I understand honoring the full term of any existing copyrights, but should anyone besides the author or artist be able to continue to profit like that?
Should intellectual copyrights be able to be renewed after the creator's death?
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I could just give an off-handed yes or no without considering the matter too much but instead I would like to ask whether you have any specific examples that made you think of this issue and make a thread about it.
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@K_Michael
Ah! a great subject. As a writer and illustrator, copyright may not be my bread and butter, although it is, but it is certainly the jam. My take is that beyond my death, my surviving family has already had the benefit of my largesse, and will inherit everything I have forgotten to take with me. That means everything not in my head, I guess. They'll be ok without an extended copyright, not because I'm Michelangelo, but because my father taught principles of ambition, planning, and execution. I've applied that to investing and the in of the vest has been very good to me.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
As a rather high profile example, The Great Gatsby's copyright was renewed by a family member of the author in 1953, 13 years after the author's death.
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@K_Michael
I don't like it in that case. Unless said family member was involved in the creation process I don't think they should have any legal rights on the copyright.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
I agree.
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@K_Michael
The way this is achieved is that rarely do creators truly own the full patent (only genuinely independent/underground ones with no label or distributor own it to that degree). Thus, it follows that the label and/or distributor ends up being the owner upon their death.
With the 'fully owned' scenario, a legal will is necessary as there's no nepotism de facto concept with intellectual property.