Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 8492436" data-attributes="member: 7023840">So I'm happy to answer your questions, and I'll do it fairly quickly with my own opinions, before I get to the more important point (to me, at least).Who gets to determine the appropriate cost of older material? The rights-holder.Is it bad for Disney to occasionally rotate things off sale, for example? The whole "artificial scarcity to boost desirability" was annoying, but that was a business model for them with physical media. Obviously, Disney+ appears to have changed that equation for now.Is it different if the individual author doesn't want it for sale instead of a corporate entity? That's a variation of the age-old, "How much should Lucas get to edit his old movies?" question, or, if you prefer, "Do you like guns or walkie talkies in your E.T.?" I don't think the question is actually different between people and corporations, personally, although I tend to be more sympathetic to people because I try to approximate human emotions on occasion. It's part of my T2000 programming.Okay, now for the main point- I don't think the interesting question is about the rights holders, or the libraries. I really don't. It's like asking in the 80s, "Who gets to decide what labels are put on music?" I think that this tends to hide the actual problems, because in the end, someone will always be able to make a decision to restrict access.Instead, I think the real questions should be asked of ourselves. What do we want? More importantly, when do we think it should be proper to lobby rights holders to remove legacy products? What am I really doing, and what precedent do I set, when I believe that I should try and force companies to only sell products that I find acceptable? Do I draw a distinction between old products and what the company is currently doing, and if not, why not? I am not saying that these questions necessarily have easy answers. But I think that too many people get caught up in the rhetoric of what is allowable (trying to pressure companies to "do the right thing," with the "right thing" varying depending on your beliefs) with what is right (recognizing that the past is a foreign country and does not live up to the standards of the present, and being okay with that).In my opinion, people do far too little self-interrogation on this. There can be nuances, and I'm not saying I am always correct, or that this is always easy. Here-Company makes product A that is racist. Company also allows on-line store to sell Product B, from 40 years ago, that is racist. I would argue that it is right and proper to pressure Company to stop selling product A (and/or revise it), while it would be improper to pressure company to make Product B completely unavailable. Or, how about this-Disney+ has almost the entire catalog of Disney available for streaming. But Song of the South is not available from any official Disney source in hard copy, and Disney has stated that it will not be available on Disney+ (even with a disclaimer). Do I think Disney should be required or obligated to carry it? Heck no! Do I even lose the tiniest bit of sleep over it not being there?* Of course not. On the other hand, if Disney+ did carry it (with VERY STRONG disclaimers), I would be against efforts to remove it. And I hope those examples illustrate why this might not be easy, and why (for me), many of these certainties should die away. *Full disclosure- I also can't imagine using or reading GAZ10, and since I'm not a Mystara person, I doubt I'd ever use it for historical research. This is about the principle, and the concern that given the very low profits involved, enough of these controversies will just cause Hasbro to yank the older IP completely.</blockquote>

Verification