ryanbrennan wrote:
What with the studios going the MOD route with titles that won't sell mega-copies it appears to me that the vault doors have been thrown open.  Maybe this is merely an illusion, but it seems given enough time, everything that can be released will be released.  I don't think the studios want to hold onto titles.  They want to make money.  Sitting on a title makes them no money.  With the exception of Turner Classic Movies and maybe the old American Movie Channel there hasn't really been an outlet for the really obscure stuff.  The MOD model is a way for the studios to cash in on stuff they thought was ready to turned into guitar picks.
The whole MOD thing is just to cover the cost of them transferring their archives to digital.

They are moving to selling this stuff as huge licences librarys now.  That what MeTV and THIS are, they are basically the old b-movie packages on steroids sold as whole ready made channels to air on extra digital over the air channels.

A few studios are trying there own hand to see if they get a bit of action setting up their own Netflix like services.  This walled garden is doomed to fail though, people are not going to go down the cable path again where they have to pay individually for different channels/libraies.

Eventually this will all be on one Netflix like service.  It probably won't be Netflix, it probably won't even look like Netflix.  I imagine eventually this will all come in one one seamless settop box and we will subscribe to it just like we do cable now.  

That the direction we are moving towards everything you can imagine on VoD.

Probably another 10-15 years till it's all done though.  You have to wait for one set of old guards at the studios to be replaced by younger people who instead of being threatened see $$$.

As far as PD.  I either want PD back the way it was or have an abandonment rule built into it.  If you have done nothing with your copywritten work for lets say 2-3 decades you have the choice to either make it available in someway or give it to the PD.   Kind of like the whole UK unreleased material rules which I find hysterical as The Beatles and Dylan trip all over themselves to release stuff that they have never had any interest in making money on just so that it won't fall into the PD.  Money makes people do strange things.