Quote:
Originally Posted by BWinmill
... it is also possible that the creator or publisher will never recover the cost of producing the work.
So on the one hand you have creators and their descendents profiting immensely, and on the other hand you have creators or publishers losing money.
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When intellectual property goes public domain, everyone still makes money from that work except the author. Only the advent of ebooks has made (some) books free.
But if you walk into a book store, a copy of Melville still costs you money, meaning the publisher is making money, the retailer is making money, the distributor, the printer, and everyone else along the supply chain, everyone except the family of the author.
What other kind of property disappears like intellectual property. If you put money in a bank, buy a bond or shares in a company, or buy land, houses, or gold, all of that persists. You can leave all of that to your estate for the express purpose of benefiting your family. But you can't leave intellectual property, or rather you can leave it with the understanding that it'll vanish when the clock strikes twelve.
I can appreciate why utility patents expire as society has an interest in spreading innovation throughout society. But novels and plays have a different role in society than patents.