Copyright: Rockefellers take the Elevator, Writers, Seals get the Shaft?
Interesting opinion piece in the New York Times here by Mark Helprin about how copyright laws discriminate against writers. And I quote: "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. And,
second, why, when such a stiff penalty is not applied to the owners of
Rockefeller Center or Wal-Mart, it is brought to bear against legions
of harmless drudges who, other than a handful of literary plutocrats
(manufacturers, really), are destined by the nature of things to be no
more financially secure than a seal in the Central Park Zoo."
