cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/14484060
This is one impact of media consolidation: Studios can work very hard to hold your attention before deciding, at the last possible moment, that they’re better off throwing out artists’ work than letting you pay money to see it. “Coyote vs. Acme,” the Warner spokesperson says, “remains available for acquisition.” Just not by you.
If companies want to write off losses for unreleased IP, they should lose the copyright to it and be forced to release it to the public domain
That is such a logical answer. And in fact, it may be true as soon as they write it off.
If WB writes it off and then it leaks, WB asserting copyright to remove the leak implies ownership over something, contradicting their tax write-off which is founded on the implied disclaimer that there was nothing to own.
At that point they’ve possibly committed tax fraud. They could claim they didn’t write off all of the value, but even if they DMCA the leaked version, their damages would be severely limited because they can’t double claim both the economic value of the copyright and the tax write-off value.