That said, the idea that your "life" has any role in this whatsoever is also unreasonable.
Copyright should last X years. If the author dies, X is still X, and if the author lives then X is still X.
This maintains the incentives, despite terminal illnesses, while also preserving the rights of the greater society to reflect on its own culture and encourage new artistic works. It's also how copyright originally worked (IIRC).
My own perception of fair would be that copyright expires 25 years after creation, or 20 years after publication, whichever comes first. If any of the creators are alive at that time and still own the copyright, they may extend by 10 years if no other creator objects.
If you create a copyrightable work and die the next day, and your executor manages to get it published the next year, your estate owns the copyrights for the next 20. That is enough time for any child sired by a male author on the day he died to be supported by his estate until it becomes an adult. It also provides a reasonable 5 year window to get something published before later publication is punished by a shortened copyright term. Still-living creators will, of course, be able to deny that a work was actually finished--and therefore started the 25-year clock--until just before the day the first copy is made available for sale--which starts the 20-year clock--so that would pretty much just be enforceable on posthumous publications and on bizarre edicts from eccentric or reclusive creators who try to exert too much control over how other people may enjoy their work.
And it allows for a work still profitable after 20 years to squeeze a little more out. I think the extension may encourage corporations that commission works for hire to support their successful creators for 20 years so that they will not object to the extension.
Works-for-hire, by the way, would have all the individual humans and the corporation as the creators, and the default would be tenancy-in-common, with the humans temporarily assigning their interest to the corporation in exchange for a regular salary. (I think the current works-for-hire system encourages immortal corporations to use up and throw away their human talent.) So if the corporation stops making the payments, the creators regain their full interest in the work, according to the size of their contribution defined by the work-for-hire agreement, if one exists, or an equal share if not. So the only reason to fire a creator would be if the profits from the works they create aren't sufficient to pay their salary, at which time they get their (lesser) share of the profits instead.
A session musician, for instance, might be hired by a record label to get a 4% share of every recorded music track, and assign that interest to the company in exchange for salary of $1200 every week working in the home studio and $1800 every week spent touring. If the tracks that musician played on bring in more than $2.34M, the company should keep them as salaried employees indefinitely. Otherwise, they could fire them as an employee and just pay out their 4% until the copyright term runs out.
You sign a publishing contract with a publisher, you (and your estate so your kids) collect money from that. After the contract ends it's done. Which is reasonable in my opinion. If I die, my kids don't get my monthly payment anyway.
Since other publishers do not have the manuscript, they can take the book and write it over completely to their own publishing house but due to market lag they it's too little, to late. And if you are wondering, digital reproductions usually fall under the same rights as reproductions (e.g. playing Beethoven, you cannot reproduce that specific work while the author has been dead for years).
There's no reason that inheriting wealth means you must also inherit crimes. Just because they are related concepts doesn't make them have to both be reasonable or unreasonable together.
Inheriting wealth is reasonable because gives people a(nother) reason to contribute to the world - to secure a place for their children in a potentially uncertain future. Parents who have spent a large portion of their life caring and provisioning for there children want to see that they have a level of security when gone.
Inheriting crime is unreasonable for, hopefully, obvious reasons.
Luckily, we don't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Right but if you kill someone and stay living your heirs are not criminals either.
If you create the next billion dollar game and survive your heirs (or those you specify in your will) will surely be enriched, perhaps it should be 70 years alive or dead that copyright persists for.
Nope. They get 70 years from your death. Since 1976, copyright ticks from the date the work was created, not the date it was published. That's also why it changed from a fixed period (X years after publication) to life + so many years (X years after death of the author).
It would be 70 years after the author died. Here, read this:
> Often when and how a copyright owner registers a copyrighted work will depend on whether that work is published or unpublished because the requirements for registration differ slightly depending on whether the work is considered to be published or unpublished under the law. The “under the law” phrase is important here because what the normal person might consider to be published does not necessarily correspond to the Copyright Office’s definition of the term. Moreover, sometimes even knowing these definitions doesn’t help because there is some ambiguity in the term and how it applies to new digital environments. So this is one area to proceed with caution.
> The Copyright Office’s definition of published includes: the distribution of copies of a work to “the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending” or offering to distribute copies … “to a group of persons for purposes of further distribution, public performance, or public display, constitutes publication.” A public performance or display of a work does not by itself constitute publication.
> In the online environment this gets confusing. For example, a blog post or a photo posted on a website might be considered to be a “distribution of copies,” which would mean it’s a published work under the definition or it could be a “public display,” which would mean it’s unpublished.
That said, the idea that your "life" has any role in this whatsoever is also unreasonable.
Copyright should last X years. If the author dies, X is still X, and if the author lives then X is still X.
This maintains the incentives, despite terminal illnesses, while also preserving the rights of the greater society to reflect on its own culture and encourage new artistic works. It's also how copyright originally worked (IIRC).