Quote:
Originally Posted by delphidb96
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.
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The contracted rights belong to the publisher. The publisher doesn't get automatic assignment of copyright in case of author death--unless that's in the contract. (Is Smashwords a publisher? I'm pretty sure they don't own the rights to the books published through them, if the author dies.)
The fact that most publishing contracts today are manipulative and over-broad doesn't change the purpose of copyright after death: to encourage the author to publish, even though s/he won't see personal gain from it. Allowing the author to assign potential gains to someone else is an incentive we don't need to remove.
What we need to remove, is copyright durations that mean 85+% of all works will be obscure and unavailable before they ever enter the public domain. (That's the amount of books that aren't republished in 28 years.)