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Message: <blockquote data-quote="prosfilaes" data-source="post: 7689821" data-attributes="member: 40166">Meh. Seven is short for my tastes, but JK Rowlings are more common then authors who take a lifetime to see a profit. If you publish something, it's going to make most of its money back in a few years. It's more likely to stay in e-print now, but if it wasn't big when it came out, nobody is going to look at it. The biggest exception I can think of is Roger Corman's The Little Shop of Horrors that he didn't bother copyrighting and thus he got no licensing fees for the modern remakes. Even then, the more common 28-year period would have covered that. (Also, the period usually starts at publication.)Film studios can and do rip off all sorts of stuff; whenever a big movie comes out, there tends to be ripoffs that are just distant enough to avoid a lawsuit. With what they do to most novels, if they just changed the names, they could probably avoid copyright infringement charges. But the sums they tend to pay authors are usually tiny enough that big studios don't worry about it; they'll license nonfiction works and books just to stick their name on the movie. In the 21st century, paying John Scalzi a few thousand dollars for his book is likely to repay many times in the advertising, certainly when compared to annoyed fanboys. And movie studios aren't going to wait seven years to grab the momentum.28 years was the original term in US law, and is somewhere more common. I find it a little short, but let's use it. So as of 2011, the original trilogy of Star Wars is completely in the public domain. So what? New editions can still come out, with the changes getting 28 years. Star Wars is still a trademark. The Star Wars IP would be worth a little less, but Disney still has rights to all of the further movies, all the newer novels, and will still probably get all the fanboy attention they did when coming out with a new movie. So the original original trilogy would be available on PD DVDs, merchandise from the original trilogy would be cheaper, there'd be a host of published books set in the universe without authorization, etc. It's not that big of a deal.</blockquote>

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