[macintux]

When you're 60+, you either still need to make money (life is expensive) or you're creating because you want to. Creating so that your grandchildren can keep making money 50 years from now doesn't seem like a strong motivation.

[kohanz]

Legacy and providing for your offspring is a huge motivation for many people. It's interwoven through all aspects of our society. Why should it be ignored here? To say it's not a "strong" motivation for older people misses the mark, IMHO. It may not be a motivation for you (at this point in your life, or forever), but that doesn't mean it's not a significant factor.

Again, you're essentially saying that older people don't need as much incentive as younger people to create, which I don't necessarily agree with.

[soundwave106]

Plenty of economists have negative views about inherited wealth, and the negative sociological and economic effects of inheritance inequality that result. Copyright goes beyond wealth -- it is a defacto monopoly on creative work that the public cannot benefit from without paying someone for the privilege of usage.

Although you are taking the "family" viewpoint, the reality is that copyright more atypically tends to be shuffled around and bought up by large rent-seekers corporations. Many times, the original artist's descendants don't even make a penny. Example: Before invalidated in 2015, who benefited from the strange copyright on "Happy Birthday"? Was it the ancestors of the originators (Mildred J. Hill at the most direct, but probably with several other hands involved before it morphed into its familiar form)? No, it was Warner/Chappell Music.

To me, it would be very hard to argue that the benefits of extended copyright at this point. It's a form of rent-seeking, an activity many economists have problems with. (It was actually pretty easy to find an economist -- a Nobel winner -- blasting rent-seeking. Nobel winner Angus Daton did so here for instance around the 30 minute mark -- https://www.c-span.org/video/?424924-5/national-association-.... It was more in the context of our broken health care system, but similar issues apply with government-sanctioned monopolies of creative works.)

[namarie]

Then people should save money they made from their works and pass it to their children. I've never heard of someone continuing to work after their death to provide for their children, which is what the current copyright system basically amounts to.

[kohanz]

What about passing on an income generating asset (real estate, dividend portfolio) to children?

[namarie]

I think it should be at least heavily taxed and wouldn't be very much opposed to it not actually passing down.

[davidgh]

The argument against copyright sounds too simplistic to me.

A lot of things that are subject to copyright are not as simple as scratching out a poem on a rainy afternoon.

If I was to spend my resources to design and build a building, most reasonable people would not argue that my estate should be forced to give up its rights to the building when I die. There may be an estate tax, but the estate can choose to keep the building and its income, decide to sell it, or whatever. Seems logical. In fact, the very reason I may have deployed my resources into a building was because it would outlast me and provide economic benefits to those I love after I die.

Are not many (if not most) works subject to copyright just another type of developed asset, like a building? Sure, there are no sticks and bricks, but valuable time, resources and money went into developing the asset. Is that irrelevant because the developed asset is intellectual rather than tangible? Should my estate be denied of benefits based on the type of asset I spent my time and resources creating?

As a society, we have decided to limit the scope in which certain works are protected, for the greater good. I support this. But to abolish copyright or to truncate benefits based on death of the creator doesn’t seem to make economic sense to me.

[jack9]

> Is that irrelevant because the developed asset is intellectual rather than tangible?

Copyright has a sort of enthalpy (an appreciation) that grows into new forms of protections with socio-techno changes increasing the value, as opposed to a depreciation. The value is also appreciated by how much it's already been used to make! (e.g. Star Wars) Without physical entropy, like a building, you have a very different economic mechanism. The benefit to the originator's estate is not the single determining factor. Copyright is bad, in the current form. A simple depreciation factor would be far superior to the copyright expiry.