inheritance has nothing to do with copyright. Financial assets are not monopolies. Copyright is only a valuable asset because of the granted monopoly on copying/distribution.
Therefore, to reduce the value copyright has (as it currently does seem to have too much), reducing the granted terms should be sufficient. Like patents, a good 20 years seems like a sufficiently long time to recover cost of production, while letting people who are currently alive to produce derivatives of it afterwards.
If I spend $20m on building a house or creating a computer game, why house can be inherited indefinitely and creative work is not? I would have a monopoly on this specific building and on this specific creative work, but anyone is free to build/create anything else.
If J. Rowling created Harry Potter universe, why her family can't own it indefinitely? We somehow accept this notion for other assets, but treat copyright differently.
p.s. creative work is more valuable as it has something that money can't buy (authenticity, taste, sincerity, etc)
The framing isn't charitable. People want to weaken copyright because it is a government granted monopoly. There are negative economic effects (i.e., for everyone) to government granted monopolies. Other assets generally aren't government granted monopolies.
The negative economic effects of monopolies stem from a lack of competition leading to insufficient supply, but there's no lack of competition or insufficient supply of copyrighted works. Even if copyright were indefinite like other property rights, it wouldn't stymie the supply of new works, but rather expand investment due to raising the future expected profit.
they are not fungible, unlike houses.
Also, if you could copy a house like you could copy digital goods (i would download a car), i am also going to claim that the "monopoly" on the house must also be shortened.
Because copying houses is inherently expensive, while copying creative works is inherently free. To make creative works act like houses you have to add artificial cost to copying, which is a tax the public has to pay for the entire duration of copyright.
If the public has to pay a tax they should get something out of it, and that something is the incentive for authors to create new works. But does copyright have to be for life + 70 in order to incentivize new works? Clearly not! It could be much shorter while still providing plenty of incentive.
You also don't have to rent/buy a place to live, but I wouldn't want to live a life without a roof over my head or access to creative works of my culture. When you accept that access to media is a necessity (and people today do treat it as such, just try finding someone who doesn't listen to music, watch videos, read books...), you clearly see that having copyright is a decision made by the state that results in wealth transfer from every citizen to authors and publishers.
Those authors/publishers do provide value, so it's not necessarily a bad thing, but as with every market intervention, the specifics need to be carefully considered.
Why don't the builders get infinite royalties on use of that house? Wouldn't that also be reasonable. At least as long as it stands. I don't think that would be unfair comparison.
They do, some build to rent indefinitely or sell to other who rent out the property.
But copyright restricts others from building on top of previous works. Can her family forever sue anyone into poverty for naming a wizard “Harry”? Does that even make sense in 100 years from now when most people have never heard of Harry Potter anymore?
For your building analogy, it would be more like the builders created your building there, and now you own it. It has a red roof and blue shutters. And also the government passed a law that said nobody else can own a building ever again with a red roof and blue shutters, otherwise you, the owner of the idea of those colors, can take possession of every new building like that.