Copyright Without End, Amen

"What if, after you had paid the taxes on earnings with which you built a house, sales taxes on the materials, real-estate taxes during your life, and inheritance taxes at your death, the government would eventually commandeer it entirely?" asks Mark Helprin, an author who is a fellow at the Claremont Institute, in The New York Times. Mr. Helprin then goes on to make an argument that might cause some scholars' jaws to drop: If property ownership is permanent (at least in theory), then copyright should be, too.

What the author seeks, apparently, is the eradication of the public domain, which he considers financially unfair to copyright holders:

Were I tomorrow to write the great American novel (again?), 70 years after my death the rights to it, though taxed at inheritance, would be stripped from my children and grandchildren. To the claim that this provision strikes malefactors of great wealth, one might ask, first, where the heirs of Sylvia Plath berth their 200-foot yachts.

Of course, a literature professor might also ask whether it's more important for Sylvia Plath's heirs to own yachts or for scholars and students to have unrestricted access to the poet's work. In fact, American writers, academics, and lawmakers have been debating that point for much of the past century.

In 1906 when Congress considered a bill to keep items under copyright for 50 years after their creators had died, Mark Twain made an argument that Mr. Helprin echoes now: The 50-year term "would satisfy any reasonable author because it would take care of his children," Twain said, tongue firmly in cheek. "Let the grandchildren take care of themselves." –Brock Read

Update: It's no surprise that Lawrence Lessig, the Stanford University law professor and copyright guru, finds Mr. Helprin's argument less than convincing. Mr. Lessig has set up a wiki-style rebuttal to the New York Times opinion piece, and people have already flocked to the site to poke holes in Mr. Helprin's thesis. One particularly cogent point: "Physical property, such as real estate, is a finite resource that operates as a zero sum game. And the laws regarding physical property treat it as such. Intellectual works are abstract concepts and do not naturally operate as zero sum games."