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Comment by inglor_cz | Hacker News Reader

Hmm. Looking at the cinemas, almost all the top movies are prequels or sequels, milking the same topic for the tenth time.

I'd say that at least the movie industry is somehow stuck in a rut.

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If you get rid of copyright, half of movies will be sequels to other people's work from the previous year.

From my perspective from reading and watching fan fiction, these unofficial derived works are typically significantly more distinct and interesting than the official sequels, and I'd be cool with these getting bigger budgets.

> From my perspective from reading and watching fan fiction, these unofficial derived works are typically significantly more distinct and interesting than the official sequels, and I'd be cool with these getting bigger budgets.

This suggests that copyright isn't holding back these works...

"This suggests that copyright isn't holding back these works..."

IF the copyright holders are kind enough not to harass those fans for infringement. And this kindness is quite commonplace in some contexts (people writing stories about their favorite literary characters rarely get cease-and-desisted), but much less in others ("fanfic" movies about Mickey Mouse are a no-go even for free).

As an aside, I don’t know that fan fiction is the strongest case for originality!

Fanfic is subject to the Gauss curve like everything else.

The Lord of the Rings is sorta-kinda fanfic to Beowulf, the Witcher is fanfic to Slavic and Celtic mythology. Neither of these two authors started as "big published renowned authors", they were both amateurs smitten by some earlier works.

And yes, I realize again that in those particular examples, the original work was no longer protected. But that is irrelevant to the question of the derived work's quality.

Maybe not the strongest, but definitely a case. For example, it's my understanding that many scholars believe that The Odyssey is fan fiction by a separate author(s) to that/those of The Iliad.

There would be no movies as we know them today. Studios couldn’t support making multi-hundred million dollar movies that are immediately free to everyone. Basically movies would become YouTube.

It could potentially help theater owners, who provide a somewhat unique experience. That doesn’t seem very valued these days, though.

An exclusive theatrical window is one of the big reasons to go to a movie theater: you want to see a movie before it's available on streaming. Removing copyright seems like it would harm theaters pretty significantly.

The screen would become the thing. If anyone can watch anything anywhere at any time, having a 200 foot screen differentiates a theater from watching something on a phone. 99% of the time, people will choose the phone, will choose to watch sports on tv, etc. that remaining 1% might be a big enough market and without licensing fees, theaters have a lot more margin.

Actually, it seems surprising they haven’t moved into sports (especially with sportsbooks becoming so popular).

Some cinemas do present some sporting events. The rights negotiations for sporting events are multi-layered and complex. Your average soccer or MLB game is not likely to be negotiated for that venue, and a whole-season license is unlikely. Playoffs, championships, and the like are sometimes worthwhile but it's not going to be the corner mom & pop cinemas paying for that content. It's going to be IMAX or Regal Cinemas or someone huge.

For example the 2024 Summer Olympics, with NBC owning exclusive rights to the US market for video coverage (meaning NBC Universal, meaning Comcast) IMAX licensed the opening ceremony to be picked up from NBC and delivered to their US cinemas over IP with fixed latency. It was only the opening ceremony and no scored events. That involved NBC, IMAX, and LTN to carry the video in between. IMAX and NBC negotiated the rights and LTN got statements of agreement on that from NBC. There was involved planning and engineering work to make sure the technical part went smoothly. I'm sure the negotiations, contract writing, redlines, and final sign-off between the source and destination took longer than the tech work.

Wouldn’t removing copyright just lead to more “milking the same topic”?

I don’t see how it would lead to a higher volume of original ideas.

I can assure you that people had original ideas before the invention of copyright 300 years ago.

> people had original ideas before the invention of copyright 300 years ago

Not in dispute but that's also not the point being argued.

The argument is:

a) whether copyright kills original ideas. I don't think it does but would love to understand what the mechanism is if you think otherwise.

b) whether removing copyright would lead to more "milking of same old topics" in movies. I think the answer is self-evidently yes.

Whether removing copyright would lead to more "milking of same old topics" in movies. I think the answer is self-evidently yes.

This is not self-evident to me, at least as far as "milking" goes. Inspiration is not the same as milking. I specifically use the word "milking" for the sort of low-level repetitive quasi-effort that the cinemas are full of.

OTOH if someone takes, IDK, Don Quijote and rewrites it into a space opera, it might actually be genuine fun, even though the old idea was there as a foundation.

> Don Quijote and rewrites it into a space opera, it might actually be genuine fun

Don Quixote is in the public domain. Copyright isn’t holding back adaptations.

I know, but my point (I could have made it clearer) is that you cannot do the same with Geralt or Frodo Baggins.

Getting rid of copyright is going to make that problem worse not better...

I'm wondering if you are reasoning correctly about this.

I'd say that random people, if they reuse a copyrighted material, are a lot more likely to veer far off the beaten path than the big studios.

Fan fiction, even if building on previous materials, seems to be much less repetitive to me.

Sure.

Your point was studios recycle IP a lot.

My point is without copyright studios would recycle it even more.

And your point now is that it would be higher quality.

My main point was that they recycle lazily, producing slop before the name even existed. Not every adaptation is lazy, I'd say that Odyssey is quite good, even though the original work is 100 generations old.

Just imagine how much slop they could make if licensing wasn't holding them back

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