Not by a long shot. They're still milking famous books, movies, songs, from 50 years back and more.
But I'd argue that by 25 years all the money being made for the original owners should have been forced to stop. Similar as with patents.
Once concern is when a creator isn't making money (e.g. from a book), and the work takes off after the 25 years (say, it becomes viral).
I would say that the bulk of the (for lack of a better term) fandom, occurred after the 1980. Frodo Lives!(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frodo_Lives!) notwithstanding.
I would also argue that corporations would have no qualms of waiting 25 years to capitalize and format shift a work of art, where as the 50 year term limit makes it more difficult for them to play off of nostalgia alone.
So? Tolkien after all died in 1973. The fandom would exist even without copyright past 1981.
>I would also argue that corporations would have no qualms of waiting 25 years to capitalize and format shift a work of art, where as the 50 year term limit makes it more difficult for them to play off of nostalgia alone.
What would waiting for 25 years achieve? And what is "format shift" this context? "The book is copyright free, but the movie coming out after the book's 25 years is not"? Wouldn't that be an improvement over today which neither is?
When something is available for every channel to rerun, it would be even less of a differentiator than a channel getting the rights to Friends or Seinfield today.
So Channels wanting to attract people would need to come out with new material still - as Seinfeld and Friends would be able to be played by any other channel.