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by legutierr
1159 days ago
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> If you have a chair as your property, it doesn't magically become public property in N years, it's yours forever. Copyright lasts 70 years past the death of the author. I assure you, you will not own that chair after you die. Your heirs may own the chair, but inheritance itself is also a legal construct. No will, and the decision is made by the probate court. No heirs? Then your chair does go to the state. Or maybe it gets left on the street to be taken by any member of the public who sees it and happens to want it. Intellectual property in the end is really not that different from any other kind of property. Like any form of property, it's a social construct that exists because people think and act like it exists, and because the resources of the state are used to ensure that any dissenters are suppressed and/or punished. Ultimately, the reason that your chair sits in your living room, rather than in your better-armed or more muscular neighbor's fireplace, is the same reason that you can't sell bootleg copies of the latest Disney movie on Amazon: the voluntary observation and enforcement of the law by human beings. |
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If inheritance didn't exist, I imagine people would achieve a similar result by gifting everything to their heirs towards the end of their life. And there would be cases where someone meant to do so but died earlier than expected, or where someone did so when they thought they were dying but then ended up living 10 years longer. Compared to that world, inheritance with wills is more convenient and orderly for everyone involved, but it is not the thing that enables people to pass things on to heirs.