Against perpetual copyright

From Lessig Wiki

A few points to get this started:

1) Mr. Helprin is mistaken in the government's ability to strip him of his "intellectual property". Like all property, once freely given or shared, it belongs to the person to whom it was given. Presumably Mr. Helprin's ideas are so unique that no other living entity could have independently created them in their present form, and so their safety from seizure can be assured if only Mr. Helprin were to refrain from sharing them with others in the first place.

2) As Mr. Helprin states, "We have different words for art and idea because they are two different things." Surely then, he should see that we have different legal status for tangible property and intangible property precisely because they are two different things.

3) Further, he writes:

"The flow and proportion of the elements of a work of art, its subtle engineering, even its surface glosses, combine substance and style indistinguishably in a creation for which the right of property is natural and becoming."

Surfaces glosses? At this point, it seems to me that Mr. Helprin is confusing a physical painting, from the image depicted in the painting. No one could feasibly claim that the property rights the owner of a particular painting enjoys should be stripped away after a period of time, nor is this reflected in the copyright law. Instead, it is the exclusive right to reproduce, to modify, and to derive from that image new works that expires for the copyright holder.