Quote:
Originally Posted by tubemonkey
How do you undo the past? How do you economically track down the legal heirs to every author that ever existed? What's done is done.
You start with the "now" and move forward.
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Ok, so let's talk about a book published right now. You really think that it should
never enter public domain? Not in 50 years, 100 years, 500 years? 500 years from now and beyond you think an author's descendants should still be profiting from their great-great-great-great-great-great......grandparent's work?
I'm asking because I really don't think you've thought this through. Not a single country in the world has perpetual copyright, even countries with the strongest intellectual property rights. There's a good reason for this. It's impractical, for one thing, and certainly not fair, for another. A person from 500 years ago has thousands, possible tens or hundreds of thousands of descendants. Why should one of them own the rights to a work they had absolutely nothing to do with?