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Originally Posted by Kumabjorn
I see. 14 seems a tad strange too.
I could see a copyright of life +25 or +30, that would make sense to me. And it is not about getting access to free material in my case. I'm more than willing to pay for my reading pleasure. I just don't think descendants of an author (or inventor or composer) should be able to live a whole life in perpetual leisure based on what a parent produced. In my mind there is a difference between an entrepreneur making money and an author. An entrepreneur invests in a business and keeps on running it, if the children wants the benefit of that they need to keep that business alive, thereby providing income for those who work and depend on said business. In an author's case royalties keep coming in, and if an author, Kenzaburo Oe comes to mind, have a child with special needs, he will make sure, through investments and savings, that those needs are met even after his demise.
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Many people live of the fruits of their parents labour or success, or of that of their grandparents, greatgrandparents etc.
Fortunes have been passed down for generations that have been made by a person's effort, luck such as having oil discovered on ones land (and owning the appropriate rights when it happened), criminal enterprises such as bootlegging, gambling, slumlording, running a successful bawdy house, or perhaps extortion or robbery.
Perhaps a closer analogy is the stock market. If a person inherits a good stock portfolio, they and their heirs can own them as long as the stocks exist. The can collect premiums, sell them outright, and generally have to do nothing to keep the company or companies in business. Should those stocks expire 28 years after the purchaser? Or perhaps revert to the public domain (government?) where they can be used to lower taxes? Possibly a bigger benefit to the majority of people than getting a free ebook.
Same with money in the bank, should the heirs only be allowed to collect interest for a certain number of years and then the money reverts to the public domain?
And property, is it any more unfair that people inherit a house or a farm or an apartment building, which will save them thousands of dollars or rent each year just because their parents purchased it and possibly make them money as well? Should it not revert to the public domain?
Most authors and their heirs receive very little royalties, if any, on books past a certain date. Sometimes royalty checks cost more to issue than the amount on them.
And out of print books generate no royalties at all. They are not out of print because of spite, but because they weren't selling. The rights holders are possibly unaware that they have these rights.
In most cases inabilty to track down the rights holders is not very credible. If the book was worth printing from the searchers viewpoint, genealogy experts could be hired and most likely would be successful. Anyone who wants to spend the money or the time could do this, even one of ourselves. But there is the somewhat bizarre expectation that someone else should do this for us.
If I read a book years ago and felt that it was really really important to read it again, I could make a personal effort, perhaps as little as wishing on a star or as great as spending time and money on it. Or more likely remembering it fondly and not let bitterness permeat my soul.
IMO authors deserve royalties and whether they get them for perpetuity or not does not concern me. If a book is so mind-blowingly wonderful that humanity would be poorer without it, does that mean does that mean the author should get nothing because everyone should have free access to the book today?
Seems to me we are intent on killing The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg here folks.
Helen