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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.
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!
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.
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.
Enforce the laws that says that others are not allowed to copy it.
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
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
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.