Death should be the limit, and 70 years for corporate owned assets.
You shouldn't get to make money just because your mom or dad was creative. I know that sucks if you die early and your kids are young.
I think that the 70 years thing is also to dis-incentivize killing the creator to cash in on his work a mere 10 years later. Though 70 years is overkill even in this regard, I doubt anyone would wait say, 20-30 years, for such a plan.
Re:Disney Open Source
by hiddenkrypt on Tuesday October 18, 2016 @11:21AM
(#12735326)
That may have been an argument in setting the date, but Disney was the real driver of it. The reason it's 70 years after the death of the creator is because Mickey Mouse was in danger of becoming public domain again, so they added years to the law.
I think you'd be hard pressed to find any instances of people committing murder for IP reasons.
There are two factors determining how much value a society can derive from the body of art created within: the amount and the distribution. (ignoring "quality" because it's unaffected by the following).
The quantity created and the distribution it gets are somewhat conflicting goals: If you maximize for distribution (all works are public domain), the amount that is created may be low because artists aren't rewarded financially / can't concentrate fully on their art etc.
Currently, the compromise is to protect a work of art for 70 years after the creator's death, assuming there are very few people who'd say "oh, I'd love to write the great american novel, but I fear my great-grandchildren won't be able to collect royalties on it, so I'll go be an investment banker instead".
Arguably, 70 years is too long to be optimal. Personally I'd say something from 10 to 20 years is probably enough, or maybe different terms for different categories like newspapers being protected for a week and movies for 30 years.