Book pages 223 through 228.

Copyrights for Laurel and Hardy films are owned by Hal Roach Studios for which Michael Agee is the chairman.  Despite directly benefiting from the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA), Agee opposes the legislation.  Even though Roach sells thousands of DVDs and video cassettes of these films, few of what they own still has any commercial value.  The works sit in a vault, and even though what doesn't presently have value could be deemed valuable by the owners of the vault, the commercial benefits from the works must surpass the costs of making the work available for distribution in order for this to happen.

We cannot know the benefits described above, but we can know the costs.  Today, film restoration, which used to cost thousands of dollars, can be done for hundreds.  This leaves most costs to the hiring of lawyers, who are presently necessary in order to find and secure rights from the many copyright owners of a film.  Thus the process of restoration for the preservation of film is time consuming and costly, and unfortunately it can be argued that the benefits do not outweigh the costs.  Therefore we wait until the copyrights expire to restore them, but because these old films were produced on nitrate-based stock, by the time the term expires, the stock will have dissolved and there will be nothing left to restore.

This death of old film and creative works is the death of future works.  Even is someone chooses to wait until the end of a copyright term to create a derivative work, the original work from which the person wishes to derive will no longer physically exist, making the creation of the derivative work quite difficult.  Today we have digital copies of work with a much longer lifespan; however, if big media companies continue to push for term extensions such as the CTEA, works may never pass into the public domain and new works with potentially high commercial value as well as creativity will never be produced.

Once a work has entered the public domain, the original owner no longer has rights over it.  This clause of copyright law has proven challenging as past copyright holders have attempted to reclaim their rights when it becomes suddenly convenient.  This is the subject of the U.S. Supreme Court case Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp.

In 1948, Fox obtained rights to create a television series called Crusade in Europe based on a book written by Eisenhower and published by Doubleday.  Doubleday renewed the copyright to the book in 1975; however, Fox chose not to renew their copyright on the series, which thus entered public domain in 1977.  Dastar then took the series in 1995, edited and manipulated them, and repackaged them.  They sold the new videos and credited Dastar employees as producers and not the original book or TV series.

Fox sued in 1998, attesting that Dastar had infringed on copyright and had "passed off" the work as their own.  The district court found for Fox and awarded it double Dalstar's profits.  Finally, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the decision of the district court and another appeals court.  In an 8-0 ruling, the court reasoned that once a work passes into the public domain, anyone in the public may do anything he or she wishes with it and does not have to attribute the author.

This court ruling helps promote creativity somewhat by assuring artists that anything in the public domain is fair game for their use in future works.  However, there is still the fear that someone might try to claim rights, and often the potential battle isn't worth it.  In addition, copyrights today, thanks to extensions, are so long that producers and publishers don't need to renew copyrights because they last well over the death of the author.  Once again, the copyright monster scares small companies from creating for fear of infringement.