[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.