Quote:
Originally Posted by tubemonkey
Society protects your right to ownership without demanding that you relinquish control of it after a set amount of time. So why should intellectual property be any different?
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If your country has no or minimal estate or net wealth taxes, yes. But if those are significant, you or your descendants will likely wind up having to relinquish valuable property.
In the U.S., there is no wealth tax, and minimal taxation at death, but there are significant property taxes. As a result,
every last one of the great 20th century physical estates in my area has been subdivided and/or donated to the public -- usually a bit of both.
Every year my wife and I
purchase a popular-price membership that allows us to stroll, sit, and read on this wonderful property, previously owned by people who relinquished control. I know that popular-price isn't free, but several other local estates have become free public parks.
Maybe, if the value of copyrights was included in the base for local property taxes, unless and until donated it to the public domain, I'd be more sympathetic to long copyrights.