Following the wise advice of Andrew Carnegie's Gospel of Wealth (see EstateTax): perhaps an author, an artist, an inventor, a programmer, or any other person who creates intellectual property should be scorned if s/he dies before putting all that s/he has done into the public domain (barring untimely accidental death). Copyrights and patents thus expire when the artisan does. The proper disposition of intangible wealth becomes precisely the same as that of an industrialist's fortune: to benefit the world, rather than produce an unearned stream of income for selfish descendants.

(But how to handle corporate IPR? I don't know—any suggestions? Meanwhile, cf. TradingInGhosts (1 Oct 1999), BuildingToLast (23 Nov 2002), PublicDomain (13 Feb 2003), FreeLibrary (29 May 2003), AntientCommons (3 Nov 2003), MacaulayOnCopyright (27 Jan 2004), EstateTax (6 May 2005), ...)

TopicSociety - TopicEconomics - TopicJustice - 2005-05-27

(correlates: FreeTrope, FlaxenAphorisms, ArtificialScarcity, ...)