Hacker News Reader

Comment by kijin | Hacker News Reader

It doesn't even have to be a strict cutoff. The first 10 years might be free and automatic, but the Copyright Office could charge exponentially increasing fees for renewals afterward.

For example, $1K for the next 10 years, then $10K, then $100K... This means that only works that remain truly profitable in the long term will stay copyrighted. If Disney wants to pay $10B to keep Mickey Mouse copyrighted, they are welcome to do so. The extension fees could be put to good use improving the nation's public schools and libraries.

View on HN

I think this is a generally sensible proposal that would garner much public support.

However, I would like to see moral rights retained for longer than 10 years - the right to prevent modification of the work, the right to be named as author, for example. Extending these to life+X years (but requiring free-gratis registration) seems fair to me as well.

The ability to create derivative works is one of the primary benefits of works entering the public domain, so no.

I think you misunderstood - you can make derivatives, you can't sell the work with your own modifications as if it were the original (you can sell your derivative though). Neither could you plagiarise works under such a system.

Another option is to tax intellectual property at the rate of real property in the countries that they want to claim copyright in. The holder of the copyrighted material will have to declare how much the intellectual property is worth, and be forced to put it in the public domain (or maybe transfer ownership) if some entity pays the declared worth of that asset.

I think you are onto something, and the nice thing about this is that it provides a runway to move us to a basic income economy. Eventually (30, 50, 100 years from now) all property will be intellectual because anything will be 3D printable, biological agents will be synthesizable etc etc so this would allow everyone to benefit and still reward innovation.

Also, a flat tax favors the wealthy on a linear scale but is fairer on a logarithmic scale. So for example when income increases by 10 times, the corresponding tax rate could go up by 10% or something to that effect.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com