It’s always been curios to me that the author or inventor or artist doesn’t own the rights to their work for all time. Why do these things expire?
In: Other
On paper, the laws try to balance the right of the creator to be compensated for their original work and the right of the public to exercise their own creativity via derivative works. Eventually, the creator of a work will die. For a while, their descendants will be able to get some income from that work and the laws help to ensure that they will.
Imagine that someone who doesn’t hold the copyright to that work has an idea for something that uses an element from it. If the copyright doesn’t expire at some point, that person wouldn’t be able to profit from the idea and, romantic as it sounds, the culture wouldn’t be able to get richer from it.
Latest Answers