Comment by duped

> I struggle to understand why the (potential?) rights-holders are so intransigent about this.

> you will get a fixed percentage of every sale"--that seems like an easy win-win, does it not?

It's really not an easy win-win. Entertainment falls into the attention economy, so if you're giving rights to some low-value IP away for pennies but it winds up getting popular, that's lost revenue elsewhere that might be more valuable.

On top of that these media corporations are borderline militant with defending their vaults of IP because it's the only way to distinguish themselves in a crowded landscape. Exclusivity is essentially the only way they can compete, and giving away rights for peanuts is not in their interest.

These companies default to saying "no" and when you add in the complexity of finding documents that may not exist, it's not hard to see why it'll never happen.