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djoldman ◴[] No.43577414[source]
I don't condone or endorse breaking any laws.

That said, trademark laws like life of the author + 95 years are absolutely absurd. The ONLY reason to have any law prohibiting unlicensed copying of intangible property is to incentivize the creation of intangible property. The reasoning being that if you don't allow people to exclude 3rd party copying, then the primary party will assumedly not receive compensation for their creation and they'll never create.

Even in the case where the above is assumed true, the length of time that a protection should be afforded should be no more than the length of time necessary to ensure that creators create.

There are approximately zero people who decide they'll create something if they're protected for 95 years after their death but won't if it's 94 years. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same for 1 year past death.

For that matter, this argument extends to other criminal penalties, but that's a whole other subject.

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jpc0 ◴[] No.43579392[source]
You are missing a bunch of edge cases, and the law is all about edge cases.

An artist who works professionally has family members, family members who are dependent on them.

If they pass young, become popular just before they pass and their extremely popular works are now public domain. Their family sees nothing from their work, that is absolutely being commercialized ( publishing and creation generally spawns two seperate copyrights).

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1. anhner ◴[] No.43579564[source]
If copyright law is reduced to say, 20 years from the date of creation (PLENTY of time for the author to make money), then it's irrelevant if he dies young or lives until 100.
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2. jpc0 ◴[] No.43588135[source]
There we stand in agreement. Current copyright law and how it is governed is horrible.

What most people propose is equally bad and will never get traction with lawmakers.

Returning to what came before makes a ton of sense. Just make it X number of years and let's debate X for a while to get a decent number.