Also any medical people who treated you or your parents.
Teaching and Medicine are skilled jobs that took years to learn. It is hardly fair that you and your heirs get to profit from some teacher's or Doctor's work without them getting a share.
You think yourself superior to people who "piece together code from StackOverflow"? You're not. They will prove it to you with machine learning AI.
What? An heirloom by definition is something passed down in a family for generations.
If I created Mickey Mouse for example, why does my future offspring have to give away its rights, perhaps to someone that may use the character in nefarious ways for profit?
I fail to see the logic of having a free-for-all on an artist's work just because they're potentially deceased and therefore let the highest-bidder receive profits instead of the original creator's family?
Maybe if you paint a picture on a canvas you could call that physical canvas a heirloom. The copyrights associated with it have nothing to do with that. Anyone can produce a copy.
> If I created Mickey Mouse for example, why does my future offspring have to give away its rights
> I fail to see the logic of having a free-for-all on an artist's work
It's called our public domain rights. Our culture is ours and it belongs to everyone. That's the natural way of things. Public domain is the default.
We willingly chose to pretend that we can't copy and distribute your art infinitely at negligble cost so you could make some money and be rewarded for your efforts. We sure as hell didn't do that so you could have functionally infinite rent seeking all the way down to your grand children.
It's clear that you're not keeping up your public domain side of the bargain. Why should we keep up our end? We can just stop pretending that your art is artificially scarce. Suddenly, it ceases to be. Just like that.
Again, my argument doesn't retain to anything related to engineering and the like (eg. aviation software or an entire aircraft). I'm talking about stylized artwork for the sake of art... I'm saying very specific characters and such that would only be [legally] bought in the future purely as an investment, not to iterate or improve upon because the new owners are so passionate about any sort of paintings/drawings/etc.
Like the many characters Disney based their works on?
https://nyunews.com/opinion/2019/10/01/disney-public-domain-...
Those also belong in the public domain after enough time passes. Maybe one day a corporation will make billions off of the characters you created too.
Plus on average you're so far removed from about... the 3rd generation of descendants that it doesn't really matter.
Nobody should leave their descendants that much wealth that:
1. they don't need to be productive themselves
2. that the initial wealth has a higher than 1% chance to pass to grandkids
Each generation needs to earn their bread.
Baby boomers kind of didn't and look at what people are saying now.