Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant
You may have understood how it works, but you seem to have missed the point of copyright. It's not to provide a perpetual income stream for the heirs of the author. It's to provide an income stream for the author, so that they can continue to produce work.
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I think, though, that most people would accept that it's reasonable for an author's royalties to be passed on to their family when they die, just as any other intangible asset could be. If I set up a widget-making company, I can pass the ownership of, and profits from, that company on to my descendants after my death without them having to personally make widgets themselves. The question then becomes how long it's reasonable for that to continue.
Of course the reality is that very, very few books continue to earn significant revenue long after their author's demise, so I think the current situation of works entering the public domain a certain length of time after the author's death is a reasonable compromise, although one might debate how long that time period should be.