Comment by monknomo

I agree 20 or 25 years should be plenty of time to protect artistic work. No other industry or line of work has anything like that protection. A work published today by 10 year old could stay in protection for nearly 200 years. If that person was to live to 140, theoretically possible with medicine in future.

We do not continue to pay for most things once they are created. Unless they are continuous services. Artistic works should not be any different.

It also solves the issue of potentially not knowing when the author died, with a fixed period (the number isn't so important imo so long as it's sane), a work is out of copyright x years after the first known copy was published.

Either that or some exponentially increasing tax so that Disney can keep their vault. (I'm perfectly fine with them keeping it if they pay some proper taxes.)

For corporations sure. For individual authors that's certainly not fair. Especially since it makes it easier for corporations to exploit their work without paying them anything.

> If it's good enough for patents, I don't see why it isn't good enough for copyrights

Because there are fundamentally differ concepts and serve different purposes?

But this must then follow for all forms of works, why just books? Every company whose original creator dies must be converted into a public company within 20 years of founder's death for the public benefit as well if that's the case.

If I wrote it, I own the copyright on it, why should I or my future family give away something I worked really hard for? Why do only authors must care about public benefits?