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Originally Posted by Utahcowboy
Having copyright last longer than the life of the author only benefits one person... the publisher. Considering the fairly recent fiasco between John Steinbeck's family and Penguin books, it is clear that the publisher nor the terms of copyright ever have the continuing family in mind. Authors never know what kind of sales they will do nor what kind of impact their writings will have, and in the case of Steinbeck, his books should be free to have, learn from, and enjoy. Publishers are just greedy and I am sure that they had a lot to do with the current law on copyright. However, during an authors life time, I think it is his right as the artist and creator to sap every penny he or she can out of what they created. As far as the authors descendants are concerned, if the author was successful, then they will happily inherit their estate, if the author was not then having the copyright wouldn't benefit them anyway. Besides they weren't the ones who wrote the book so they don't deserve the copyright anyway.
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Bull.
Intellectual property is still property, and can have value. As such, it's something that can be legitimately passed on to designated heirs in a will.
A copyright that extends beyond the author's lifetime is something that can be passed to the heirs. It may have current value, in terms of continuing royalties from books in print. It may have potential value, in that it may be possible to resell the work(s) to another publisher in a new edition.
And as far as the author being successful and the heirs happily inheriting the estate, define "successful". For every internationally bestselling author who becomes rich and famous, there are a thousand who make a living at best. Copyrights may be one of the few things of value in the estate to pass along.
Publishers are often greedy, but the Steinbeck case is not typical. the problem is that many famous older works were published under contracts which no savvy writer would accept now. And the law is racing to catch up in any case. For instance, there was a spat between (I believe) Random House and Rosetta a while back, over a bunch of books which had been written and contracted for long before digital publishing was a gleam in anyone's eye. There was no mention of ebook rights in the contracts. The publisher still had the books under valid contract, but did the contract cover electronic editions?
Nowadays, ebook rights are one of the things specifically covered in a publishing contract, and what "Out of print" means is now generally a combination of the paper volumes no longer in print, plus low ebook and Print On Demand sales as evidence that the publisher has lost interest and the rights should revert.
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Dennis