Rather than advocating against "evil superrich" we should focus on digitization. It should be a law that any piece sold, insured or stored has to digitized in high resolution.
Indeed.
"At New York’s Museum of Modern Art, 24 of 1,221 works by Pablo Picasso in the institution’s permanent collection can currently be seen by visitors. Just one of California conceptual artist Ed Ruscha’s 145 pieces is on view. Surrealist Joan Miró? Nine out of 156 works. ... The vast majority of art belonging to the world’s top art institutions (and in many countries, their taxpayers) is at any time hidden from public view in temperature-controlled, darkened, and meticulously organised storage facilities. Overall percentages paint an even more dramatic picture: the Tate shows about 20% of its permanent collection. The Louvre shows 8%, the Guggenheim a lowly 3%..."
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150123-7-masterpieces-you...
I know in Moscow there is an interesting museum called the Pushkin museum which mostly consists of replicas of the worlds famous art. It was actually kinda enjoyable having for instance all the renaissance sculptures of note in one place
Governments already demand that you give up your intellectual property after a number of years, yet the same concept hasn't been applied to physical property yet.
But as painful as it would be to lose it, if you had verifiable proof that the documents the code is printed on were legally yours, you shouldn't be obligated by outside parties to handle them in any particular way.
You give that example of hyperbole, but I believe that is quite reasonable. I am of the opinion that if you want your code to have copyright protection, you must have a copy of the source code either available to the public or placed in an escrow service to be made public when the copyright expires.
Copyright is an agreement between authors and society. In exchange for limited protection of the work, the work is not hidden from the public, and can therefore be built upon once the work is in public domain. If the author is not allowing the work to eventually enter the public domain, then the author's side of the agreement is not being upheld, and they should not have copyright protection either.
With code, "[..]sold, insured or stored[...]" are the three verbs under consideration. Selling and insuring likely require somebody to look at it, so copyright is somewhat relevant(although you can make them sign an NDA). But that "stored" verb would mean that writing code for your personal or company use with no intention to ever show it to the public is also illegal. So you wouldn't just waive some benefits, but would be fined or jailed if you don't file a copy with the government.
At best, they are avoiding taxes with the art. At worst, they are laundering money or hiding treasures plundered from places like Iraq behind a curtain of shell companies and noxious Swiss regulations.