If copyright on a work expired immediately after death, would be that a bad or good idea?

Bigtech would hire hitmen to go after PhD students

Should be X years after publication, lifespan should not matter.

A person at age 200 (I mean in the future when they find anti-aging tech) should not be able to gatekeep the stuff they wrote when they were 25.

A person publishing a book at age 30 then dies next day in a car accident should not lose the right to pass on profits made from the book to his/her children.

Copyright should be fixed-length, fuck lifelong copyright, fuck "corporate personhood".

Also this length should be at most 25 years and 10-15 years is better. These 75+ year copyrights are total BS.
- 10-15 sounds pretty short tbh. It can take years to write a book, and then 10 years later a company can just make a movie out of it and doesn't have to pay you shit for it?
They shouldn't need to inherit anything wealth from their parents. We are playing wackamole instead of just building a better system than the current obviously flawed models that we all.... Inherited. Ironic
- Yeah why do I keep inheriting the sins of my forefathers. I didn't do shit.

https://rufuspollock.com/papers/optimal_copyright_term.pdf

Research by mathematician Rufus Pollock in 2009 pegged optimal copyright length at 15 years, regardless of time of authorial death. So if I copyrighted something at 30, I would lose the copyright automatically at 45, even if I lived to 90.

So glad to see another reference to this guy's work in the wild.
As an amusing side note, the original term of copyright in the first law that established it (the British Copyright Act of 1710) was a flat 14 years, with a mechanism that allowed you to apply for only one extension of an additional 14 years. So most things would be 14 years, and whatever select things were particularly valuable or important could have 28 years. Under Pollock's analysis this is just about the perfect possible system. So by sheer coincidence this is something that we got right the first time and ever since then we've been "correcting" it to be less and less optimal.
This estimate is also an overestimate according to the paper.
First, much creative endeavour builds upon the past and an extension of term may make it more difficult or costly do so. Were Shakespeare’s work still in copyright today it is likely that this would substantially restrict the widespread and beneficial adaptation and reuse that currently occurs. However we make no effort to incorporate this into our analysis despite its undoubted importance (it is simply too intractable from a theoretical and empirical perspective to be usefully addressed at present).
This means that the real number is significantly less than 15, maybe more like 12.
Whats the TL;DR on why?
I wish the abstract had information on what factor they're optimizing for when deriving the optimal length.

It should return to the original design: 14 years from creation, and then 14 more years if requested and paid for.

Could be incentive to murder content creators.

You should separate the art from the artist.
I cannot do it when the artist is using the money to hurt people.
Just give me a moment
Breaking news, popular book series enter public domain as the author was Luigied last night.
- Separate the art from the artist with extreme prejudice

Plot: a rival publisher hires a killer to murder a successful author over the copyright.

I was just thinking about that. If the copyright is tied to the author being alive, that’s essentially putting a huge target on your back. People have mysteriously died for much less than that.

I am in favour of that.

I'm all in favor of shortening copyright length, but it shouldn't be tied to a creator's lifespan. It's too variable, and it doesn't make sense for anything that more than one person worked on.

I think a reasonable compromise would be 20 years default, after which point you could apply for a 5 year extension twice. Extensions will only be granted if the work is still being made accessible, either new physical copies are being printed or digital distribution is available.

But I would also include a clause that if a work is no longer accessible, such as being pulled from streaming services, an online game being shut down, software not updated to be compatible with modern platforms, etc, copyright is considered to be in a weaker state where end users are permitted to pirate it for noncommercial purposes.

I would shorten the initial term to 15 years instead but keep everything else the same, if the author can't be bothered to even file for an extension then they probably aren't earning money from the thing anyway. See below for why 15.
- That's fine, the exact number isn't really important. I kind of went for an intentional highball to pitch this as a closer compromise to how long copyright currently lasts.

That is the BARE MINIMUM of reason.

There's no reason IN THE WORLD for any kind of idea of "intellectual property" to exist once the creator is dead.

NONE.

It doesn't benefit the creator in any way to have such a system where people can claim ownership of another's work after death. All that does is deny the living things that could help them in favor of some ridiculous notion that you're helping the dead; it's asinine.

Minor children of artists benefitting from their parents work is one possible reason. Like if an author had a five year old why shouldn't the kid get royalties if their parents is in an accident?
It should be short enough that the child of an artist shouldn't be benefitting for decades, but there are cases where an untimely death would screw over the artist's family and allow the publisher to make all the money themselves.
The current setup is awful, but there should be at least a period of time after their death for rights to be inherited that is no longer or possibly shorter, than a reasonable time frame like a decade or two.
- This highlights that we are fucked in the head how we take care of ourselves, kids shouldn't be made to struggle becsause of the economics of parents. Neither should adults. Neither should retirees.
  Neither should adults, but economics based survival is what we have until we all decide why the fuck don't we just cover the basics of a decent life, no strings at all, waste your life doing what you want or be the best version of yourself, getting us from financial from would just solve so many problems.
  Like needing copyright to secure financial gain/benefit.
  Especially for creative/cultural works that only have value because other humans went to to share an experience
- “Nope, the kid is fucked. We need public free access to his father’s work ASAP.”
  I’m just being silly and taking the counter view to the extreme
- Like if an author had a five year old why shouldn’t the kid get royalties if their parents is in an accident?
  Like I said, all it does is prioritize the desires of the dead over the needs of the living. It's not justified.
Why should the benefits of my labor not pass on to my children just because it's a creative work?
- Because the benefits of labour don't pass on to your children, period?
  Maybe there's something out there I'm unaware of, but I don't understand the implication in your question.

Would have made all of Disney and Universal's IP buy-ups over the last decade+ a lot more interesting.

Headline from the past: Sadly, our beloved Walt Disney died yesterday after apparent suicide by 20 knife stabs to the back.

Ahhhh, that sure does explain why it exists, lol.

Well, we need to figure out how to kill companies first. They own the copyright in the situations you would care about.

So, it kind of already works that way. If the company dies, no one is gonna come after you. Unless it was sold of to another company, that is.

I think it's a great idea. Their descendants can inherit any proceeds from their life, rather than the ownership of the copyright.

I think I'd prefer a flat timespan rather than a lifetime-dependent one. The two flaws I see with the lifetime-dependent one are:
It can give wildly different opportunity to the rightsholder depending on how old they are and what their random life circumstances happen to be. A 20-year-old author could have 80 years' hold on their work whereas a 70-year-old one could have just 10. Unless Truck-kun randomly gets involved and sends that 20-year-old author into another world a day after he published.
It creates an incentive to assassinate popular authors.
It also creates complexity for work-for-hire situations where a corporation owns a copyright, though that's already a special case so one could continue handling it separately.

Bad. Copyright needs to be reformed, but this would be more likely to put money into the hands of rich people and corporations.

Imagine that I've just released a book series that's more popular than Harry Potter and LOTR combined, and I get hit by a bus. What's then stopping Disney or Warner Brothers etc from producing a set of movies with all the associated merch, and making a shit load of money, with not a penny going to my family? Not even giving them the opportunity to make enough to live on, never mind getting rich?

In that situation, depending on the contract, the publisher could even pulp the existing books and release identical copies without paying me or my family.

It should be held by government and every company that makes money out of copyrighted material should pay it in taxes and authors should get money from government as long as they live. It can be steam % so 70% author 30% government. When author dies government gets 50% children gets 50% after that grand children 30% and then back to 0%.

This way each country would benefit from their brightest minds now it's just foreign corporations benefit from everything.

Honestly we need to make inheritance an obsolete custom. Keep personal items, but wealth should not be transferred
- I don't know what is your understanding of wealth but money is not wealth and never should be treated as one. Wealth are material things. Profit sharing is not wealth transfer it's just paycheck.
  Wealth are audio records, movie records, books. Those are now inherited and monetized by corporations. What is benefit for you by living in country that had many famous musicians ? If you live in country that have oil you benefit from it.
Hmm. Interesting idea.
- It's not idea, it's how art worked since ancient times. Artists were always sponsored by kings and noble people and this art is now in museums, somehow along the way we put art in hands of corporations, and money in hands of idiots and leave countries with nothing. We have countries with ministry of culture that posses no culture. We pay taxes and get nothing back.

Copyright is only here because of capitalism, omce we get rid of this toxic system, copyright is simply bot required to better humanity

I very much agree that copyright is a tool to protect the wealth of the rich.
But I think the idea of restricting access to knowledge in order to benefit a select few predates capitalism. The ancient Chinese state iron and salt monopoly is the first example that comes to mind, some Greek mystery cults probably count too, even if we don't think of that knowledge as beneficial now.
I'd guess it's a common feature of strongly elite-dominated societies, of which capitalism is just the current model.
I know this is irrelevant, but what system do you prefer. Not asking in bad faith, I agree, just curious what your alternative is because I don't know what mine would be.
- An alternative i want is star trek style beyond scarsity system where people tend to do what they want. if it actually works in relatity is another question but i would like to try that

Define "death".

For a book? There is very much an argument that the listed author would make sense. But... good authors tend to have ten or twenty solid pages of thanking their editors and beta readers and researchers and partners and so forth for very good reason. And while they tend to not get royalties (outside of the partner), those associated with the publisher sort of do in the sense of getting a continued paycheck in part because of their demonstrated "value".

But let's bump that up to a movie. Is the screenwriter the creator? What about a case where there were multiple "script doctors" brought in to punch up a premise? The director? The lead actor? The ridiculously good performance by the supporting actress that held every scene together? The people in the editing bay who turned "I want this scene to pop more" into actionable edits? The VFX team who did the entirety of every action sequence and half the dialogue because the costumes weren't finalized until a week before it hit theatres?

And so forth. The time where works tended to have a singular creator was... closer to millennia ago than not. Even a lot of the "Willy Shakespeare was a fraud" is rooted in a misunderstanding of what editing and collaboration is.

I don't know what a good model is. I like the concept of a fixed period with the idea that if you are continuing to use an IP then people will pay for the new stuff. Then I look at all the cash-in horror slop because Winnie the Pooh became public domain and... does that help ANYBODY?

My mind keeps coming back to the end of Sebastien de Castell's Spellslinger series. He left a LOT of loose ends (in part because of the themes of the story he was telling which would be spoilers to elaborate on) but did a quick epilogue sequence of two characters reuniting. And then he wrote an afterward where he talked about how (paraphrasing) that is just one possible ending and that it doesn't actually matter what he wrote because, after the years we all spent reading about Kellen and Reichis and Ferius and Nephenia and Shalla... they aren't just his characters. They are OUR characters too. And what he can see as a potential future isn't necessarily what we see. I forget if he explicitly said writing fanfiction was a good idea but... that is kind of the reality of it.

And in that sense? I increasingly come down on: Let the companies and creators keep their IPs. Only they get to profit. But also heavily strengthen fair use so long as there is no direct profit (we do need to understand the idea of ad revenue for a youtube channel or a website or something). Fill up AO3 with ALL the good slop but keep it out of theatres unless they are gonna file the mormon off and Fifty Shades of Grey it. Beyond that? Whatever.

And just for those wondering what those themes were: ::: spoiler Spellslinger series spoilers A huge part of the series, and de Castell's writing in general, is the idea that the viewpoint character isn't the main character. Yeah, Kellen Argos is a really cool con-man with limited casting capability who does heroic stuff. But there is little he can do against the horrors of the world other than to inspire, and force the hand of, those who can. And, in turn, he is inspired by those he loves. Kellen isn't Frodo or Aragorn. He is Eowyn and Faramir. :::

Limit copyright to 5 years.

Abolish patents entirely.

Greed and selfishness are unacceptable foundations for any society.

Rich bastards would still fuck it up.
The guy who invented insulin made it free for all rather then patenting it because it’s literally a life saving medication.
How’s that going in the US?
- Those insulin are still available at $25 a vial, no prescription, no insursnce. But those are not the newer fast-acting ones and (I'm not an expert on this) are supposedly less effective than the more modern insulin.

Anything to shorten it sounds good to me.

My idea has been that copyright shouldn't be automatic. It needs to be registered, and renewed every 2 to 5 years. And each renewal costs twice what the last one did. Start off super cheep maybe even free. Then $5 for the first renewal, doubling each time. Eventually it becomes too expensive to bother; Even for billion dollar franchises.

Anything to shorten it sounds good to me.
So say we all.
In the U.S., a few years ago, GOP Senator Josh Hawley, one of the speakers who helped incite the January 6th insurrection, introduced a bill to make the term of Copyright 28 years with optionally one renewal for an additional 28 years.
And, it's so weird to me that I could agree with him on anything really.
Mind you, he introduced that bill in an effort to punish Disney for being too "woke". And the bill didn't go anywhere. But I'd let the MAGA nuts use such a bill as an opportunity to crow for a few minutes about their victory over strong woman protagonists or whatever if it got us more reasonable copyright terms. (And honestly that's too long, but it's a hell of a lot better than the bullshit we have now.)
Also, fuck Sonny Bono.
- Steamboat Willie was released almost a hundred years ago but only got into public domain last year. 95 years of copyright is overkill.
Those fees won't pay for the cost of registering all these copyrights. Currently the government doesn't need to get involved until there's a suit, and then they get court fees. Everybody registering their first 2 to 5 years of copyright would be a massive burden.
Also, at every 5 years you're only up to a few hundred bucks at 40 years. Definitely needs to be on the lower side.
- Registering doesn't need to cost much. It could be largely automated.
  And the government will get plenty of money later on from the big ticket copyrights.
  And the government isn't supposed to be profitable in itself any way. So that doesn't matter much.
  And yah, personally I'd root for for a year or two. But to get this system in place, that would likely have to be compromised on. 5 years is the long edge of worth doing at all.

(From a US perspective) It would be good. As an analog, take a look at patents, the surge in 3d printer tech is because the patents expired. The idea is a "limited exclusivity", the permanent nature it has become is stagnating, and only there to benefit the corporate rather than personal nature that the system was designed for.

As with all economics, the answer is probably complicated. Death incentives aren't great. Brands partially have value because they can be kept consistent, and some iconic characters have kept a relatively consistent identity across multiple authors. Allowing a free-for-all too early might make those kinds of characters harder to develop?

My favorite variation on this (which probably also has complicated consequences) is that government should, after say ~10 years, get the chance to buy any particular copyright/patent for a sum (based on its profitability, say), and should they choose to buy then the work enters the public domain early. No idea what horrors this hides.

Without doing much research on the topic I'd say time limit it to x years after publication.

Bad idea unless it gets forced under public domain with no derivative patents possible

Copywriting is typically fine for a company though I thought

Copyright, even if signed away to a company, is still timed off the original creator's lifespan.
- Not in the U.S.. For work-for-hire, It's 95 years after publication. For works owned originally by a lump of flesh, blood, and bone, it's 70 years after the author's death.