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If IP Is Property, Where Is the Property Tax?
nweaver writes "In a response to the LA Times editorial on copyright which we discussed a week ago, the paper published a response arguing: 'If Intellectual Property is actually property, why isn't it covered by a property tax?' If copyright maintenance involved paying a fee and registration, this would keep Mickey Mouse safely protected by copyright, while ensuring that works that are no longer economically relevant to the copyright holder pass into the public domain, where the residual social value can serve the real purpose of copyright: to enhance the progress of science and useful arts. Disclaimer: the author is my father."
Real property (real estate) has property tax, but no one taxes you for personal property.
I am sitting in a chair, no one is going to TAX me on the fact that I own some chair (personal property).
Weak argument.
Its easy why it isn't, almost everyone owns some piece of IP. For example, this comment, it could be considered IP, now should I have to pay essentially a fee on that? No. Or what about a program I wrote, should I have to pay a tax to license it under say the GPL? What really needs to happen, is lower copyright terms and the abolishment of the "forever copyright" and also, what in the world does the government do with all their copyright fees?
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
For example, the kid who wrote Chocolate Rain has a potential revenue stream from the YouTube advert. You can bet he wouldn't have guessed that he would get almost 15 million views - so he would automatically have ceeded his potential copyright into the public domain. Someone else who saw the potential could have stepped in, linked it to all the right sites, and took all the advertising revenue for themselves.
This is an issue which will resolve itself just as soon as the internet becomes the main (legitimate) medium for entertainment distribution. At this point all the money currently spent on old media advertising follows the shows to YouTube or whereever they are being distributed. This creates, in effect, a democratic marketplace which rewards creativity; which will allow viral video authors to generate a revenue stream and (if they wish) go mainstream. Well, that's the dream, anyway.. and at that point all the big copyright trolls can go fuck themselves as their precious content they horde will have become almost worthless.
I propose that the RIAA and MPAA and the BSA file the ridiculous figures they've been claiming all these years.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
"So after all this, you make my case for me. To end this stalemate, you must die..."
The whole problem with requiring an annual fee to maintain your copyright is that the little guy would get screwed. Many artists spend their whole life creating and virtually starving to death (because sales require promotion and promotion costs money), only to become successful at the end and their early work thereby becomes profitable. They could not afford to maintain their copyrights if fees where involved and then Mickey and friends could step in a utilize their work for nothing.
A better solution would be to only charge a copyright fee on copyrights held by corporations (i.e. created under a work for hire license or purchased from the artist). When the artist who created the work still holds the copyright (and has no contractual obligations to a company on the use of that work) the current system works fairly decently. Since a company's main priority is its bottom line, unprofitable works would be released into the public domain sooner, but the little guy would still be able to benefit from his / her individual work.
Technology is most abused by the very people it was created to help
That doesn't solve the problem addressed... people keeping copyright on things that are no longer economically viable to them.
Maybe require you to file official copyright claims on anything before you can defend it (automatically approved, but chalangeable) and then a small flat fee to maintain that copyright until you declare it public domain (a decision that you obviously can't recant) in addition to a percent of your income based on that copyright as property tax? Or maybe a tax on how much total you've made on that copyright, or some assessment of its current market value if you were to sell it (that'd be hard to do...) until you declare it public domain? (if the former, that'd certainly be an incentive to declare something public domain once you stopped really using it...)
The idea of property tax is that the owners of property owe something back to society. The idea goes back to feudalism when the land owners were feudal lords. Instead of(or in addition to) taxes, feudal lords could be called on to send knights into battle as a condition of their land ownership. If they couldn't fulfill the duty, the land would be taken away and given to someone who could...
The same idea could be applied to intellectual property. The owners of intellectual property should be required to give something back to society. As some other posters have pointed out, the problem becomes valuing the property. The easiest way to value intellectual property is by how much income it brings in to the owner.
By that measure, intellectual property is already taxed. The tax is simply paid through the corporate or individual income tax.
If you had super powers, would you use them for good, or for awesome?
That sounds similar in concept to a shotgun buy/sell (for corporate shares).
It sounds great in theory. In practice, however, it would be untenable. Linus would never be able to afford the property taxes on Linux, and as a result Microsoft with its billions in cash reserves would be able to buy it for a steal (unless of course Linus let it into the public domain, a decision I'm not even sure he could make.)
Linux is obviously an example, and perhaps a bad one. But a shotgun buy/sell system as you are proposing dramatically favors those with larger revenue streams and ready cash reserves.
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
The answer is easy: nothing. You're never required to pay the property tax. It's just that you lose your copyright if you don't pay. Since I don't really care about the value of my slashdot comments, I wouldn't pay and they'd lapse into the public domain.
That's exactly the point. Things like blog comments that have little monetary value to their creators shouldn't be protected indefinitely. Neither should books that their publishers care so little about that they're allowed to go out of print. They should move into the public domain so that other people can make use of them without fear of lawsuit.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Yes, but by doing so he's pointing out one con to such a system. In that system, for instance, modifying and relicensing GPL software to be closed-source would be legal (in fact, encouraged) unless the author of that software paid a copyright fee.
Which would probably end with something like our modern-day patent system, where big corporations can easily absorb the copyright fees and be invincible while the smaller "people" it was designed to protect get shafted.
-:sigma.SB
WARN
THERE IS ANOTHER SYSTEM
The government has all sorts of "innovative" methods of taxation.
For the case you mention, I can think of a very simple solution - some sort of "minimum IP tax". Hold the IP, pay at least the minimum tax. As your revenue stream rises from zero, you continue to pay the minimum tax, until the taxation on your revenue stream exceeds that minimum. You know, pay the greater value.
Then there needs to be a process for releasing content into the public domain, so you can prove it to the Tax Man.
Plus it may sound biased, but there probably needs to be some sort of "equivalent to public domain" status for open source licenses. After all, the purpose of public domain is to make the IP usable by others as a foundation for further work. But then again, that also means that the government would probably meddle in defining open source licenses, at least for tax purposes. I could readily foresee bsd licenses passing the muster, but perhaps not the GPL, though maybe the LGPL. Remember, one thing the US government *likes* is businesses making money, and if you assume that closing the source is *necessary* to making money, as some very powerful business players do, then the gpl can be considered hostile toward that end.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Property tax is evil, and it should not be legal. The whole point of property is that once you have something, it's yours and no one can take it from you. With property tax, it's like you don't really own your property, and you are just renting it from the government. Once you stop paying, they come and take it away from you.
Moreover, if you are going to ask where is the tax on IP, why don't you ask where the tax is on everyday objects around your house. Where is the property tax on industrial equipment, where is the property tax on you bank account, your stock investments, the money other people owe you, labor contracts? All these things are forms of property that are used to generate revenue but are not taxed under property tax.
The government should not be able to place an arbitrary value and tax rate on any property. I should have the right to be secure in my possessions. If I don't have that right, I don't have any property at all.
Sounds like a great way for big corporate interests to stamp out little competitors. Just force them to overvalue their IP (so they are at a disadvantage in servicing it) or buy it out from under them.
The idea is very good. Even not performing assets (i.e. unrented buildings) pay property taxes; of course, if I'm getting $3,000 a month rent from an apartment it is very likely that my property taxes will be higher than if it is a rundown hole in the wall, but even then taxes must be paid.
Buildings pay property taxes to pay for public services, like public works, fire and police protection, road and sidewalk construction, snow removal, animal control, etcetera. What essential services do you plan on providing to my recorded thoughts, ideas, and code?You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
What a great idea! We could have a schedule of taxes or fees due every few years to maintain IP or it would become dedicated to the public. We do that with patents.
Or, if that's too complicated, we could just ask copyright holders to identify which copyrights they care about and submit a simple application to maintain them or let them flow into the public domain. We did that for nearly two centuries until 1976.
It's just amazing how little we demand that the holders of incredibly valuable copyrights do to obtain those rights and to keep them.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Enforce the laws that says that others are not allowed to copy it.
>I've been advocating that exact idea for a while, with one slight change: if that happens,
>the IP in question goes into the public domain instead of to the purchaser.
GPL and public domain are not the same thing. Linus owns parts of Linux and holds a trademark on Linux in some countries. He could not afford to pay such taxes, so a company like say microsoft could come along and use his code under these laws.
In general, these laws make no sense and would hurt open source developers even more than closed source developers.
Finally, these are in no way analogous to property tax because property tax is just on land, not on the various other things you own. Also the federal government doesn't even collect property tax. It's a stupid idea that would hurt everyone.
Under that system, where would the money from the auction go? To the government? To the original inventor? To the previous owner of the IP?
... triggered early") is even WORSE, because $megaCorp could argue that the IP's value has changed drastically in the first 6 months and squash the original inventor before he's had a chance to reap his reward.
There are flaws with that system no matter how you look at it:
Some dude in a garage invents something amazing, makes a few million bucks selling it. In 10 years time, maybe it's become even more relevant (ready for mass adoption), so $megaCorp steps in and 'bids' a few BILLION on it. Original inventor doesn't have that kind of capital, loses rights to $megaCorp. But the rights are now transferred to someone else for their exclusive use. The small guy gets locked out, and the public interest still isn't satisfied.
Under your other scenario ("for IP that drastically changes in value in a short time, a petition
I'm going to guess they can keep, say, everything but $0.02 (payment of which may be deferred without penalties or interest - see Section 32, entitled "The RIAA Paid Us To Do This", appended to a war funding bill).
That's not to say corporations don't pay taxes, they clearly do, but you just know that anything pointed directly at Microsoft's monopoly or big media's stranglehold on content and culture is going to be lobbied into nothingness before one of us can finish tagging the news on IP reform 'suddenoutbreakofcommonsense'.
With the scenario of $megaCorp, the original owner could bid however much he wants (ten trillion trillion), and then he'll pay himself (so he doesn't actually need to have any money). However if he does that, his taxes will go way up, and he has to decide if the IP is really worth that much, and if it really is worth a BILLION dollars, and no more, he'll sell. If he's emotionally attatched to it and doesn't want it to fall into the hands of $megaCorp, he can just release to the public domain.
Perhaps that's true in the short term, but it's not in the long term. Assuming you've made the copies legally (i.e. copyright law doesn't exist), the value of Vista will go down due to supply and demand. If people can get Windows for free, no one (except the ignorant and those needing support contracts) would pay for it.
No, I'm sorry, but that's wrong. Diminishing returns only works on real goods, not state-supported monopolies. That's because in a free market the producers are "price-takers" - they accept the price the market sets based on supply and demand. Goods protected by copyright exist in monopoly markets, not free markets. Microsoft owns the monopoly on Vista, and thus are the "price-setter". If they say it's $400, it's $400.
Sorry, but this is just economics 101.
There needs to be a way for people to be compensated for the content they create. They may not be creating a tangible good, but you can't deny that they've put a lot of time into their creations. I'm a big fan of open source projects; many of them have been successful at earning their creators decent livings while they give away their code for free. Not every piece of intellectual property can work this way, however - you're not going to sell a support contract on a work of art or a musical composition, for example.Let's face it - copyrights are necessary if we want the arts to continue to be a career option. While there are certainly many ways that the law is flawed, the underlying concept is not.
No, this is also wrong. People do *not* have a right to be compensated. Let's say I go out into a field (designated as a public resource) and dig a hole. A really big hole. I work 10 hours a day in the blazing sun and now there is a hole big enough for 2 or 3 olympic sized swimming pools.
I've put a *lot* of work into that hole. Who is going to pay me? Probably nobody, because nobody wants that hole. Just because you work hard on something doesn't mean it has value.
There was never an "industry" for things like books and recorded music for most of history, yet music and writing have existed for thousands of years. Cavemen painted on the walls of their caves. Nobody paid them, but it was still done.
Frankly, I think music in general would be a lot better if there weren't a bunch of corporations making widgets out of it.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Became the government's right there, so they kept the money when it was sold.
See, IP isn't a thing. Bob won't treasure his IP like it's an old car. Maybe he's proud of the idea, but if he's not charging licensing fees from it, does it matter whether he wants it or not?
If he seriously TREASURES it for non-monitary reasons and doesn't want to let it fall into the hands (and he wants to be able to freely use it), all he has to do is announce that it's now public domain.
Taxes, gone. Mega corp gets their IP for free and poor $70k Bob gets to use his IP all he wants.
The ONLY REASON to keep IP exclusive, is for monitary gain, isn't it? Make it public domain if you value it for the esoteric social benefit it provides...
Your "vintage car" analogy is odd as IP isn't a thing that can be "taken away" when you have the option to make it public domain where the result is "everyone in the world who cares to have one gets their own, with my name stenciled on the bumper".
*shrugs*
SI
In my opinion, the real problem isn't copyrights as much as it is patents. I think, and the creators of the Berne convention must have agreed, by default people's creations need protection and in some countries they have gone farther by saying you can't legally blanket reassign those protections to another party.
Patents however are probably the most widely misused legal instrument in the 'IP law' realm. They're often filed and obtained purely for anticompetitive reasons and are rarely ingenious enough to actually deserve patent protection. Companies constantly reinvent the wheel with minor variations and continually repatent the wheel simultaneously(see recent "online" gift card for sale at POS counter).
I think if a patent is filed and the patent holder has not made any effort to commercialize or otherwise 'use' their patent within a predetermined time period(say 2 years, or 5 years), they should lose it. The benefit to society as a whole for so-called "IP holding companies" is negative and punitive reasons to prevent this situation from occurring should be created.
You have to realize the patent is a government granted temporary monopoly to encourage companies to innovate, or at least that was the purpose. Fast forward to the present and you see now the primary reason to invest in patents is to stifle the competition and raise the barrier to entry. Effectively this creates not a single monopolist for a specific product, but instead creating monolithic industries that are impenetrable to newcomers. The only companies routinely willing to sue others to force compliance with patent laws are those IP holding companies; since they don't actually manufacture, design, distribute, redistribute or retail anything, they have no fear of reprisal.
If someone creates a widget, patents it but fails to commercialize it and another person or company independantly comes up with the same widget and succeeds, what was the original inventor's benefit to society? None, but under current patent law the subsequent inventor is forced to redesign their widget differently from the original inventor even though the original inventor plays no value-adding role in this chain of research, design, invention, implementation and monetization.
So, the trillion dollar question is, how do you fix this conundrum without unfairly empowering tipping the balance of power? I could write a book on the subject, but nobody with the power to change this will read it.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
I woul;d support the idea of a 5 year expiration based on lack of effort to commercialize. Two years is a bit too short - it may take longer for a company to work out funding, etc. I suppose a lot depends on how that law is written as to what a good time frame would be.
There are already patent maintenance fees of a few thousand dollars (and the numbers increase with the age of the patent) that do clean out some of the underbrush when it comes to patents.
For copyrights I like the idea of a similar idea. Once the original author is dead (or some time period, say 10 years has passed it takes a maintenance fee to keep the copyright alive.