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Originally Posted by CommonReader
My pet example for the excessive length of copyright protection today is the German author and WWI hero Ernst Jünger. He published his diaries of the Great War "In Stahlgewittern" (Storm of Steel) in 1920. He then went on to live to the ripe old age of 102 years, dying in 1998. His work will therefore be protected until 2068, giving "In Stahlgewittern" protection for almost 1 1/2 centuries. Who is the main beneficiary? Most likely his publisher as the people closely associated with him have died long ago.
Authors themselves have received inspriration from the public, right down to the very tools of their trade, letters and language, therefore their own works shall return to the public after some time.
BTW, the Industrial Revolution spread so fast because everyone was busy stealing British intellectual property (who themselves were also happy to grab intellectual property wherever they could get it). The spread of knowledge is therefore a common human interest and this limits the property rights of the author or inventor.
As a side note: Hitler's book "Mein Kampf" is currently not printed in Germany as the State of Bavaria claims to have inherited Hitler's rights to the book and refuses any permission for print. It will be interesting to see what they will do when the book goes into public domain in 2015.
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"Mein Kampf" is a perfect example for the value of eternal copyright in some cases. This rambling drivel should disappear from the face of the earth and we would be better off for it. But of course, in most cases life +50 or life +70 seems more than enough. Only a few choice works will be popular enough to still attract people who value them enough so that they want to spend money on them. If we had eternal copyright, then most works which are not commercially viable anymore would just be forgotten. Of course, I can understand Tubemonkey's position that it is wrong to just make a law to take away people's rights "for the good of society" after a certain period. So what is best? Perhaps requiring a payment to extend the copyright after a certain number of years. You don't pay, your copyright expires.