Quote:
Originally Posted by bill_mchale
By ensuring that copyrights can extend past the life time of the author, it provides publishers a reasonable incentive to actually publish the work of an older author. For example, lets assume that an author is in his 80s and is rather ill; he does have enough left for one last publishable work. If copyright ends at death, the publisher may decide to skip the novel since they will have very little chance to profit from their work before the work enters into the public domain. In other words, by trying to speed a work into the public domain, you might be ensuring that the work is never published at all.
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This is still covered if the copyright is based on X years, with nothing to do with the life of the author. Whatever X is, whether or not the author dies has nothing to do with it. Publishers still have plenty of opportunity to make the work available and return a profit on it.
I don't think anybody has said that copyright should automatically end at death. But I don't believe it should automatically extend beyond death either. It should be for a fixed length, pure and simple.