Calls for perpetual copyright have been widely criticized. Lawrence Lessig organized a community response to Helprin's editorial. Public Knowledge issued a response which argued that copyright expiration ultimately provides a net benefit to society. It distinguishes intellectual property rights from those associated with material goods; the latter "are scarce and rivalrous: cannot be created anew, and only a limited number of people can occupy and use a space at any one time. Copyrighted works are neither scarce nor rivalrous: books are created anew, by specific authors, and can be read by five million people as easily as by five dozen, depriving none of them, nor the author, of the ability to use the work." Critics state that copyright expiration does not deprive a creator's heirs of the right to continue to appreciate and use the works of that creator as though a government had legally confiscated their physical possessions after a set period of time. Society as a whole is granted the same right to appreciate and exploit the property that once was under the exclusive control of a single family or corporate entity. This wider potential for the creative exploitation of works formerly under the exclusive control of a copyright owner promotes learning. Public Knowledge and other critics wrote that existing copyright terms already provide more than sufficient compensation for creators of intellectual property. It has also been argued that copyright should not become a welfare system used to benefit remote descendants who happen to come into possession of a valuable copyright through the lottery of birth, and that society is a "quite important heir" to copyrighted works.