it, when the ridiculously excessive copyright length is over and the works are supposed to cease their artificial monopoly and be returned to the Public Domain from which everyone takes inspiration, there might be nothing left. A DVD is unlikely to last 100 years.
This is not a matter of life and death but culture has its value.
Most people don’t have the understanding to fully appreciate the consequences of the current system of “free” services. That’s why it’s the job of governments to put robust consumer protections in place. The Europeans have been making some moves in the right direction, lately. Unfortunately, they also increasingly have been veering towards totalitarianism in their moves to enforce mandatory trusted certificates, weakening of encryption and other hare-brained schemes.