I think you meant to be funny, but seriously, why do you choose to subsidize his music habits? Opt out already.
Some of us have to buy it so that the people who produce the product actually get some decent money for it. That others choose to live off our contributions to society for free, is merely unfortunate.
is Canonicals increasing love for that trojan patent-horse called Mono. I still use Ubuntu, but one of the first things I do with an install is strip out all of the de Icaza taint; I suspect one day the infection will be dug in too deep to cure.
I agree there! That's my biggest issue with Ubuntu too. None of the other criticisms of Ubuntu have ever been anything I particularly cared about. Even the building off Debian doesn't seem to be a bad problem as at least it gets more of the world using.deb rather than.rpm.;) But Mono... Yeah - yeugh!
That's an interesting comment. Thanks. Regarding you staying with Ubuntu for want of a better option (I also prefer KDE to Gnome, btw), if you're providing the hardware yourself and thus can choose stuff you know will be well supported, have you considered just using Debian with a KDE environment? Or is there too much missing?
Actually, have we established that something actually is going on? Maybe I've been too busy to notice the tides of distro-politics, but asking why people are turning on Ubuntu is the first I've heard of people turning on Ubuntu. So is there somewhere else that would back this up and show it's not just someone muck-raking?
That's just wordplay. As it stands now, Linux on the desktop is never going to happen, is a valid statement. Things can change, but the only sliver of "well, it *might* happen" requires significant changes that are not historically justified.
It's not "wordplay". You can't say something was "never going to happen" whilst the thing is still going on. Every year, the number of Linux desktops has grown. You can argue the liklihood of where it's going to go from here, but it can hardly be said with confidence that Linux desktops are "never going to happen".
This is the crux of the discussion. 1% may be "huge" if you gathered all these people together in one room, but in the wide world they are wholly insignificant.
And the point I was very clear on is that you may say 1% is a small percentage but in real terms that presents a very large number of people, more than adequate to support not merely one desktop environment but, as we have seen, several! And it is the real terms that matter. If there is a sufficient community around Linux that it can continue to develop, improve and draw in new members to that community, then there remains a possibility for Linux to gain larger shares of the overall desktop usage.
That's why Linux doesn't have much in the way of commercial software or direct hardware support, which is what is meant by "Linux on the desktop".
Hardware gets better year after year. If you want to put together a Linux machine, I can't think of any area of functionality you can't source modern, supported hardware for it. I invite you to name an area if you can. In regards to software, it depends what you're after. Desktop Publishing and art / photo editing are the weakest areas. Other than that, the only big omissions are bespoke software written for a company's specific purposes. That's obviously a problem for entrenched systems, but not a problem for new systems, meaning you can adopt Linux moving forward. And more significantly, with applications increasingly being web-based, it's becoming less of a problem year on year.
The OP made the case that Linux on the desktop was "never going to happen" and I don't see anything you've said as showing that it wont happen.
It's vibrant as a niche platform, but it's not a major player in terms of driving innovation or any aspect whatsoever of the consumer/desktop market, which pretty well backs up SocietyoftheFist's post.
You originally said that inherited copyrights should be taxed in the same way that inherited money is. I pointed out, by example of The Silmarilion, that it wasn't possible to know what value inherited copyrights have at the time of inheritence and, indeed, that the value could be affected by the effort the inheritor put into the work or not. If the value of an inheritance is indeterminate, it makes it difficult to tax. The same is true of things that are already published - just because a novel was released two years before you inherited the rights and sold well in those two years, doesn't mean that it's likely to sell as well in the years after you inherit it. Thus all you can reasonably do is tax the earnings that come from that inheritance. Which is in fact, how things are normally done. Hopefully that clarifies what I'm saying.
What with your double standards? It's not ok to accumulate money until it's all owned but copyrights that never expire (it's been 40 years now) is ok with you? Having a bit of trouble understanding you..
I don't consider it a double standard. You can be walking on a beam across a ravine and it's not a double standard to say I don't want to veer left or veer right. I'm in favour of copyright, but think that in many cases, the term lengths could be reduced and that there is also a case for them not being associated with time of death (although the latter would add some complex situations to do with publication dates, etc.) I'm not in favour of "taxing inherited copyrights as with money" because I don't think it is possible to do so fairly.
It's not that nobody sane would make a positive comment about a Microsoft product. The problem is that/. has a hight level of insane positive comments about MS products (and Apple too, but sometimes it seems that insanity is a requirement for buying Apple).
I honestly don't see that. My impression is that Slashdot has a general anti-MS bias. Even TFS here ends with a "sadly" indicating that we are expected to feel disappointed that MS has triumphed. It is slightly sad as I would like to see Linux continue to do well. It seems to be doing so in large parts of South America and China so I don't think it's in any danger. Still, the point is that I see more Linux fanboyism here than I do MS fanboyism where you're likely to be modded down for a stance. I use fanboyism to describe an attitude of support, regardless of facts. It exists on both sides. But I don't think its at such levels where any post that is positive about MS or its products should be accused of bias, which seems to be the purport of the OP.
I call shenanigans, or whatever the hell that is in German.
Shenaniganzensneakenbluff or something, probably. Yes - I can see a number of reasons why they might go back to MS, with MS Office being one of the biggest to re-training being another. But printer support seems pretty dubious to me. I'm guessing it was just a snarky comment or bit of humour that someone ran with.I've certainly had trouble getting printers to work in Linux, even modern ones where I've ended up hunting down some PPD file (or whatever they're called) online, but in a large environment where you have professional IT support and consistent machines, I would expect them to be able to roll out some solution en masse. Perhaps they had a lot of problems and this was just a sample of them. But still, they ought to be able to use Linux if they want to. Even Open Office, for all my praise of MS Office 2010, is still a usable piece of software. I expect we'll learn a bit more about the reasons in time.
Nonsense. If a piece of copyright has been making x amount of income for the last x years you can tell very well.
You know you're absolutely right! When Christopher Tolkien inherited the manuscripts for The Silmarillion, it had never been published and had made zero money in the last x years. Consequently, we could reliably predict that it went on to make zero amount of money in the years afterwards. And as to published works! Well, we all know very well that their sales are consistent and predictable year on year. Their sales are never influenced by popular review, re-releases, sequels, adaptations into film and television, et al.
Well migrations are usually a hassle. They might have some XP licences knocking around - I obviously can't comment as to what definitely is the most cost effective approach without knowing what they have, when licences expire, etc. But faced with two options, one of which is preferable for a number of reasons, and knowing that you're going to end up there anyway, I wouldn't want to do two extra migrations beyond what I had to do without a very good reason. But hey, it's not me going to be doing it...;)
Not to speak of that sovereign countries should use sovereign software
where is the risk analysis for a backdoor/firmware trojan in IT products coming from certain countries? ( US, PRC, Taiwan etc.. )
Actually, MS will allow governments to inspect the source code. It's not much good for spotting bugs, as with Open Source's "thousand eyes", but it is useful in allowing governments to check for deliberate sabotage.
Does Windows 7 really offer much in the way of management that you can't get with XP? Can you give some examples?
Well, apart from the general smoothness of the experience, uninstalling software is easier. Configuring network connections is easier. I love the way that the built in Networking in Windows 7 presents me with a list of my configured VPNs and just lets me click to activate one. The grouping of like windows and mini-previews is surprisingly useful. The quick search in the Start menu and the incorporation of recent files under their program headings in the Start menu is also far tidier than XP's old recent documents. I like the Libraries in Windows 7 very much. It lets me get closer to the way I can use Soft Links to directories in Linux, but in a really convenient way handled by the GUI. I also approve of the distinguishing between actions at Administrator level and normal user level. I guess that the last one falls under the heading of managing the environment. There are undoubtedly other things I've forgotten about, but this is what I can immediately think of off the top of my head that is actually functionally different to XP as opposed to simply look and feel.
Of course one of the big things is MS Office 2010. It's a joy to use. If it weren't for that, I'd likely use my Windows 7 installation much less than I actually do as I'm perfectly happy bouncing around in my KDE environment. I suspect MS Office was one of the factors in the change over for the Germans. Open Office isn't anywhere near as nice to use.
Microsoft staff + vendors posting as AC in 3...2...1...
Just as people who work on Open Office or Ubuntu or Django or anything else that isn't produced by Microsoft will also post on Slashdot, sometimes logged in, sometimes as AC. What's the problem? You're implying that anyone saying something positive about MS or their software must be doing so because they have a financial interest. That isn't so. For example, if I had a choice between using MS Excel 2010 or Open Office, I would certainly choose Excel. If I have a choice between running Apache or IIS, I will certainly choose Apache (unless I need some particular integration with IIS by other software). Many of us here discuss things as they are, not because we have some absurd allegiance.
I think it's very likely you are right. I actually quite like Windows 7 and it's my secondary desktop O/S. But all other things being equal it doesn't offer me much more than KDE and in some regards quite a bit less. But MS Office. Now that is lovely and when I just want to write documentation or whatever, I'll reboot into Windows 7 just so I can use it. Sure I have OO on my Linux install and I store all my documents on a server so I can access them just as conveniently from either. But I would far, far prefer to spend a couple of hours tapping away in Office 2010, then in OO. The new KOffice looks better than OO, imo. But I haven't used it in anger yet and it's certainly not as feature complete.
Evidence of what? I don't see any non-personal claims in SocietyoftheFist's post other than "desktop Linux was never going to happen" (which so far is quite correct).
Firstly, the OP made the comment that something was "never going to happen". That's only a valid statement if everything is done and dusted and desktop Linux has died a death. So the GP's response showing that people do use Linux on the desktop is a valid counter to that. I do too. I don't have figures for how many people out there use KDE or Gnome but there has to be quite a lot. Estimating adoption is hard, but conservative estimates say 1% of desktop users are using Linux. That is millions of Linux users on the desktop. As a proportion, it is small. But as a community of people necessary to keep Linux on the desktop alive and healthy, it is huge.
Secondly, the GP's point was not that his experience was proof for something, which you have set it up as, but merely showing that he has an equal but opposite anecdote showing that the OP's evidence of personal experience isn't statistically useful.
In the world of advertising, where it prevents claims that so and so endorses your product whthout his permission, it's a good thing. If it prevents you writing fiction involving real people, especially real, DEAD people, it's not "good" at all.
I don't know. It reminds me of Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett where the king hires bards and playrights to tell bad stories about the witches so that people start hating them. I don't think you would be impressed if someone you didn't know suddenly wrote a novel in which your father was one of the characters and started putting words in their mouths and making them act a certain way. You might dislike that very much.
Tolkein was/is a public figure, feels like there isn't much to stand on here especially if its fiction and portrayed as such. Seems like this fall well within the fair use realm.
Tolkien was not a "public figure". He wasn't a politician or other social leader. He didn't make a living by direct interaction with the public at large. He was an author. That you have seen his name on book covers doesn't mean he was a public figure.
Christopher Tolkien is an exception in that he actually did do something with his inheritance. He also would have done very well just with his Fathers unpublished manuscripts which I presume he could have copyrighted after editing them and releasing.
He's also an exception in the success of the unpublished manuscripts. Most people who inherited some manuscripts might make a modicum of money off them. And why not? Do we want to reward only people who create short-term and immediately profitable things by saying only such people are allowed to pass on the full benefit to their children? If Christopher Tolkien is to be excused the large rewards for the amount of time and effort and thought he put into it, shouldn't others also be excused their lesser efforts for the vastly smaller amounts of money they make from inherited manuscripts other than those by JRR?
So if your father spends his whole life working his ass off in a coal mine to put food in his children's mouths, then dies of black lung disease when you're fourteen, his savings should all go to the state and your mom should have to go door-to-door looking for a job, huh?
In the UK this pretty much happens already.. You have death tax (haha even in death there is no escape) and then any inheritance has a huge tax on it too.
Ineritance tax is not a case of taking everything someone owned for the state. Don't exaggerate. Additionally, if you didn't have a progressive inheritance tax, that would be one less thing standing in the way of a permanent owning class of dynasties that accumulated and accumulated until everything was owned.
This is why you give all your assets to your offspring before you die.
Check out Capital Gains tax.
I think inherited copyrights should be taxed the same way money is in my opinion.
Inheritied copyrights are a potential wealth, not an actual wealth. If someone gives you a house, we can look at its market price and say that you have received X amount of wealth. If someone leaves you copyright on a load of old manuscripts, well we don't know whether they'll sell for tens of thousands or if they'll earn you nothing. Unless you're assigning courts the power to see the future, or like playing the lottery, then you can't "tax copyrights the same way money is". If you're, for example, Christopher Tolkien and you put a lot of work into editing and preparing those manuscripts and they do sell well, then guess what - you are then taxed on your earnings. So taxation has taken place. But so has someone benefiting from what their father has left them and from their own efforts in realising that potential.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you meant to be funny, but seriously, why do you choose to subsidize his music habits? Opt out already.
Some of us have to buy it so that the people who produce the product actually get some decent money for it. That others choose to live off our contributions to society for free, is merely unfortunate.
Heh. Your post was fantastic. And you know what? So was mine! :)
is Canonicals increasing love for that trojan patent-horse called Mono. I still use Ubuntu, but one of the first things I do with an install is strip out all of the de Icaza taint; I suspect one day the infection will be dug in too deep to cure.
I agree there! That's my biggest issue with Ubuntu too. None of the other criticisms of Ubuntu have ever been anything I particularly cared about. Even the building off Debian doesn't seem to be a bad problem as at least it gets more of the world using .deb rather than .rpm. ;) But Mono... Yeah - yeugh!
Yeah, I was born in canada yet would be illegible for this contest.
Ineligible.
Heh. Is that a reference to what I think it's a reference to? "I can bring down your distro with just five words". ;)
That's an interesting comment. Thanks. Regarding you staying with Ubuntu for want of a better option (I also prefer KDE to Gnome, btw), if you're providing the hardware yourself and thus can choose stuff you know will be well supported, have you considered just using Debian with a KDE environment? Or is there too much missing?
And some distros tweak it more than others unfortunately.
Actually, have we established that something actually is going on? Maybe I've been too busy to notice the tides of distro-politics, but asking why people are turning on Ubuntu is the first I've heard of people turning on Ubuntu. So is there somewhere else that would back this up and show it's not just someone muck-raking?
That's just wordplay. As it stands now, Linux on the desktop is never going to happen, is a valid statement. Things can change, but the only sliver of "well, it *might* happen" requires significant changes that are not historically justified.
It's not "wordplay". You can't say something was "never going to happen" whilst the thing is still going on. Every year, the number of Linux desktops has grown. You can argue the liklihood of where it's going to go from here, but it can hardly be said with confidence that Linux desktops are "never going to happen".
This is the crux of the discussion. 1% may be "huge" if you gathered all these people together in one room, but in the wide world they are wholly insignificant.
And the point I was very clear on is that you may say 1% is a small percentage but in real terms that presents a very large number of people, more than adequate to support not merely one desktop environment but, as we have seen, several! And it is the real terms that matter. If there is a sufficient community around Linux that it can continue to develop, improve and draw in new members to that community, then there remains a possibility for Linux to gain larger shares of the overall desktop usage.
That's why Linux doesn't have much in the way of commercial software or direct hardware support, which is what is meant by "Linux on the desktop".
Hardware gets better year after year. If you want to put together a Linux machine, I can't think of any area of functionality you can't source modern, supported hardware for it. I invite you to name an area if you can. In regards to software, it depends what you're after. Desktop Publishing and art / photo editing are the weakest areas. Other than that, the only big omissions are bespoke software written for a company's specific purposes. That's obviously a problem for entrenched systems, but not a problem for new systems, meaning you can adopt Linux moving forward. And more significantly, with applications increasingly being web-based, it's becoming less of a problem year on year.
The OP made the case that Linux on the desktop was "never going to happen" and I don't see anything you've said as showing that it wont happen.
It's vibrant as a niche platform, but it's not a major player in terms of driving innovation or any aspect whatsoever of the consumer/desktop market, which pretty well backs up SocietyoftheFist's post.
Having a bit of trouble understanding you..
You originally said that inherited copyrights should be taxed in the same way that inherited money is. I pointed out, by example of The Silmarilion, that it wasn't possible to know what value inherited copyrights have at the time of inheritence and, indeed, that the value could be affected by the effort the inheritor put into the work or not. If the value of an inheritance is indeterminate, it makes it difficult to tax. The same is true of things that are already published - just because a novel was released two years before you inherited the rights and sold well in those two years, doesn't mean that it's likely to sell as well in the years after you inherit it. Thus all you can reasonably do is tax the earnings that come from that inheritance. Which is in fact, how things are normally done. Hopefully that clarifies what I'm saying.
What with your double standards? It's not ok to accumulate money until it's all owned but copyrights that never expire (it's been 40 years now) is ok with you? Having a bit of trouble understanding you..
I don't consider it a double standard. You can be walking on a beam across a ravine and it's not a double standard to say I don't want to veer left or veer right. I'm in favour of copyright, but think that in many cases, the term lengths could be reduced and that there is also a case for them not being associated with time of death (although the latter would add some complex situations to do with publication dates, etc.) I'm not in favour of "taxing inherited copyrights as with money" because I don't think it is possible to do so fairly.
It's not that nobody sane would make a positive comment about a Microsoft product. The problem is that /. has a hight level of insane positive comments about MS products (and Apple too, but sometimes it seems that insanity is a requirement for buying Apple).
I honestly don't see that. My impression is that Slashdot has a general anti-MS bias. Even TFS here ends with a "sadly" indicating that we are expected to feel disappointed that MS has triumphed. It is slightly sad as I would like to see Linux continue to do well. It seems to be doing so in large parts of South America and China so I don't think it's in any danger. Still, the point is that I see more Linux fanboyism here than I do MS fanboyism where you're likely to be modded down for a stance. I use fanboyism to describe an attitude of support, regardless of facts. It exists on both sides. But I don't think its at such levels where any post that is positive about MS or its products should be accused of bias, which seems to be the purport of the OP.
I call shenanigans, or whatever the hell that is in German.
Shenaniganzensneakenbluff or something, probably. Yes - I can see a number of reasons why they might go back to MS, with MS Office being one of the biggest to re-training being another. But printer support seems pretty dubious to me. I'm guessing it was just a snarky comment or bit of humour that someone ran with .I've certainly had trouble getting printers to work in Linux, even modern ones where I've ended up hunting down some PPD file (or whatever they're called) online, but in a large environment where you have professional IT support and consistent machines, I would expect them to be able to roll out some solution en masse. Perhaps they had a lot of problems and this was just a sample of them. But still, they ought to be able to use Linux if they want to. Even Open Office, for all my praise of MS Office 2010, is still a usable piece of software. I expect we'll learn a bit more about the reasons in time.
Tolkien was not a "public figure".
By the dictionary definition he is; by the legal definition he is (was) not.
And the relevant definition in a law suit is the latter. ;)
Nonsense. If a piece of copyright has been making x amount of income for the last x years you can tell very well.
You know you're absolutely right! When Christopher Tolkien inherited the manuscripts for The Silmarillion, it had never been published and had made zero money in the last x years. Consequently, we could reliably predict that it went on to make zero amount of money in the years afterwards. And as to published works! Well, we all know very well that their sales are consistent and predictable year on year. Their sales are never influenced by popular review, re-releases, sequels, adaptations into film and television, et al.
Well migrations are usually a hassle. They might have some XP licences knocking around - I obviously can't comment as to what definitely is the most cost effective approach without knowing what they have, when licences expire, etc. But faced with two options, one of which is preferable for a number of reasons, and knowing that you're going to end up there anyway, I wouldn't want to do two extra migrations beyond what I had to do without a very good reason. But hey, it's not me going to be doing it... ;)
They should have used something more viable...
That's uh, um, very, um... WHAT??!?!?!?!?!?
and many other Foreign Offices around the world.
Not to speak of that sovereign countries should use sovereign software
where is the risk analysis for a backdoor/firmware trojan in IT products coming from certain countries? ( US, PRC, Taiwan etc.. )
Actually, MS will allow governments to inspect the source code. It's not much good for spotting bugs, as with Open Source's "thousand eyes", but it is useful in allowing governments to check for deliberate sabotage.
Does Windows 7 really offer much in the way of management that you can't get with XP? Can you give some examples?
Well, apart from the general smoothness of the experience, uninstalling software is easier. Configuring network connections is easier. I love the way that the built in Networking in Windows 7 presents me with a list of my configured VPNs and just lets me click to activate one. The grouping of like windows and mini-previews is surprisingly useful. The quick search in the Start menu and the incorporation of recent files under their program headings in the Start menu is also far tidier than XP's old recent documents. I like the Libraries in Windows 7 very much. It lets me get closer to the way I can use Soft Links to directories in Linux, but in a really convenient way handled by the GUI. I also approve of the distinguishing between actions at Administrator level and normal user level. I guess that the last one falls under the heading of managing the environment. There are undoubtedly other things I've forgotten about, but this is what I can immediately think of off the top of my head that is actually functionally different to XP as opposed to simply look and feel.
Of course one of the big things is MS Office 2010. It's a joy to use. If it weren't for that, I'd likely use my Windows 7 installation much less than I actually do as I'm perfectly happy bouncing around in my KDE environment. I suspect MS Office was one of the factors in the change over for the Germans. Open Office isn't anywhere near as nice to use.
Microsoft staff + vendors posting as AC in 3...2...1...
Just as people who work on Open Office or Ubuntu or Django or anything else that isn't produced by Microsoft will also post on Slashdot, sometimes logged in, sometimes as AC. What's the problem? You're implying that anyone saying something positive about MS or their software must be doing so because they have a financial interest. That isn't so. For example, if I had a choice between using MS Excel 2010 or Open Office, I would certainly choose Excel. If I have a choice between running Apache or IIS, I will certainly choose Apache (unless I need some particular integration with IIS by other software). Many of us here discuss things as they are, not because we have some absurd allegiance.
I think it's very likely you are right. I actually quite like Windows 7 and it's my secondary desktop O/S. But all other things being equal it doesn't offer me much more than KDE and in some regards quite a bit less. But MS Office. Now that is lovely and when I just want to write documentation or whatever, I'll reboot into Windows 7 just so I can use it. Sure I have OO on my Linux install and I store all my documents on a server so I can access them just as conveniently from either. But I would far, far prefer to spend a couple of hours tapping away in Office 2010, then in OO. The new KOffice looks better than OO, imo. But I haven't used it in anger yet and it's certainly not as feature complete.
Evidence of what? I don't see any non-personal claims in SocietyoftheFist's post other than "desktop Linux was never going to happen" (which so far is quite correct).
Firstly, the OP made the comment that something was "never going to happen". That's only a valid statement if everything is done and dusted and desktop Linux has died a death. So the GP's response showing that people do use Linux on the desktop is a valid counter to that. I do too. I don't have figures for how many people out there use KDE or Gnome but there has to be quite a lot. Estimating adoption is hard, but conservative estimates say 1% of desktop users are using Linux. That is millions of Linux users on the desktop. As a proportion, it is small. But as a community of people necessary to keep Linux on the desktop alive and healthy, it is huge.
Secondly, the GP's point was not that his experience was proof for something, which you have set it up as, but merely showing that he has an equal but opposite anecdote showing that the OP's evidence of personal experience isn't statistically useful.
In the world of advertising, where it prevents claims that so and so endorses your product whthout his permission, it's a good thing. If it prevents you writing fiction involving real people, especially real, DEAD people, it's not "good" at all.
I don't know. It reminds me of Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett where the king hires bards and playrights to tell bad stories about the witches so that people start hating them. I don't think you would be impressed if someone you didn't know suddenly wrote a novel in which your father was one of the characters and started putting words in their mouths and making them act a certain way. You might dislike that very much.
Tolkein was/is a public figure, feels like there isn't much to stand on here especially if its fiction and portrayed as such. Seems like this fall well within the fair use realm.
Tolkien was not a "public figure". He wasn't a politician or other social leader. He didn't make a living by direct interaction with the public at large. He was an author. That you have seen his name on book covers doesn't mean he was a public figure.
Christopher Tolkien is an exception in that he actually did do something with his inheritance. He also would have done very well just with his Fathers unpublished manuscripts which I presume he could have copyrighted after editing them and releasing.
He's also an exception in the success of the unpublished manuscripts. Most people who inherited some manuscripts might make a modicum of money off them. And why not? Do we want to reward only people who create short-term and immediately profitable things by saying only such people are allowed to pass on the full benefit to their children? If Christopher Tolkien is to be excused the large rewards for the amount of time and effort and thought he put into it, shouldn't others also be excused their lesser efforts for the vastly smaller amounts of money they make from inherited manuscripts other than those by JRR?
In the UK this pretty much happens already.. You have death tax (haha even in death there is no escape) and then any inheritance has a huge tax on it too.
Ineritance tax is not a case of taking everything someone owned for the state. Don't exaggerate. Additionally, if you didn't have a progressive inheritance tax, that would be one less thing standing in the way of a permanent owning class of dynasties that accumulated and accumulated until everything was owned.
This is why you give all your assets to your offspring before you die.
Check out Capital Gains tax.
I think inherited copyrights should be taxed the same way money is in my opinion.
Inheritied copyrights are a potential wealth, not an actual wealth. If someone gives you a house, we can look at its market price and say that you have received X amount of wealth. If someone leaves you copyright on a load of old manuscripts, well we don't know whether they'll sell for tens of thousands or if they'll earn you nothing. Unless you're assigning courts the power to see the future, or like playing the lottery, then you can't "tax copyrights the same way money is". If you're, for example, Christopher Tolkien and you put a lot of work into editing and preparing those manuscripts and they do sell well, then guess what - you are then taxed on your earnings. So taxation has taken place. But so has someone benefiting from what their father has left them and from their own efforts in realising that potential.