Quote:
Originally Posted by tubemonkey
Because it's their work, not yours. You have no right to it.
How about granddad's gold pocket watch? He dies and passes it on to his heirs for them to enjoy. Then 70 years after he dies, you're forced to give it to a museum for the rest of society to enjoy. Does that sound fair?
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This is the same flawed argument whenever comparing intellectual property and physical property.
In the case of your granddad's watch, one cannot put it into a museum without depriving you (or whoever inherited it) of it.
In the case of a litterary work (or, really, any intellectual property), you lose nothing if it is reproduced. So the law has another goal than just protecting your property.
Yes, producing such and such book is work, and the law is there to protect whoever put their work into it - for a time, to ensure that they are properly compensated for it. But there is no reason why it should ensure an eternal, transferrable right to compensation. In the case of scientific or technological discoveries, there is even good reason for it not to: the inventor gets a protection that for some time so that they don't rely on secret to prevent copies (so that the discovery is not lost if the inventor dies), but at some point the discovery becomes common property of society as a whole, because it must benefit everybody at some point.