I remember when I was a kid they used to show It's A Wonderful Life on TV pretty much non-stop during the Christmas season. TV55 in it's pre-Cablevision pretty much had it on continuous loop.
Sometime in the early 90's they stopped showing it. I recall something about it's rights being reclaimed, but I never was sure exactly what happened.
This video is a bit long at 20+ minutes, but I found the explanation and presentation very interesting.
He makes an valid point that this is a movie nobody would really care about if it hadn't been for the glitch that temporarily made it free to show on TV.
The Curious Copyright Case of - (
New Window )
it is really down to disney wanting to prevent Mickey Mouse from going in to public domain disney has successfully lobbied to have copyright laws extended many times already i believe Mickey will finally go in 2023 unless Disney manages to get it extended again
however there are some things are starting to slip into the public domain - especially songs ..
and it is funny how some songs have slipped into public domain but the music publishers of the songs still send bills to anyway that uses the song -- and most end up paying not knowing any better.