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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."
"Many artists spend their whole life creating and virtually starving to death ..."
They're free to get another job, the whole concept of "starving artists" is ridiculous in modern society, the fact is if a market is unprofitable and you knowingly go into it, it's not anyones fault but your own that you're starving. The poor nebulous image of starving artists is a bit bullshittery when you consider real poor countries have to eat mud:
http://abcnews.go.com/International/popup?id=4216121
Mosts "artists", today feel they are entitled to ridiculous amounts of money, just because the industry has become big they become accustomed to it and become very unrealistic.
Monopoly property rights is the whole reason artists are able to get rich in the first place. You get rich by having a large enough population, you don't get rich because of "merit" this whole myth of richness by merit is bs, if we killed everyone who was a customer, suddenly their skills have no value and they are unskilled or unneeded laborers.
Being rich is a matter of luck and population geometry as it is working to create something.