Quote:
Originally Posted by charleski
While I'm all for authors receiving their just rewards, it angers me immensely to see descendants skimming off royalties without performing an ounce of work, these people need to get off their asses and earn their living like the rest of us.
I, too, am confused as to why copyright should even be an issue with Sherlock Holmes, the article certainly did nothing to explain what rights these greedy bums are fighting over.
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To a certain extent, you're right-but taken to extremes this essentially invalidates the entire principle of inheritance-and even casts doubt on the idea of gifts.
Basically, isn't a person entitled to leave something to his/her heirs? You can argue that the author can leave whatever's earned during his/her lifetime, but what if that lifetime is cut short? Check out when the author of Confederacy of Dunces died vs when his book was published. (Possible a bad example as, IIRC, the author's heir was his mother. But the principle is still valid. An author can die before realizing anything from his work.)
that's why I prefer a set time. Or maybe a combination, but then it should be something like '50 years or life of author, whichever is longer'.