[KevWind]

Originally Posted by ombudsman

Sorry for misunderstanding. Right, I don't think BMI or ASCAP themselves own the rights to any songs.

Copyrights that are not otherwise assigned before death of course become part of the estate, and like everyone else songwriters leave their property to their family, or other people or organizations they choose. For many creative people, it may be the main or only asset left to their families, and after their death that asset may also stand as collateral for loans or part of a licensing contract that was used for expenses during their life.

My point being it's their business what they do with it while the copyright stands, just like it's anyone else's business who they leave their earthly possessions to. I find it offensive that people openly talk about just arbitrarily taking away their property upon their demise as if there was some justification for creating a(nother) double standard that treats artists worse than everybody else. (Understood that this was not your argument KevWind.) Let's not pretend this is about "fairness"; that kind of talk of picking over a fresh corpse is transparently about greed, it's no better than the first person on the scene sliding the watch off the wrist of a body found in the street because they "won't miss it", and is unbecoming of polite conversation.

Unlike the results of other kinds of labor, intellectual property is automatically communized after an arbitary amount of time. I have always thought this was an outrageous policy , but the deal is that it's supposed to be fully protected (in particular ways spelled out by copyright law) until the expiration. I wish there was some legal means to challenge copyright expiration on the grounds that society is not holding up it's end of the deal by respecting the work for the full allotment of time before it claims it's pound of flesh.

Mostly agree. For those who may not know there have been at least two improvements on that horizon. One being the extension from 50 to 70 years after death and the other was the change in Tax Law several years ago, where do the efforts the NSAI, the tax base for the sale of a songwriters catalog is now treated as a capital gain instead of it formerly being income. (for as long as capital gains remain lower than the highest income bracket)