Re: My Website Has Been Taken Down

[nem <nem@nospam>]

Steven Lichter <diespammers@ikillspammers.com> wrote in news:

> The sit was located in Canada and what they had online in the Apple II
> area was GBBS and a Beta version of LLUCE.  They also had new version
> of Windows and all kinds of DVDs for D/L.  From what I could tell the
> site had been up for several years, I was told about it from one of
> the GBBS Sysops.

New versions of Windows? Those guys really were complete idiots.
 
> If you follow Disney you will see that every 10 years or so they will 
> release older animated movies for the kids of the time.  They are sold
> for 6 months or so then pulled.

As I said, I never cared much for Disney, although once in a great while I 
might find something of theirs I like.

I would say that 75 years is a reasonable copyright term for most things, 
since by the time it expires, everyone involved in making the work is dead 
(as I pointed out before), and everyone that saw or purchased it when it 
came out is either dead or a senior citizen. As for the argument that the 
artist's family also benefits from their work, I would assume that means 
immediate relatives. By the time 75 years has elapsed, they would all be 
dead too. Imagine if Bach's descendants demanded royalties every time a 
horror movie used the Fugue in D Minor.

> When I was growing up in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles, 
> next dor to us was one of the animators for Disney, I got to see the 
> inside of the Burbank studio and over the years he gave us cuts that 
> were used for their animated movies, he told us to keep them, that
> they would be worth a lot of money later, at the time they just tossed
> them out.  I have have many of them and they are worth thousands of
> dollars, I have been offered money for them, but for now I'm just
> keeping hem. 

I had heard that Buster Keaton had no interest whatsoever in preserving his 
old films, since from his point of view, they belonged to the past and he 
had already been paid for them. It took the efforts of a theater owner in 
1954 to convince him to drive down to a film lab and have copies of his old 
film reels made (they were all on deteriorating nitrate stock).