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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."
On the face of it, I love that idea. The bigger question would be how do you determine the value of the IP to assess it for taxation.
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with 'em later.
This is not quite true.
Many states have personal property tax, for instance Virginia taxes your car, boat, RV, and things like that every year.
However, I don't think the worry is about personally owned IP, but rather corporate. A very large number of business jurisdictions tax businesses based on their owned property. As one property tax official told me in one locale, "if it's necessary to run your business it must be listed, and we tax it." If that's the business attitude of the tax man, I think the editorial is spot on.
I think Heinlein had the solution to that (he used it for real property). You declare a value, you pay taxes based on that, and anybody can force you to sell it to them at that price.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
I understand this line of thought is really about IP, not about tax and rights...but I would like to thank the author for perpetuating the idea that even if something is YOURS, you still have to pay the government for it.
If the government can deprive you of a basic right (property as a basic right in the state of nature, Voltaire, Hobbs, Locke, T. Jefferson) simply because you don't pay for the privilege of enjoying the right, then rights are privileges, not rights.
I guess war and welfare aren't going to pay for themselves...
THL phish sticks
Patents have a maintenance fee. Why not copyrights?
Why not charge a maintenance fee for copyrights every ten years? That way, most stuff will go into the public domain ten years after publication. It won't bother most people, because most people's copyrighted stuff isn't valuable the next day, let alone ten years later, and if it is they can always extend it.
The hard part would be figuring out what to charge for copyrights of commercial material, like proprietary software, books, music, and the like. I'm sure people can figure out something halfway reasonable, likely on the low side.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Perhaps the solution is some sort of automatic grace period? For instance, anyone can maintain copyright on a work for say a timeperiod of 1-year tax-free, but after that they either have to start ponying up (because it's economically relevant enough to care) or lose the copyright. The problem I foresee is figuring out how to appropriately tax copyrights. Photographers for instance sometimes rely on copyright protection to generate revenue off their work, but since an individual photo realistically generates a fraction of their necessary income they would be paying through the nose in taxes. Whereas a huge company like UMG or Sony could easily afford the taxes on their entire vast catalog if they paid the same rate as say a photographer. The trick is finding a way to do this that leverages huge companies to drop some of their less profitable copyrights without killing the livelihood of individual creators.
Well, it's not quite what I would suggest, but it's far from a terrible idea; in fact it is similar to how we used to do things only a few decades ago.
We should have a system of copyright where an author only gets a copyright if he publishes his work, registers for a copyright, deposits a copy of the work, and pays a token fee. And where the copyright only lasts for a few years before the author must renew the copyright (if eligible, depending on the kind of work and the number of times it's been renewed already).
We know that this would work well, since it's more or less what US copyright law did up until 1978. We know that the goal of copyright is to serve the public interest by encouraging authors to create works they otherwise would not have created, but having those works minimally protected and in the public domain as rapidly as possible. This serves this goal well, since probably only authors who were encouraged by the availability of copyright would bother to undertake even the very simple steps to procure one. Further, if an author was encouraged by a shorter duration than the maximum allowed, he would likely fail to renew (as usually happened historically), getting that work in the public domain much sooner than if we foolishly gave him as long a term as we could without any involvement on the author's part. It gets copies preserved in the Library of Congress, which can help to ensure the survival of the work over time (especially once it enters the public domain). And requiring him to identify the work claimed, and himself, and his contact information, aids in the public knowing what is and isn't protected (like the title system for land), who to talk to about it, and where he can be reached if you need to license it, etc.
Sure, some amateur authors would create works without regard for a copyright, and the works might turn out to have been valuable, but so what? The system isn't meant to help them at all costs, it is meant to encourage them to create what they would not have created sans copyright. Your Chocolate Rain kid probably wouldn't qualify. That's good, really. Why should the public pay for the cow if the milk is free? Copyright isn't meant to help authors, or be fair to them; it's meant to be totally one-sided in favor of the public, but sometimes the thing that is most in the long-term public interest isn't what is in the short-term public interest.
(Plus of course, only an author can claim a copyright on his works initially; it's not as though anyone could take a public domain work away from its author, who could also try to exploit it for money; it's just that the author cannot exclusively exploit it)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I am sitting in a chair, no one is going to TAX me on the fact that I own some chair (personal property).
That's not exactly true. If you're sitting in a car seat, then you're likely being taxed on it. Some states would even tax you for what's in your home, New Hampshire comes to mind, when I lived there, every 5 years or so they would come by and assess your house, now you could not let them inside, but this would cause them to estimate something that's probably higher then your house and everything that's in it. But they would always ask to see what's inside your house, and if you had say i really nice home theater system, yea that adds to the assessment. \
If i had one dollar for every brain you dont have, i would have $1.
First, this is not true. Most artists never become successful at all. Further, when a work does turn out to have copyright-related economic value, it is almost invariably 'front-loaded.' That is, you can exploit the work for the most money immediately upon publication in some medium, with the value steadily and rapidly decreasing thereafter. E.g. a movie sells the most tickets on opening weekend, and fewer every week after until finally it is so unprofitable that it leaves the theaters. When it comes out on video, it sells the most copies the first week, and again, fewer every week after that. The time horizon is usually measured in months per medium of publication. A movie might have a month, a book might have as long as a year. A newspaper, only a few hours (people don't often buy morning editions at night on the same day, much less later on), certain kinds of textbooks, perhaps several years. Creating a work that has lasting economic value is about as rare as winning the lottery. It is just stupid to design our policies around that sort of thing, it's so rare.
Second, why should we care about the little guy -- or any author, of whatever size -- at all? Copyright is meant to serve the public interest, period. This means encouraging authors to create works the otherwise wouldn't've created, and getting those works into the public domain as soon as possible (with as little protection as possible prior to that). So long as the author creates works, it is utterly immaterial whether or not he makes money at it. Nor is it a bad thing for a work to enter the public domain and for other authors, regardless of whether they're big or small, to make some use of it. All that matters is getting the most number of works created for the least amount of cost in the form of copyright protection granted (i.e. what copyrights are granted initially, how broad the grants are, and how long the grants last). Entertaining silly, romantic notions of authors is what has gotten us into the mess we now find ourselves in. We need to stop with that crap. Copyright is utilitarian; whatever copyright system best serves the public, that's what we need, without one iota of concern for authors, save for how their condition might affect the public good that is our real sole issue. The most works for the least copyright 'buck.' It's as simple as that.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
"It seems to me that unless you take a somewhat relaxed stance toward personal property, you have to recognize that expiration of copyright prior to exhaustion of value takes something from the author."
Sure, but you are only taking a part of what you gave him in the first place. Not that you gave him the work, but you gave him the copyright.
all the best,
drew
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
As far as I recall, in the US at least, all land is actually owned by the government(on behalf of the people). The deed grants you specific monopoly rights to the land. Theoretically speaking the government can void your deed at will, though for obvious reasons they rarely do.
IP is the same sort of situation, all ideas belong to the commons, but the government grants you monopoly control over certain rights to that idea. Similarly copyright infringement is a lot like more like trespass than it is theft, someone is violating one of the monopoly rights granted to you by the government.
As such, perhaps a property tax of some sort might be in order.
However, rather than the shotgun sale provision(whereby if you value a certain thing at a certain price you have to sell it at that price), something along the lines of a limitation of recoverable losses might be more appropriate.
If you force people to sell then you allow large companies to buy the work of smaller entities that while not currently profitable, might, in the future be profitable for that creator. You also cause all sorts of problems for the GPL as they'd have to either pay incredibly large taxes or sell off everything they own to Microsoft or some other large congolmerate.
However a limited recoverable losses provision would be much more helpful. It wouldn't affect things like for profit use(where all profits are recoverable), but if you limited what a copyright holder could sue for(excluding profits derived) to some portion of the declared taxation value at the time of the infringement, you'd basically achieve most of the stated goals.
Companies might not be forced to give up their old libraries, but they'd have to either pay full taxes on them or their recoverable worth would be virtually nothing so if you got sued it'd be for very little money. Basically only the most recent/popular songs would really be worth suing over presuming no for profit use.
Instead of having the assesment burden on the owner of the IP, let's put it on the collector of taxes, or the buyer of the IP.
Every idea is assumed to be worth a nominal hundred bucks until the govt tax collecting agency can find a bidder. Once they have a notarized bid ( maybe with some percentage deposit ) then they go to the owner of the IP and inform him that his idea is now worth more than a hundred dollars, and he should start paying more taxes on it.
The IP owner then has two choices: He can assent and start paying the tax, or he can agree to sell it. If he agrees to sell it, the govt collects the money, gives it to the IP owner. They also collect a few percent fee for their services, so that the whole process is fee-based rather than taxpayer-supported.
If the owner of the IP is broke, he need not submit just for financial reasons. The 'notice of value' is a negotiable item, and a bank would be willing to accept it as collateral on a loan - because they can cash it in if the loan defaults. The big corporation would have to be careful about trying to squeeze the little guy, for in doing so, they give him collateral to start a competing business with the IP.
> Property taxes pay for services that the government provides to land owners...
> but what services does the government provide to IP owners?
The government enforces the monopoly they granted you by using it's monopoly on the 'legitimate' use of force. You would be paying the government to send it's goons against any who violated your copyright.
But copyright ain't property, at least it ain't in the US. Our Constituition only grants Congress the option to pass out copyrights/monopolies to promote science and the useful arts. It they were property, for one thing they wouldn't be 'for limited times.' Property implies moral issues but since Congress could by simple majority vote cease issuing any new ones it can't be a property right. Nope, Copyrights and Patents are just a form of 'Industrial policy' for the creative trades. Same as any other Industrial Policy, Farm Policy, Blah Blah. It can and should be adjusted to get the maximum benefit to those in the industry, the country at large and yes, the federal treasury.
I'd suggest something along the following lines:
No more automatic copyright. Screw Berne. Register it or it doesn't exist. Copyrights would have a registration number assigned and they should be international; something like year-country prefix-number. That would allow people to actually KNOW when a copyright had expired by looking the number up in an online database. As things currently stand you needs lots of research to know if a work is actually in the public domain.
Registering should cost a non-trivial amount and it should vary by some sort of catagory chart. Not fair? Who said it was supposed to be fair, it's Industrial policy remember? Articles and books at low rates, television programs at a higher one and movies at a percentage of gross. Good for three years, renewable. Renewal rates set to discourage hoarding low value content while allowing marketable franchises to be milked a bit. After all, creating something of lasting interest in this short attention span culture should be rewarded. But make each successive renewal more exensive on a log scale. Yes, Disney could keep the mouse for a century but the price for a copyright that long should be expressly punitive.
Democrat delenda est
If the red stapler is property, where is the property tax? For that matter, why don't we all subject ourselves to a quarterly inventory of all our posessions, fill out form J-stroke-zed 45, and send it to the ministry of information?
Will those attempting to fight the injustices associated with the current IP laws please focus on the unjust aspects of them, not all IP laws. Also, please not cause an even worse problem? pretty please? Pretty, pretty, please? Thanks.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Let me try to understand you correctly. Intellectual property[1] is not scarce - it is 100% copyable, for free, by anyone with access to a single instance of the IP. If people are only paying for scarcity, and IP is not scarce, you have just claimed that the IP is worthless. I couldn't disagree with that more. I believe IP is still valuable, in spite of its complete and utter non-scarcity. IOW, I pay for the music because the music itself has value. Maybe I'm also paying for big media to find the "next big thing", the studio equipment, the production, the marketing, etc., but I'm paying for the music too.
People payed for personal, live performances and still do because they are scarce. People buy original canvas paintings (as opposed to reproductions) for the same reason.These things aren't IP precisely because they are not perfectly reproducible. Instead of a canvas painting, we should talk about photographs, especially digital photographs. They certainly aren't scarce - anyone can buy a camera and take them, and photographs are really easy to copy, especially if they are digital. But the good ones have value despite their lack of scarcity - maybe they capture a cool-looking scene, a mood, a rare event, etc. Are those worthless? Maybe it's just a matter of personal opinion at this point.
Making money as an artist is great if you can do it, but there is no necessary relation.100% agreed. But I think the good artists are worth paying for, and that's why I support the notion that some people can and should make careers out of their art - and be able to be compensated for it. If people find that they cannot make careers out of art because the general public finds their creations worthless, we might lose out on good art.
[1] Let's not get caught up in the semantics of the word "property". "Intellectual property" is the generally-accepted term for the things and concepts we're discussing.
It boggles my mind that folks think they can come up with any system of copyright law in which your generic starving artist will be treated as equitably as Disney is. Disney has the multi-billion dollar warchest to make sure any process you require, any form you mandate, any hoop you establish, will be accomplished exactly as the law dictates. They will happily offer to write the law to make this easier. Your generic starving artist is likely too busy waiting tables to remember to file his IP13-I in a timely fashion on the 37th week in the 14th monsoon season after the IP creation. ("Darn, I was sure if we made it that hard, Disney would forget to file their form for Mickey!")
All you'll do is create a very inegalitarian world: one in which those with the most access to the techniques of *manipulating the copyright system* end up with IP, and one in which no other creators end up with anything. It will have absolutely nothing to do with importance of the created works, skill or effort involved in creating them, or any subject of social concern except to the extent that those immediately translated into money to be burned to satisfy the regulatory gods. (And you non-creators will get to freeload a bit, yay. Not on Windows or Mickey, though -- you'll be freeloading on the backs of the little guy. Microsoft and Disney will also happily freeload off the backs of the little guy, when the little guy actually comes up with something worth stealing, which will be about as seldom as it is in the status quo. They'll use your new copyright tax like Pfizer used New London's power of eminent domain -- to accomplish theft under the color of law.)
The current copyright regime has its issues, granted. However, it has some nice features: you know how many bureacracies I had to ask for permission to write software and start selling it? None. I wrote it, I put it up on the Internet, money started coming in, the following April I sent an extra large check to the IRS. This system protects the incentive for me to actually write the software. Without me writing it my customers would still be stuck with the grossly inferior solutions they had to use before. Folks who aren't my customers might not benefit as much as they would if you could requisition the fruits my labor for nothing but, hey, it was a boring program to write and I wouldn't have written it without the prospect of compensation.
(P.S. The software, which I sold about ~$10k worth of last year, makes educational bingo cards. It is about 2k lines of code. If the very notion of this offends you, there is an OSS project on Sourceforge called bingo-cards which is my direct competitor. It is currently broken -- doesn't run on Windows, can't actually print cards, etc.
I'm sure many Slashdotters think that, in a world without copyright to protect profits, there would still be a socially optimum level of IP creation. Well, it seems to me that the socially optimum level of IP creation includes some way for teachers to print bigno cards. If you think software copyrights are invidious, I think you probably owe society a patch to bingo-cards. It can't be that hard. Let me know how it goes.)
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
(Well, there's already been a flood of posts on this one, but anyways .... )
[1] FWIW I think the idea of a copyright tax is a good one, for the sake of making commerically unimportant copyrights available.
[2] The tax doesn't have to be a big one to be effective, and any realistic tax would have to be on a uniform basis and a reasonable level to be administratively workable. Patent renewal fees already exist and are like that, and they do result in many patents being abandoned to the public domain before their term is up.
[3] An additional advantage of a copyright tax would be that in the case of items that might look like 'abandonware' but are not, the tax register would help people's efforts to find the person claiming the copyright, if they want to fix up any kind of proper licensing permission.
[4] A big difficulty in the way of implementation, is that copyright law conditions are now set by international treaty, the Berne Convention. This says that copyright has to be available without formality. So it isn't any longer up to Congress just to alter the law, unless they also want to leave (denounce) the Berne Convention (this would result in lack of mutuality of copyright protection between the US and just about every other country, an inconvenience and cause of loss and expense to copyright holders that caused the US to join the Convention in the first place.)
So, international negotiations would be needed to insert some kind of 'sunset' clause into the Berne Convention. Or else, the tax could perhaps be brought in for some other effect, short of ending the copyright, like maybe avoiding a presumption of licensing-as-of-right: this could be legislatively created for untaxed copyright works. (But I'm not sure that even that would be compatible with the existing Berne Convention anyway.)
[5] So, all in all, the idea sounds good, but is probably impractical until the international climate (in which the US govt currently has a big influence) moves away from the tendency to tighten IP nooses, and starts loosening up.
-wb-
The problem is that everyone has started thinking like damned lawyers...
They stop seeing the actual thing but see the distorted, vile way of looking at things.
I know Linux is not in the public domain has far as law is concerned, but damn it, it certainly
is for most of the world population so why would he have to pay for something he gave away!
No I think the general concept is great.. it would probably put an end to patent trolls..
and big megacorp would think twice before applying for patent only to apply for patents...
But it must be worked out so that it doesn`t hurt people who gives it without compensation.
GPL and uder licenses need to be protected under such law.. These shoudl fall under special
circumstances which would protect the world interests..
So you establish a reasonable period of monopoly that's tax-free. Say, for the first 5 or 7 or even 10 years a copyright is tax-free. The entrepreneur then has a reasonable window to derive value at no cost, but corporations still cannot exploit the system forever for zero cost.
The problems in patent and copyright law, while they may seem similar, are actually quite different. I agree that a patent tax would likely cause more problems than it solves. But copyright is a different animal. Copyright law doesn't have broad coverage, trolls or rewards for gaming the system -- not until you hit the megacorp level and game the system via lobbyists.
The biggest problem in copyright law is simply that copyright terms are far, far too long.
The real drawback to TFA's proposal is that it gives permission to megacorps to hold copyright in perpetuity, so long as they kick back some cash to Uncle Sam. Under the proposed scheme, Mickey Mouse will -never- fall into the public domain.
Now, I don't have a very optimistic view that lobbying won't manage such perpetual copyright -anyway-. But that doesn't mean I'm comfortable in embracing it up-front, just because Washington would get a taste.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"