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Message: <blockquote data-quote="prosfilaes" data-source="post: 7690039" data-attributes="member: 40166">But real estate is the only usual type of property (that comes to mind at least) that is taxed for mere existence. Real estate is not passively yours; it can and will be taken from you unless you actively maintain your hold on it. I think there's an interesting comparison to the copyright issue; even on some types of property, possession is not passively eternal.A tax model for copyright duration has been batted about in some forums I'm on. It has basically the opposite goals of the stuff we've been arguing about here; Disney gets to keep Winnie the Pooh as long as they can keep paying increasingly usurious taxes on it, but all the little stuff gets put into the public domain.One of the thoughts that has shaped how I view copyright is my grandfather, who had streaks of a know-it-all pontificator (it must run in the family), wrote the newsletters for his Veterans of Foreign Wars branch for many years. Those works will be in copyright until most of the veterans of current wars are dead. Should his branch want to print a work including older newsletters, or put a sample, some or all online, they would have to hunt down his heirs. Even knowing what I know as part of the family, I'd have to consult an attorney; I'm sure that alone would sink the idea for an organization much richer in manpower then money. So the current copyright law has "protected" my grandfather's works until everyone who cares about them is dead. Same thing for huge numbers of authors; there will never be a point where I can dig out the science fiction magazines I read in my youth and legally post the unanthologized stories without chasing down heirs and making payments far more then they're worth to me. I would have to live to 85 to do so, even if the author got run over the day the story was published. It seems quite possible that there are stories in fairly major magazines that will leave copyright in 2019 that have nobody alive who has read them; sacrificed so that the Mouse and Pooh may walk hand in hand for a few more years.</blockquote>

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