Quote:
Originally Posted by tubemonkey
Copyright = Forever
I make no distinction between physical property and intellectual property. If a land owner can pass his land on to his heirs after his death, then an author should have the right to do the same thing with his writings.
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I am curious what is the longest period a piece of land has been continually legally owned by heirs or legal buyers without any “funny” breaks. I do not think it is very long. Surely it would get messy if you dig enough into the past.
Nevertheless, intellectual property is not the same as physical property. On that subject, I wonder how much my car would cost if the price of each and every invention is built in the final price: something for the wheel inventor, a bit for the rubber inventor, steel inventor, glass inventor...
It would be a bit like monopoly game when the winner is known but the game is not over yet. Boooooring.... The world of perpetual copyright would be very boring but only until it ends in a possibly interesting and most probably bloody revolution started by the copyrightless population.
You chop some wood for 3 days, you get paid. You drive a truck for a month, you get paid. You think some time, a day, few years, maybe even longer until you think of something new to build and then you and your descendants should be getting some money forever. Yeah, right.
So, it took an author a year to write a book. Fine. I have no problem that he gets paid for every copy. His/hers spouse and children should get paid if (s)he dies too soon. But there has to be an end to that. Sooner or later we would reach a point when half new books, new songs, new inventions would be disputed by copyright owners of previous works. It would take forever to clear anything new for publishing. It would be the Dark age of copyrighttrollocracy.
I have voted for 10-20 year in the poll. No extension.