Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
Because we'd like to encourage people to publish, even late in life, and if their heirs can't inherit those rights, why should someone on his deathbed bother publishing his memoirs? Why put his (hypothetically beloved) family through whatever media attention might result from them, if they won't get anything but stress from it?
Copyright is an *incentive* to produce & share creative/artistic/scientific content. Allowing inheritance of copyright is supposed to provide some incentive to publish in a case where there's little to no possibility of personal gain.
(That said, I want copyright lengths to go back to no more than a few decades, regardless of whether the author is alive.)
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Except... Unless the contract between the writer and the publisher specifically deals with heirs and assigns, once the publisher buys the book, all rights belong to the publisher. So the heirs may not be collecting a dime from late-in-life works. Sure, bigger name authors and agents of authors, may well remember to carefully delineate which rights the publisher gets, but often a new author, or one who's yet to get an agent, ends up assigning all rights because s/he does not know better.
So why should the publisher be able to extend copyright protection for decades after the author's death?
And before someone goes off on the need for the publisher to recoup profits - well, if the publisher doesn't do any marketing to move the initial release from lower-midlist status, then why do we think it's okay for the publisher to 'rediscover' the author's works after the author's death solely to generate profits for the publisher???
Derek