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There's a lot of discussion about authors who have died recently. Would you put some kind of time limitation on protecting posthumous works? For example, if a previously unknown play by Shakespeare were to be found, should that play never be published because Shakespeare didn't publish it during his lifetime?
Kafka has been mentioned, what about Anne Frank? I'm sure you could create a large list of material that has been published posthumously, that the world would be poorer without.
And what about every piece of work written before the printing press was invented? Did Aristotle give his permission to mass produce his works? Homer? And what about other arts? The Egyptian tomb painters clearly never intended their work to see the light of day (literally!).
I'm not trying to argue away the rights of writers; I'm not a writer and I don't have a horse in this race. I'm just saying that we'd be missing a lot of literature if you stricly adhered to a 'no posthumous publication of written works' rule.
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