Copyright Should End With Death

Copyright protection of artistic creations (including books, music, visual art, etc…) should end with the death of the creator. Upon death, the work should immediately enter the public domain.

The main reason is because there is no compelling reason for it to extend past death. Copyright protection, and with it, exclusive marketing rights over the creation, is best justified as a means of incentivizing artistic creation. This protection gives creators a much better chance to monetize their work than they would have had without it, thereby providing means and/or encouragement for such creation. Once the author is dead though, they are not capable of enjoying the monetary benefits from this protection anymore, thus severely diminishing its incentivizing effect.

I say severely diminishing, not entirely eliminating, because some creators might like to secure the royalty money for their descendants after their death. But this consideration is only relevant when the creator is so old or sick that they foresee their, relatively imminent, demise. Otherwise, they will be around to receive the copyright-protected royalty stream, and will remain incentivized to continue creating. Nevertheless, it is possible that removing copyright protection after death might disincentivize old/sick creators, which should be considered a (small) negative of my proposal.

‘Now hold on’ a critic may object. ‘Taking away copyright protection upon death is like levying a large inheritance tax on the dead person’s assets. And I thought you were against such taxes!’ In response, I am indeed against inheritance taxes, but I consider the current proposal to be a fundamentally different beast. The reason inheritance taxes are bad is because they encourage old people to consume their accumulated capital for the purposes of consumption, as the tax will diminish their ability to pass on their capital assets to their loved ones after death. This results in a withdrawal of capital investment from the economy, which reduces wages and productivity. No such effect is present for the case of removing copyright protection upon death. In fact, there is reason to believe it would have the reverse effect. Knowing that their descendants wouldn’t be able to rely on post-death royalties, the creators might be encouraged to save and invest more of their pre-death royalties, and then leave a capital asset legacy to their descendants instead. This would result in an injection of capital investment into the economy, which would increase wages and productivity.

Besides this, there is the more obvious benefit of consumers getting much cheaper access to the creator’s works right after the creator’s death, rather than having to wait 50-70 years after the creator’s death to get the cheaper access. Plus, copyright of any kind is getting more and more difficult to enforce, so it makes sense for authorities to focus their enforcement resources on the much more important protection of living creator’s works, and to allow dead creator’s works to enter the public domain immediately.   

In sum, my proposal has three main benefits: cheaper access for consumers earlier, better focusing of enforcement resources, and the encouragement of capital accumulation. These are set against one small drawback: the potential disincentivizing of old/sick creators who believe they are near death. I would say that the benefits most definitely outweigh the costs, therefore, copyright protection should be removed following the creator’s death.