Quote:
Originally Posted by Bilbo1967
Loads of people get paid for a fortunate bloodline, some of them even become peers of the realm or kings and queens etc... but what can you do about it? We can't surely suggest that any estate left on a person's death reverts to the state can we?
I for one would like to leave my children a little to get them started in life. Now, I'm not likely to be in the Tolkein/Rowling bracket (unless the market for memoirs by short, fat, bald software testers really takes off) but, even so, I'd be pretty cheesed off if anything I do manage to scrape together is denied to my children when I'm gone.
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It's not about denying one's children their inheritance. Letting something pass into the public domain does not involve going into the bank accounts of the author's estate and removing money from them.
It does prevent creative works from becoming a perpetual source of income for large corporations that profit on the monopoly. It's just like patent expiration: even when the generic drug becomes available you can still get the authorized version.
The public domain allows for the cross-fertilization of existing works and springboards new creative ideas.