I don't understand the analogy. We don't continue to pay authors after we buy their book. We do pay construction companies again if we want a second house - even if the design is the same.

Probably floorplans would be a closer comparison - and I believe they are licensed IP?

>We do pay construction companies again if we want a second house - even if the design is the same.

You might pay the construction company again for the identical 2nd house, but you're not going to pay the architect again.

Why not? The US, for example, recognizes a copyright in architecture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_in_architecture_in_t...

Dépends. If the 2nd house location requires review by an architect because of ground issues or regulation. If contractual provisions require an architect fee. If small adjustments that may have structural impacts are needed. You won’t pay the same amount, but still something.

You're quibbling. That's really not at all the same as paying an architect to design an all-new building.

Not quibbling. That’s not the same order of magnitude but it’s real life. It happens and can be a significant part of revenue for the architect.

I believe the analogy is as follows:

Imagine that you've paid the construction company after it finished building your house. You then go and live in it. One year later you get an invoice because you're living in the house they built.

That's what doesn't happen and what (I think) GP means with indefinite royalties: the person who owns the house has to keep paying the company which built the house.

The problem with that analogy is of course that royalties are based off profits, but there are ways to consider a home to have its own sense of profit (like the Belgian legal term 'cadastral income':

> Cadastral income is not an actual income. It is a notional value that we determine for an immovable property (building or land). This corresponds to the average annual net rental income you would receive in 1975 for your leased out property.

).

not only that, is that the analogy includes a surprise invoice. Royalties are contract law.

A closer analogy would be rent. Why do we allow a builder to collect rent a year after building a house.

> We don't continue to pay authors after we buy their book.

Libraries certainly do in basically every country in the world apart from the US.

I'd go slightly further.

A rich author can retire, and not write any more books. From an encouraging creativity POV, copyright length should be set at about the amount of time it takes to create a followup.

But, as open source software, and most authors and musicians demonstrate. People will create without any financial incentive.

So ultimately copyright is there to allow an industry that can actually find and distribute these works.

For the record, I'm not suggesting that creators should be decently rewarded for their works.

That isn't the right analogy.

To start, royalties have nothing to do with copyright. They are simply an agreement between an author and a publisher. I give you the exclusive right to publish my book, and I get a cut of every sale.

Royalties extend far beyond creative fields. Any deal where someone gets a percentage share of the sale of a product or service on an ongoing basis is a "royalty". E.g. in manufacturing or even software.

any subscription service that doesn't deliver new value each day or month, like the Adobe suite(s)

In the case of Adobe, you're paying for continuous updates and their added cloud services (or other functionality which requires their servers). Also Adobe's subscription pricing (per-month) is significantly less than the retail cost for a one-time purchase of their software without future updates.

Meanwhile one does not pay for continuous updates to a particular novel or a movie. Even if they do pay for new installments in a series, they do so separately.

> Also Adobe's subscription pricing (per-month) is significantly less than the retail cost for a one-time purchase of their software without future updates.

And the per-second pricing is even less!

Adobe presumably also fixes bugs, so hopefully you are getting something better over time. I've in the past wore out a favorite book and since it was in print bought a new copy - and found the same typos that were in the previous copy.

I'm sure thats what they say you're paying for.

I suspect you're just paying a monopoly tax.