>So the wife that supported the author can't profit off their assets? The author can't pass on this to children? They certainly can. Certain assets are depreci

>So the wife that supported the author can't profit off their assets? The author can't pass on this to children? They certainly can. Certain assets are depreciating with time though, like copyrightable works. They only have value because of the law in the first place, and the law sets the timeline for that value to depreciate to zero. Perhaps supporting a writer shouldn't be a career/investment opportunity though. >Should we do the same thing for other property like land and money? Like, with taxes on inheritance? We should and we do. And arguably, we don't do it enough. The question is: are the authors that much better off from the way the laws are now? Is the society overall? If we tell the authors that, in fact, their grandchildren won't be able to profit off of their books, what kind of literature shall we lose? We already have the answer, since the draconian copyright laws are pretty recent. Great works of literature have been written before such laws existed, and introduction of these laws hardly improved writing overall (or the plight of the author, for that matter).