Because artists have family, and if that brilliant writer wrote a book a year before they died of cancer or old age or a stupid accident, I'm okay with his family getting the proceeds. The world can wait a decade or two. A generation or two, different matter.
Also, and here's the dark part: if it's just 20 years, rather than "life" or "life plus X", people WILL start getting assassinated just to get their copyright to expire faster.
> Also, and here's the dark part: if it's just 20 years, rather than "life" or "life plus X", people WILL start getting assassinated just to get their copyright to expire faster.
Nah, the assasination would happen if it's `min(life, 20 years)` or `life + 20 years`; there's no reason to hire hitmen if it's simply `20 years`, regardless of whether or not the author is alive.
At least in the USA, the legal justification is to promote progress in science and useful arts, not to give someone/some entity a monopoly on use an idea. If someone writes a great book and then up and dies (John Kennedy Toole, "A Confederacy of Dunces") I'm not sure that giving any entity a copyright promotes any kind of progress in science or useful arts. Toole can't write another book.
Yes, this is legalistic, but just giving some entity ownership over representations of anthropomorphized rodents doesn't really make a lot of sense either.
If I die suddenly do I have some right to demand that my employer/customer pays my family some amount of money.
You are probably right that that's the intent but if so make it a fixed 20 years.
Your second paragraph seems to be saying the opposite of what you want it to?
Also, and here's the dark part: if it's just 20 years, rather than "life" or "life plus X", people WILL start getting assassinated just to get their copyright to expire faster.