Patent law allows triple damages in the case of willful infringement, and trademark allows triple damages in the case of a counterfeit mark that the infringer knew was counterfeit.

Copyright does have some things that can increase a damage award but there is no real triple damages mechanism.

The plaintiff in copyright gets a choice. They can ask for either:

• The actual damages plus the profits that the infringer made from the infringement. The latter is only to the extent that the infringer's profits exceeded the actual damages.

E.g., if you lost $100k due to infringement and the infringer made $70k your damages would be $100k. But if the infringer made $120k your damages would be $120k (the $100k you lost plus the $20k the infringer made over $100k).

• Statutory damages. It is often very hard to figure out actual damages so the law allows an alternative. If you elect statutory damages the damages range from $750 to $30000 per work infringed. The amount is determined by the judge or jury.

They can be decreased to as low as $200 if the infringer "was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright".

They can be increase up to $150000 if the infringement is found to be willful. This is the closest thing copyright as to triple damages.

The way registration affects all of this is:

• You have to register before filing a copyright lawsuit. There are some exceptions such as when a foreign copyright owner wants to sue over a work not published in the US but infringed in the US, due to Berne Convention requirements but we can ignore those here.

• You can only collect statutory damages for infringement that commences after registration (unless the registration is within 3 months of first publication).

• You can collect actual damages and infringer profits from infringement before registration.

Today things are much easier, if you create something it is copyright. If you want to sue you need to register, but you can register at anytime. If you register you can sue for triple damages for anything that happens after you register, but you can still get damages for things that happened before your register. (The above is my understanding of the law, but I'm not a lawyer)

Now, fixing a creative work in a tangible medium is all that's required. When does the copyright expire? Nobody will know, because there's no year of publication listed, and no author listed to find out when they die. (Even if there is an author listed by name, maybe it was me; maybe it was the Pulitzer Prize winning author)

On top of this, genre films in general, and horror specifically, if anything, have rabid fans that go out of their way to watch movies because of their genre, regardless of accessibility or buzz. Again, George Romero's involvement alone would make sure that even a passing fan of horror (or budding cinephiles) would seek it out.

It feels like so much history and reality is missing in this idea of an 'ancient film'.

There were so many films like this, yet under copyright, available on late night TV back in the day. Before most had cable, before most even had VHS machines, you'd turn on TV at night on a Saturday, or at 2am on a Tuesday, and see endless old movies.

Once VHS came out, you could get virtually anything older because the film -> VHS transfer process was cheap, and people wanted content. You'd pay a buck to rent old junk at the store, and the campier the better.

Put another way, it became a cult classic when it was released, and then was always available. Endless copyrighted works were in the same category.

There is no 'chance' taken, for it was always seen as chance-worthy.

But beyond this:

* This film is the first part of a trilogy, Night, Dawn, Day of the Living Dead. Anyone watching any of these films, wanted to see the whole set

* Even if under copyright, as others have stressed, this one is on the list. What list? A list you do clearly not share, which is fine, but horror fan films do.

EDIT:

I'm going to give a little more context here.

In this timescope, there was a show called "I Dream of Jeannie"... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Dream_of_Jeannie

In this show, Barbra Eden wears a 60's envisioned harem costume. There is one important aspect of this costume, and that is that her belly button is covered.

Why?

Because it was illegal.

There is a whole deep dive here, but the point is that Night of the Living Dead was an extremely gory and violent film in its day, immensely groundbreaking, and people desperately wanted to see it.

It didn't become a cult classic because it was easier to distribute. It became one because of what it was.

That's the point I think.

NOTE: This does not invalidate the concept that some films can follow your path, it's just that this one didn't.

The question shouldn't be about how much it costs but why do things cost anything in the beginning, and if they have to what is the amount a specific piece should be retributed for its contribution to society minus how the non-zero cost impacts society.

AIs are being let off the hook with their massive copyright infringement but when a movie being open directly benefits everyone suddenly that's a problem.

The economist I know of who calculated a socially optimal copyright duration, Rufus Pollock, came up with an estimate of 20 something years.

This makes sense from the point of view of finance because the NPV of extra years beyond this is very low. To put it in qualitative terms, no one is thinking about their grandchildren's pensions when they decide to create a work.

Personally I would also have different durations and rules for different types of work: a book, a video, and a piece of software are very different works and need diffferent incentives