An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

> If that asset generates revenue for 120 years, then it’s slightly more valuable than an asset that generates revenue for 119 years, and considerably more valuable than an asset that generates revenue for 20 years.

Not so, because of net present value.

The return from investing in normal stocks is ~10%/year, which is to say ~670% over 20 years, because of compounding interest. Another way of saying this is that $1 in 20 years is worth ~$0.15 today. A dollar in 30 years is worth ~$0.05 today. A dollar in 40 years is worth ~$0.02 today. As a result, if a thing generates the same number of dollars every year, the net present value of the first 20 years is significantly more than the net present value of all the years from 20-120 combined, because money now or soon from now is worth so much more than money a long time from now. And that's assuming the revenue generated would be the same every year forever, when in practice it declines over time.

The reason corporations lobby for copyright term extensions isn't that they care one bit about extended terms for new works. It's because they don't want the works from decades ago to enter the public domain now, and they're lobbying to make the terms longer retroactively. But all of those works were already created and the original terms were sufficient incentive to cause them to be.

> And that's assuming the revenue generated would be the same every year forever, when in practice it declines over time.

For the crown jewel IP that the studios are most interested in protecting, the opposite of this assumption is true. Star Wars, for example, is making more money than ever. Streaming revenues will probably invalidate that assumption for an even wider pool of back catalog properties.

Your analysis misses the incredibly important caveat that revenue rises with inflation – or sometimes even faster.

50 years ago, a movie ticket was 0.50 cents in revenue. Today, it’s $25. That’s a 50x increase… a dollar in 50 years might be worth $0.02 today, but a movie ticket in 50 years is worth about a movie ticket today.

If Star Wars were in the public domain now it would be making even more money. Money that would go into the general economy and not just into a single studio.

And surprise movies are a rip off and people have stopped going.

Plenty of crowds at my local theaters.

Also copyright duration when Star Wars was created was a maximum of 56 years, and obviously George Lucas felt that was sufficient incentive to create it!

I wonder if there is value in splitting copyright into two parts and keeping a longer duration on the copies of the original work, but shortening the duration on the concepts in that work. That is, allow an author / studio to retain a long duration ownership of the original movie or story, so no one else can just start distributing copies of their VHS tapes after a few years. But at the same time, after 10 or 20 years other people can start making new Star Wars universe movies and books without licensing it from the original artist/author. If the original was good enough, then the rights to be the sole distributor of that original material should be plenty worthwhile, and in the mean time, just in time for the generational “nostalgia bump” a whole new set of related properties can come out, reinvigorating interest in the original.

Maybe even some sort of gradual opening of the IP, where after say 10 years, broad categories are opened (think things like “the Jedi” or “the Empire” or “Endor”), but specific characters and their representations aren’t (so no Darth Vader or Luke Skywalkers), then after 20 years you open the characters themselves but only derivative works. And then finally after 30 years or so you open the originals as well for things like translations or “de-specialized” editions or what have you. Then finally 50 years puts the raw originals in the public domain as well.

No, that's just the difference between real and nominal dollars. A dollar today is worth more than a dollar 30 years from now even after adjusting for inflation, because the dollar you have today could be invested, or the dollar you don't have today has to be borrowed until you have it, and investments and loans both have interest rates in excess of inflation.

> 50 years ago, a movie ticket was 0.50 cents in revenue.

he average price in 1975 was $2.05 [0], which is ~$12 today [1]. That is not so different from most movie prices today, excluding concessions.

[0] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/cost-movie-ticket-were-born-1...

[1] https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1975?amount=2.05