Considering the speed at which society and entertainment is changing and being produced, at some point it ceases to be "unlawful" to become legitimate preservation.
I've noticed an uptick on reruns of old series and films, especially late seventies, eighties and nineties. On films, I'm seeing even earlier production, going back to the sixties, and even of minor cinema like italian, spanish and french.
I have no illusions that these older productions are probably cheaper to license than current day productions, but recent production gets aired once, maybe twice, and is just gone.
Some will argue this is due solely to most not having rewatching value, others that it is predicated on the shorter attention span audiences have nowadays. Other arguments exist.
Regardless of those, not seeing current series being re-run, for me, is a sign that there is no interest keeping those works around.
It would be extremely satisfying if somewhere in the future some of those productions had to be rescued from private copies, as it has happened before with others.
