Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Presumably, then, you'd also like to prohibit any form of inheritance? An author's copyrights are his assets which he passes to his heirs.
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Copyrights are not assets in the same way tangible property is an asset; authors are grudgingly given a monopoly over a particular expression to encourage them to produce, but they don't "own" the idea or the way its expressed. Copyright is only useful to the extent that it encourages the creation of new creative works, but it is detrimental when that monopoly prevents the creation of new and interesting works by disallowing others to make use of the copyrighted expression.
Copyright should be treated differently than other heritable assets because it is different; treating it as just another form of property is a gross oversimplification that ignores the careful balancing that is at the core of copyright law.