"I sometime wonder whether IP should be permanent like Physical Property.
"I'm looking at it from the other end to "Shakespeare's copyright was owned by X'; instead, my house will continue to benefit my heirs in some way after I'm dead, and their heirs, and so on. So why shouldn't my heirs get a similar benefit if I were to write, draw, compose, etc. something similarly valuable."
The crucial difference is that if I make use if your house I deny it to you. My gain is your loss. If I sing a song you wrote, you may never know: my gain does nothing to you.
The only conflict comes in opportunity cost: if I release a song on CD at the same time as you do, then I quite possibly deprive you of some sales.
So I think the creator of a work should be allowed to reap the financial rewards, or at least the bulk of them, and I think the system of granting an exclusive right to the creator does this well.
Then again, after a while a creative work seeps into society's culture. New works are inspired by or refer to older ones, and having that public domain is very important.
So if on the one hand the pubic domain is important to keep creativity going, and for the artistic healh of society, and on the other restriction of rights is important if individual people are going to be able to make a living out of being creative, a balance needs to be struck.
The system of giving the creator an exclusive licence to exploit his creation for a limited time does that. The key for me is that it should be for a limited time. Why should an old author be able to be paid for work he did as a young man? I get this year's salary for this year's work, next year I have to work again. Giving the author ten or twenty years to turn his work into cash seems entirely reasonable to me - any more is excessive.
You notice that in the more tangible world, patents last a lot less time than copyrights do.
Re: intellectual property
"I'm looking at it from the other end to "Shakespeare's copyright was owned by X'; instead, my house will continue to benefit my heirs in some way after I'm dead, and their heirs, and so on. So why shouldn't my heirs get a similar benefit if I were to write, draw, compose, etc. something similarly valuable."
The crucial difference is that if I make use if your house I deny it to you. My gain is your loss. If I sing a song you wrote, you may never know: my gain does nothing to you.
The only conflict comes in opportunity cost: if I release a song on CD at the same time as you do, then I quite possibly deprive you of some sales.
So I think the creator of a work should be allowed to reap the financial rewards, or at least the bulk of them, and I think the system of granting an exclusive right to the creator does this well.
Then again, after a while a creative work seeps into society's culture. New works are inspired by or refer to older ones, and having that public domain is very important.
So if on the one hand the pubic domain is important to keep creativity going, and for the artistic healh of society, and on the other restriction of rights is important if individual people are going to be able to make a living out of being creative, a balance needs to be struck.
The system of giving the creator an exclusive licence to exploit his creation for a limited time does that. The key for me is that it should be for a limited time. Why should an old author be able to be paid for work he did as a young man? I get this year's salary for this year's work, next year I have to work again. Giving the author ten or twenty years to turn his work into cash seems entirely reasonable to me - any more is excessive.
You notice that in the more tangible world, patents last a lot less time than copyrights do.