You're right, there are holes. the problem is that there are lots of ways of making a living, and comparing them is apples and oranges.
In particualr, I think there's a big difference between living off money you received years ago on the one hand, and continuing to earn money for work you finished years ago on the other. If you create something and sell it you should get to keep the money, but copyright has a large element of having your cake and eating it.
In your example, one could say that the work he did in setting up the business was presumably (ignoring bubble effects etc) to create something worth £100m. But he's clear of it now, it's done and dusted. The government can't reasonably take the money back, but equally he can't jump back in 10 years later and say "I set this business up, you should be running it like this and give me the profits".
Actually, thinking about it this chap has probably created IP: most of the £100m profit is probably goodwill and brand value. What he's doing is saying "I have IP that I could make a profit out of licensing out, but actually I think I'll sell the rights now for a lump sum". Much like recording artists seem to do - sell the rights over their songs to a record company.
What is normally recognised in business is that such IP doesn't last long. Amortising it over 25 years is quite a long time to do it (and in fact new accounting principles are suggesting that you shouldn't assume any life at all, you should revalue it every year to see if it's still worth anything). To keep the value you need to keep pumping new effort in: marketing campaigns to keep the brand value going, new research and development to keep products worth buying, and so on.
With copyright, though, you don't have to do a thing. You can sit on your rights and collect royalties automatically through PRS and so on, or you can deny anyone the right to use your IP even though you've no use for it (compare trademarks, where you have to actively use them or lose them). The right to do so currently lasts far longer than normal business IP would be expected to last.
I don't think limiting the term of copyright to a few years is like taking back money from people, it's more saying "Right, what you've created is worth something. What it's worth to you is what you can do with it in the next X years. After that, it's open to everyone".
Ideally perhaps society would say to creative people "Well done for making that, here's what it's worth. What are you going to do next?" As no-one can tell in advance what a work is worth, though, we have to approximate.
Re: intellectual property
In particualr, I think there's a big difference between living off money you received years ago on the one hand, and continuing to earn money for work you finished years ago on the other. If you create something and sell it you should get to keep the money, but copyright has a large element of having your cake and eating it.
In your example, one could say that the work he did in setting up the business was presumably (ignoring bubble effects etc) to create something worth £100m. But he's clear of it now, it's done and dusted. The government can't reasonably take the money back, but equally he can't jump back in 10 years later and say "I set this business up, you should be running it like this and give me the profits".
Actually, thinking about it this chap has probably created IP: most of the £100m profit is probably goodwill and brand value. What he's doing is saying "I have IP that I could make a profit out of licensing out, but actually I think I'll sell the rights now for a lump sum". Much like recording artists seem to do - sell the rights over their songs to a record company.
What is normally recognised in business is that such IP doesn't last long. Amortising it over 25 years is quite a long time to do it (and in fact new accounting principles are suggesting that you shouldn't assume any life at all, you should revalue it every year to see if it's still worth anything). To keep the value you need to keep pumping new effort in: marketing campaigns to keep the brand value going, new research and development to keep products worth buying, and so on.
With copyright, though, you don't have to do a thing. You can sit on your rights and collect royalties automatically through PRS and so on, or you can deny anyone the right to use your IP even though you've no use for it (compare trademarks, where you have to actively use them or lose them). The right to do so currently lasts far longer than normal business IP would be expected to last.
I don't think limiting the term of copyright to a few years is like taking back money from people, it's more saying "Right, what you've created is worth something. What it's worth to you is what you can do with it in the next X years. After that, it's open to everyone".
Ideally perhaps society would say to creative people "Well done for making that, here's what it's worth. What are you going to do next?" As no-one can tell in advance what a work is worth, though, we have to approximate.
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