Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Now, our business owner dies. Can his wife continue to receive income from the business? Sure - the law has no problem with company ownership being passed to your descendents. Should the author's situation be different?
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Yes, for all the reasons Macauley enumerated.
I think Life + 90 is excessive. I agree with Macauley's proposal which was common law for quite a while until Disney started lobbying when the realized they would loose rights to Mickey Mouse or something.
But, originally is was publish date + 28 years or till authors death whichever comes last. They wanted to change it to death plus 60 years and Macaulay explained why that would be very bad.
A second time the same proposal came up, to extend it to death + 25 years... the reasoning was that if you published something later in life, perhaps a few years before you died, your estate didn't get a chance to enjoy the rewards of that work. At this time Macaulay came up with a counter proposal of publish date + 48 years. That proposal was adopted.
A link to Macauleys speech's on this topic below. Everyone on this thread should read it:
http://baens-universe.com/articles/McCauley_copyright
BOb