This feels very similar to the "think about the children" lines when people want to keep their privacy online. It's stupidly specific, and if you have to twist this far to find an example, I think you have nothing.
David Bowie died two days after his final album was released. Are the people who worked on it, put it out, somehow less entitled to make money because he died?
It doesn't feel overly specific when the topic is copyright after death to think about how people die.
There's two solutions here, either they are co-creators and then all the creators aren't dead or they aren't and they were never going to receive additional revenue beyond their work anyway.
Either way, that's not working as an argument against stopping copyright when the authors are dead.
There's a publisher, who did boring things like pay the cover artist, buy the plastic and vinyl, pay the printer. The record came out, they had a bunch of copies, and then two days later Bowie died. If they're exclusive right to sell they music disappears, they overpaid Bowie.
The cost of publishing a music online after it's been produced is close to zero nowadays. I could see how that argument was relevant 30 years ago though.
And the initial costs are similar to any other non-copyright related work, paid per service.
Because the costs to publish online are zero there would be innumerable other copies of the work posted, meaning the initial outlay for the studio time etc cannot be recouped.
Yep! The costs to press vinyl and print sleeves and market the work _are_ paid upfront. So cutting off the revenue stream unexpectedly means no more expensive projects for old artists
I don't think its _stupidly_ specific to point out that people should still be able to sell things when nearing death. But 10/15 years should be more than enough. The amount of years is beyond parody at this point.
But it's a plausible situation (terminal/severe illnesses are not that rare) and a relevant argument against the "expire on death" copyright proposal. Laws often need to deal with "stupidly specific" cases because they do happen in the real world.
