|
And their heirs' heirs, and so on. Under current law, copyright will be passed down to people who were born after the author's grandchildren died. Whatever happened to "a limited time"?
Actually, it's rather interesting to look at the wording:
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
That opens the question as to whether their great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren count as "them" for the purposes of copyright. The argument is made that outrageous copyright terms encourage creation because the author is motivated by providing for his or her children ... but is the desire to provide for hypothetical descendants a hundred or more years in the future really much of a motivation for most people? In fact, does it motivate any but a very few people, most of whom are probably busy establishing dynasties (of the political or business variety), not writing genre novels?
The idea of copyright was to grant authors a limited monopoly on their works, so that they could make a living by being authors and creating new works. It was not to grant the Walt Disney Corporation an eternal monopoly on Mickey Mouse.
|