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Eternal Copyright: a Modest Proposal
New submitter SpockLogic writes "The Telegraphs has a tongue in cheek essay in praise of eternal copyright by the founder of an online games company. Quoting: 'Imagine you're a new parent at 30 years old and you've just published a bestselling new novel. Under the current system, if you lived to 70 years old and your descendants all had children at the age of 30, the copyright in your book – and thus the proceeds – would provide for your children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren. But what, I ask, about your great-great-great-grandchildren? What do they get? How can our laws be so heartless as to deny them the benefit of your hard work in the name of some do-gooding concept as the "public good," simply because they were born a mere century and a half after the book was written? After all, when you wrote your book, it sprung from your mind fully-formed, without requiring any inspiration from other creative works – you owe nothing at all to the public. And what would the public do with your book, even if they had it? Most likely, they'd just make it worse.'"
If it's called "A Modest Proposal", that means it is satire:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_modest_proposal
Admittedly, it seems like every new class of student that reads it has some in it that thing Swift actually wanted to eat babies...
If Disney was to renew their Mickey Mouse copyright this year, it would cost them $19,342,813,113,834,066,795,298,816.