Not sure this argument works unless you are willing to give away the other property on death like houses, stocks, farms, etc. Maybe 60 years is too long, but that doesn't seem to be your argument.
Genuine question since I don’t know much about inheritance. Don’t things like houses, stocks, etc get taxed in certain places? Whereas I don’t think copyright does? In a way, that is similar to having to give property away upon death (can’t pay the tax, forced to get rid of it).
People who hold copyrights for profit tend create corporations to hold the copyrights, then just pass on shares in the company to their heirs.
These shares are valued the same as any other shares for an opaque, non-public company, with a single owner, whose assets have very ambiguous and widely disparate values, and which has the ability to cease operations for long periods of time and still remain profitable.
In other words, they’re worth whatever the owner wants them to be worth.
This is just my cynical interpretation. But if you think valuing real estate is hard, try valuing copyrights.
The usual steelman I hear is that Ulysses S. Grant wrote his memoirs on his deathbed because he knew the royalties after he died would take care of his family. I grant that's a marginal case but I don't know that the CBA there actually works on long copyright's side.
Taking copyright away on death is a bad method, and that's a reasonable argument against it.
It should be a fixed term that isn't very long. And if that term ends before death and they want more money then great, write something new.
I think most people objecting to copyright lasting after death are really reacting to how long it all is, and the average amount of time that is. Some of them really don't want it to go past death, but I think most of those objectors would be fine with copyright that lasts exactly 25 years no matter what.
That's more of an argument for making the duration fixed and not dependent on the authors life at all. Having both lifelong copyrights PLUS a fixed duration is just double dipping.
you dont need copyright for that. by the time he died the family could have kept the memoirs and sold the exploitation rights to whoever wanted them. contracts are a thing.
Exactly where do "exploitation rights" come from if not copyright? Anyone who is going to enter a contract for these "exploitation rights" is going to want exclusive rights so others can't just share, republish, copy, etc. This is what copyright affords those who want to sell "exploitation rights"
lets say a publisher secures the manuscript after buying it and the copyright is gone at the author's death. As a first mover they will make most of the money during the first publishing round. By the time copycats end up on the market most of the market for the book was captured by the first mover.
> Copyright is literally the opposite of property rights.
Why is that? Property rights, like copyright, is merely a societal construct that have been agreed upon (via legislative processes).
There are countries today that does not respect copyright (or impose their own copyright rules), just like they do so for property rights.
Therefore, this copyright is _exactly_ like property rights. In fact, copyright is slightly less powerful, since they have the potential to expire unlike property rights (tho of course, under US copyright rules, the expiration seems to be getting extended every time disney starts losing theirs...).
Property rights solve the problem of physical goods being rivalrous. We can't both eat the same portion of food; if one person has it another doesn't.
Information is not rivalrous in that way: an additional person having it doesn't take it away from anyone else. Many people can read the same (e-)book.
There are other reasons why societies originally granted a completely artificial temporary monopoly on information: the theory that it'll incentivize the creation of more works, which is a thing the society might want more than they want the ability to copy and modify and remix it on day one.
Emphasis on "might" want: it's not obvious that that's the correct tradeoff today, in a world in which we have not merely the printing press but digital information that can be trivially copied and modified, and a society of people who all have the tools at their fingertips to use that information to create and remix and do wondrous creative things with all of culture.
>Information is not rivalrous in that way: an additional person having it doesn't take it away from anyone else.
Not literally, but in every other sense, yes. It does. You make a great idea, and someone with more money, time, and resources will mass produce your product. They become ubiquitous with the product and the creator is now disincentized from sharing more potentially great ideas.We use copyright to make sure creators aren't disincentized.
The problem isn't scarcity, but falls into the same core issue. Lots of people want thing, but the owner wants either security or compensation that it's their thing.
>Emphasis on "might" want: it's not obvious that that's the correct tradeoff today
I'd still say so. More so today than before where it's only gotten much more expensive to live. Now we go to people outcopying each other and the creator is simply homeless.
It's theft. How many people, no matter how altruistic, will feel truly zen seeing their own idea copied by people who care nothing about thw craft making money, exploiting other labor, and otherwise making the world a worse place?
I argue less than the amount that at least want a steady living at the bare minimum. Something many struggle to achieve.
>why is the current model assumed to be the best, when it is based on a lot of outdated assumptions (e.g., physical copies)?
Because I've heard no better alternatives?
We don't need to throw the baby out with that bathwater. In increasing orderof viability: Implement UBI so artists don't starve guarantee an easy trial for proper compensation (which may still be pennies for thieves) if/when their art is stolen and makes hand over fist in money, or reduce the current time of exclusivity. The concept of keeping some time to benefit from your ideas exclusively isn't a flawed one, it just needs tweaks to the idea, or a fundamental shift in how humans survive in the modern world.
This isn't a legal definition, it's the dictionary term
>(the act of) dishonestly taking something that belongs to someone else and keeping it.
How is this action of taking someone else's idea and keeping the fruits of their mental labor not thievery?
Again, not legally arguing. The point here was to exercise the psychological reason that having your ideas taken without permission nor even acknowledgemrnt feels bad. Theft is bad and feels bad. People want to avoid that where possible.
Given the variety of agreements on international intellectual property law such as the Berne Convention, WCT, TRIPS pushed through multinational organizations like the WTO, the only country in the world with 0 copyright is the Marshall Islands (excluding audio-visual media regulated by the Unauthorized Copies of Recorded Materials Act, 1991). Even North Korea has life + 50 years.
Some countries decide to leave their copyright laws unenforced (or selectively enforced if they don't like you). Not much choice for people who don't agree with copyright law itself though.
