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It's election season in the UK, and the Green Party's policy document has been coming under scrutiny recently. In it is a desire to reduce copyright term to 14 years (not life + 14 years, but 14 years from publication).
Unsurprisingly, this has received a bit of a backlash from various parties.
There's no chance the Green Party will form the next government, so this is all academic, but is this a sensible idea? Are people overreacting?
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UK Green Party Proposes 14-year Copyright Term - Artists are not Amused
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Can anyone remember when the times were not hard, and money not scarce?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2015, @03:19PM
Hollywood films, video games, "club" pop music singles, and some non-fiction books (e.g. biographies of celebs) certainly make most of their money within a couple years, or five at most. That's because they're targeting a mass audience. For films and science fiction, a lot of the appeal is giving their target audience something to talk about with friends, coworkers, and dates (or conventioneers for the sci fi crowd :-).
Conversely, if you don't see that hit film, you might be left out of part of a conversation.
Serious fiction, classical and jazz music, and many non-fiction books generally don't follow this sales trend though. They can make slow but steady sales for decades; some works of fiction are entirely unknown until they are somehow "discovered" many years after publication and become best-sellers, even after the author's death.