Mark Helprin’s Op Ed piece in this past Sunday’s New York Times, A Great Idea Lives Forever. Shouldn’t Its Copyright?, raises issues of intellectual property and inheritance rights that strike close to home. Like real estate or other tangible properties, Helprin claims that copyrighted works are real and as part of the estate of the author, should be passable from generation to generation.
Helprin claims that the writers of the US Constitution gave us the ability to stretch royalty payments off into some hypothetical event horizon with the phrase “for limited times.” Currently, a copyrighted work can be kept out of the public domain is 70 years. With our increasing life spans, that just isn’t enough. For example, at 56 I am at the exact midpoint of my life. If my father had written a cash-generating work when I was in my 20’s, by the time I reach 90 I would have to find gainful employment all over again.
But Helprin isn’t just concerned with his own solvency during his twilight years; he is thinking about his generations yet unborn. Helprin writes:
“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.”
I don’t currently own any intellectual property, but would like to acquire some. However, if Helprin could also arrange to make all perpetual copyrights retroactive, I might have some real claims. Family oral tradition informs me that language was invented by a distant ancestor, for the sake of possible future legal filings, let’s call him Blob Bechman:
Blob: Eureka! I’ve just created and copyrighted language!
Mog: What?
Blob: I’m sorry. You can’t say that without paying me a royalty.
Mog: But…
Blob: No. You can’t say that either.
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