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Comment by clon | Hacker News Reader

Lazy rich child A's dad built a house, which he and his children can benefit from for marginal costs (maintenance, taxes).

Lazy rich child B's dad wrote some music, which he and his children can benefit from for marginal costs (publishing, taxes).

I know - in one case it is a physical object, and in the other - immaterial. But both houses and music can offer enjoyment and can be benefited from financially, and thus have inherent value.

I am not sure if the notion of private property should depend on the continued existence of the original creator. When do we start requisitioning houses for the hommage of the original owner?

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> in one case it is a physical object, and in the other - immaterial.

In one case or you live in the house or I live in the house. In the other, you can listen to music and other million people or 1 billion at the same time.

Physical ownership is required because it is a limit resource. Copyright is not limited by any physic constraint.

So, I agree that ownership has nothing to do with the original creator. But copyright has nothing to do with a house ownership but a legal monopoly created by the state with some goals in mind that may require or probably not to extend it beyond a few years.

The house is recouped by society though inheritance and property tax. You keep the physical object, but it has to be continuously paid for by generations to remain private.

If keeping things copyrighted had a continuous cost then copyright holders would be incentivized to release things to public sooner.

1. Immaterial rights are not material rights

2. Private property is a false analogy

3. Copyright was established for two reasons: a) to let the author (and only the author) to profit from their immaterial work. b) to facilitate the free exchange of ideas

That is kind of the point - why is the dad who wields a pencil going to have to leave his children in a worse position than a dad who wielded a hammer.

The dad who wields a pencil is paid for his art, and he can use that money to buy a house.

Nothing stopping from renting out the house in your lifetime, only to leave it for your children once you cease to be.

Let's say "a dad who wielded a hammer" is a dad who builds and sells furniture.

Are his children entitled to every piece of furniture this "dad who wielded a hammer" ever built? As it was already mentioned "The dad who wields a pencil" can just as easily buy a house and leave it to his children.

The problem with immaterial things is that they can be trivially copied. In this sense copyright law is more akin to patents: you get protection and possiblity to profit off of your immaterial work.

In my country, inheritance of more than 2 million € is taxed ~50% (20% tax for 500 000 - 1M€).

>>Copyright inheritance is not taxed in any way.

Michael Jackson's estate begs to differ: IRS argues that the pop star’s name and likeness should have been valued at $161 million; that would be down from 2013, when it valued those rights at $434 million. https://www.wsj.com/articles/michaels-jacksons-estate-faces-...

Well, as I said, in my country it's not the case.

Copyright and all forms of intellectual property absolutely are subject to estate and inheritance tax, in the US. As one random google result says [1].

https://www.weinstocklaw.com/files/newsletters-04.pdf

Your analogy makes more sense (to me) if Lazy rich child B was left original recordings of their father's music. This, like a house, would be something material that they could sell one time. Conversely, if child A was left the rights to blueprints for how to build said house. That would be something immaterial that they could license or sell the rights to.

People don't usually make a living by building houses for themselves and their family.

Lazy child C's dad worked at a factory making drills as a salaried employee. After he retired/died, the lazy child had to get over their laziness to make a living.

Why doesn't the factory have to keep paying the dad's wage to his family for decades after he died?

This comparison is intellectually lazy or maybe even dishonest.

One difference between a house and a recording is marginal cost of replication/reproduction: not zero in case of a house, effectively zero in case of a recording.

Without a government granted monopoly on copies, the marginal financial value of a copy is close to zero in all but the most exotic cases.

With a government granted monopoly comes a real cost: enforcement, and loss of social value. How does one justify that?

Authors' descendants do not have a $DEITY granted eternal right to exploit the author's work, and rightly so. This is why "intellectual property" can be more accurately described as "intellectual rights".

On the other hand, the society does not have a $DEITY granted right to benefit from the creations of an author, material or immaterial.

The fact that in one case the creation is easily reproducible with almost zero marginal costs, speaks not of the inherent value of the original creation (that was presumably undisputed at the author's lifetime), but is mere opportunistic thinking from the perspective of the society.

How would you vote against that if you were on your deathbed? You can burn your house, but you cannot undo music or literature.

I come from a former Russian occupied country that has maybe left me a bit overprotective of private property. The notion of requisitioning property "for the good of The People" is deeply repulsive - a lot of families here, including mine, actually were liberated from their house, farm, land and personal freedoms by the "liberators". So maybe after some decades, I should leave more room for "The People".

The main point against that stance is that no creation happens in a vacuum. Every cultural product is a collective creation to a certain extent. Reduction of copyright terms is simply giving back to the society's pool of creations that is the public domain.

This doesnt create many opportunities for abuse like a monopoly of the state on the creations. Public domain is, by virtue of being freely reproducible, free.

Freely sharing copies after a reasonably short state protected monopoly has expired does not equal stealing.

P.S. I do feel for the difficult bit of history in your native country's past. Lots of friends and family from a small republic "liberated" 3 times the last 80 years, consecutively by the USSR, Nazi Germany, and again the USSR...

What we are saying is, that you get to keep the original creation.

There is nothing stopping the children of the musician from continuing to listen to that music.

But nothing also stops other people from listening to it either if they lose exclusive rights to it.

Nobody is liberated from anything, as they still can listen to that music as much as they want.

Copying something is not theft. The original remains intact.

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