4 ms·

Everyone is bringing up the case of providing royalties to the descendants of the author. I wonder how common that is, and whether it ever motivates an author

Everyone is bringing up the case of providing royalties to the descendants of the author. I wonder how common that is, and whether it ever motivates an author to create work they otherwise would not (which is the purpose of the copyright, to incentivize people to create). Do royalties add up to something meaningful for the estate of authors in 1% of the case? 0.1% 0.01%? And, just as importantly (perhaps more so), do authors take this into account when they are creating?

mikeash 12y ago
I think you have to consider the opposite question as well: would authors consider the situation with their heirs if copyright expired with the author? My guess is that most don't consider it now, but that could easily change if you enshrined it in law and horror stories got passed around of Joe Schmoe Author who died young and left a destitute family. However, the entire question of how copyright incentivizes creation is extremely murky and there seems to be roughly zero hard data on it, so that could be totally wrong.
- claudius 12y ago
  On the other hand, Joe Plumber can just as easily die young and leave a destitute family. Does that mean that we have to make a law that all clients of plumbers have to make annual payments to their plumbers and their descendants for up to 70 years after the plumber’s death?
  - simonh 12y ago
    When a plumber does a job, they get paid for it in full immediately. When an author writes a book, the income comes in a trickle over an extended (but in theory fixed) time period. If a plumber and an author were to die young, the Plumber's family have already benefited in full from the results of work the plumber did before death, because payment in full was made immediately when the work was done. What you are arguing for is that the author's family should not benefit in full from the work the author did in life. Why is that?
  - mikeash 12y ago
    Only if the clients were going to make those annual payments anyway. Consider the scenario in which a plumber does a job, then dies before he gets paid. Should that invalidate your debt, or should you still pay what you owe to the plumber's estate? It seems obvious that it's the second one.

mikeash 12y ago

I think you have to consider the opposite question as well: would authors consider the situation with their heirs if copyright expired with the author? My guess is that most don't consider it now, but that could easily change if you enshrined it in law and horror stories got passed around of Joe Schmoe Author who died young and left a destitute family. However, the entire question of how copyright incentivizes creation is extremely murky and there seems to be roughly zero hard data on it, so that could be totally wrong.

claudius 12y ago
On the other hand, Joe Plumber can just as easily die young and leave a destitute family. Does that mean that we have to make a law that all clients of plumbers have to make annual payments to their plumbers and their descendants for up to 70 years after the plumber’s death?
- simonh 12y ago
  When a plumber does a job, they get paid for it in full immediately. When an author writes a book, the income comes in a trickle over an extended (but in theory fixed) time period. If a plumber and an author were to die young, the Plumber's family have already benefited in full from the results of work the plumber did before death, because payment in full was made immediately when the work was done. What you are arguing for is that the author's family should not benefit in full from the work the author did in life. Why is that?
- mikeash 12y ago
  Only if the clients were going to make those annual payments anyway. Consider the scenario in which a plumber does a job, then dies before he gets paid. Should that invalidate your debt, or should you still pay what you owe to the plumber's estate? It seems obvious that it's the second one.