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Society has the stories available for purchase. That's the good. Why should there ever be a time when society takes possession of the rights holder's intellectual property any more than any other type of property? Why shouldn't the heirs of the author inherit the value like every other type of property....subject to the same taxes as any other property?
Fiction is not like medicine or mechanical contrivances where there is only SO MANY ways to accomplish a task.
If 70 years after JK Rowling dies....anybody is still interested in writing Harry Potter fan fic it will be because some corporation is continuing to invest money into the Harry Potter franchise keeping it in demand. Such a corporation is owed the fruits of it's labor.
I've already agreed that truly orphaned works should fall into the public domain rather than disappear due to copyright.
But then....nobody is going to care that orphaned works are in the public domain. If people cared, they wouldn't be orphaned works in the first place. (care in enough quantity to matter).
The real desire is as always "gimme gimme gimme". People want books they don't have to pay for. People want to leach off the name recognition of characters they didn't create. Gimme gimme.
Every fairy tail that Disney ever borrowed from is still available to everyone else. You can't borrow from Disney's version, but you can do exactly what Disney did. If you are talented enough.
We are in a better world with Disney continuing to control Disney property. It's what Disney continues to do that makes Disney characters worth copying. Nobody would care one whit to copy Steam Boat Willie....if Micky Mouse weren't STILL being invested in by the millions and millions - by Disney.
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