Enough with this nonsense. A book isn't a family business, it's not the family home, it ain't the family farm, it's an artifact that you produced once, it makes no sense to inherit the right to copy it. We allow inheritance to exist because it creates social good by facilitating community continuity. And the best social good when it comes to copyright is to let it expire as soon as possible; let's be honest, "until the death of the author" is still eons longer than any author deserves. It shouldn't be more than 20 years, max.
The founders of the US intended copyright to last for 14 years, with the ability to renew for a single extra 14-year extension. Like patents, copyright was intended to expire quickly in order to serve the good of the public. Thank Disney for fucking that up for everyone. You have refuted your own argument.
This is really the core of the issue, all the stuff about what a world without copyright would be like is navel-gazing that will never happen.
But specifically a lot of us have an issue with the fact that beginning in the 20th century, copyright durations have been increasing so quickly that it's starting to look more like copyright is becoming permanent.
The founders were well aware of the negative societal effects of monopoly. We are well aware of them and suffering under several forms of monopoly today, many of which are enforced through copyright. The founders chose to grant a LIMITED and TEMPORARY monopoly to copyright holders, not an UNLIMITED and PERMANENT one, because of this. The eminently reasonable and middle of the road position is that we should reduce the duration of copyright, restoring it to its original intent. This corrects one of the general class of pro-monopoly errors we have made which have increased wealth inequality and damaged our society.
It is truly extraordinary how much damage Disney has done (with government as a willing collaborator) against the original intent of the founders and the will of the people.
We can agree 95 years is too long and also not want to abolish the whole system and let everyone use knowledge immediately without proper compensation.
Nor encorugae assassinations by having stuff go public domain immediately upon death.
A book is knowledge, knowledge can 100% be a family businesss to be continued. I don't see it as any different from a family restaurant protecting their recipes in an otherwise cutthroat industry.
The terms is too long as is, but I see no reason to not have any posthumous transfer period so the family can figure out what they want to do with their knowledge.
People have a secret but still share it while withholding some knowledge. They risk someone reverse engineering it, but it's still being monetized.
Whats the difference here? Have idea, share some of it, monetize it from peope who want to use it, later on it's a free for all or enough knowledge comes to easily reverse engineer it anyway.
^Just because an artist releases a work to the world, doesn't mean they have any natural rights to own what the culture does with it.
No natural right, no. But humans are greedy, tragedy of the commons, etc. So governments made copyright to protect those artists.
It's been, as usual, perverted by the people who least need that protection, but the idea is still sound. In a world of greed, give the creators time to be greedy so they can make a living off their own work. Then later on its a free for all.
Aside from the flaws in your analogy already pointed out to you, there is actually very little value in a secret recipe. A skilled cook will be able to reproduce something close enough just by seeing and tasting the result. The real value of a family restaurant is the pride in their legacy that gets them to actually stick to a recipe that gets that result instead of cutting corners in order to maximize profit.
