Quote:
Originally Posted by rkomar
The "problem" is that, apart from corporate-owned works, it soon becomes impossible to determine who it is that deserves to be paid royalties for older works. The only clear path is to not republish and let the old work die in obscurity. That helps those producing new works control the market, but is against old works and culture in general.
I have to say that I have strong, mixed feelings about tubemonkey's opinion. On the one hand, I hate the loss to our general culture. On the other, I have a malicious joy in foreseeing the burial of the works of those individual authors who thought they would have generations-long control of their flourishing "IP" via permanent copyright. Here's a hint for those in the latter camp: if long copyrights are currently helping kill your competition from past works, so will they also help kill your works when the time comes.
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My works are so magnificent that they shall live eternally. I am too crotchety to ever die. So it's a perfect confluence. Otherwise, I wouldn't see the point of eternal copyright. I don't think there are many people worrying about how to provide for their descendants in perpetuity. The ties diminish into insignificance after a few generations.