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Comment by midasuni | Hacker News Reader

After an initial period of a few years 7 or 14 sounded good to the US founding fathers), Copyright holders should declare the value of their copyright, and have to pay an escalating fee based on that value (1% per year for the first 10 years, 2% per year for the next 10 years etc) as a tax.

If anyone wants to put the work in the public domain, they simply have to pay the value the company declared.

Disney could declare Star Wars is worth $5b, as it’s 40 years old they’d have to pay say $150m a year tax to deny the rights to the public.

If they declared it to be worth $50m to save on that tax, then netflix could pay for it to go public domain.

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Way too unnecessarily complicated. Just reduce copyright terms to 10 years, maybe 20, and be done with it.

It has the added benefit of generating tax revenue and incentivizing the government to protect copyrights both domestically and internationally.

Income tax generates tax revenue just as well, and the government’s incentive to protect copyrights domestically is the fact that it is the law. Internationally is a matter of politics, but I do not see a clear black and white answer for why copyright would need to be enforced internationally.

> Income tax generates tax revenue just as well

Income tax generates tax revenue. Whether it's "just as well" as other forms of taxing is debatable. In at least some countries, wealth is taxed less than labour, which increases a class distinction. Less income taxes in favour of other taxes may redress that balance.

Or it may not - economists and ouija boards can give you predictions.

Sure, but I do not see the purpose of creating a special tax scheme just for copyrighted works. If you want to hit everyone with a wealth tax, then do it the same way for all assets.

Far more complicated and harms the little players far more than the current system.

Any law has to treat everyone equally otherwise it’s always going to be the Disney’s et al who win.

i'd prefer it work like mario kart tbh, easier for the little co, harder for the big co

That’s nearly impossible to do though because the bigger the company the more resources they have to figure out loopholes and then to exploit them. And the more profitable exploiting those loopholes becomes thus the more tempting it is to act first then beg for forgiveness later.

It’s not even as if anti-competition laws have much effect these days. There’s a real culture in the US of acting dishonourably and then asking for forgiveness later. And more often than not, the punishment for breaking the law is significantly less than the profit earned from those unlawful acts. So they’re incentivised to be unlawful.

This is why you need clear rules that equivalent regardless of income so everyone is clear where the line is drawn; but penalties that are weighted so that rule breaking cannot be gamified.

I've had this (admittedly naive) idea for a while now: what if there were a way to declare fines for corporate offenses based on a percentage of the money earned from committing such an offense? This percentage could be greater than 100% to ensure it is never incentivized to break the law. The main issue is determining how much money a corporation made based on a decision. This would require statistics and analysts and the minimum possible fine should be the minimum possible fine currently imposed by law.

The whole shell corporation, off shore tax haven bullshit would probably make this infeasible but is there actually anything that can stop that? I don't have any good ideas, but I know corporations should not make money off breaking the law.

> what if there were a way to declare fines for corporate offenses based on a percentage of the money earned from committing such an offense?

That basically sounds like "actual damages", which is already the norm for calculating penalties in civil suits.

> This percentage could be greater than 100% to ensure it is never incentivized to break the law.

... and "actual damages" is by definition 100%, though you can get higher than 100% by adding on "statutory damages."

(You can see this as applied to copyright infringement in 17 USC §504: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/504).

Easily gamed: the big company creates a new, tiny company that owns assets but is buried in debt and loopholes any such regulation.

Nah, a wholly owned subsidiary is not a magic shield against legal liability. Legislation with phrases like "beneficial ownership" can fix that stuff.

Every time the copyright law is discussed, little players and harm done to them is always brought in the conversation. In practice, however, the corporate media behemoths are the ones who benefit most from these laws.

It's 'think of the children!!' argument of the IP laws.

You’re missing the point if that’s you’re take away because I’m saying is overly complex rules are more likely to harm smaller players than they are the larger ones given larger organisations have the resources and motives to work exploit loopholes.

This isn’t a theoretical argument either. You see it all the time already (eg tax avoidance).

That's why the rules must be simple. There is no reason for tax rules to be complex, too.

> That's why the rules must be simple.

That was literally the point I made which you disagreed with!

You seem to be a bit obsessed with points. Ok, I'll elaborate.

1. The original message wasn't missing a point about complex rules harming small players. It was just stating that ANY shit done to IP laws is done on the pretence of helping the small players, but instead benefitting the big ones. This was a typical strawman argument on your part.

2. The point you say I disagreed with in the subsequent message is literally the point I agreed with.

Total points score: 2-0 in my favour. Better luck next year, have a nice 2022. ;)

> The original message wasn't missing a point about complex rules harming small players. It was just stating that ANY shit done to IP laws is done on the pretence of helping the small players, but instead benefitting the big ones. This was a typical strawman argument on your part.

Again, you’re making the same argument as I was while claiming I wasn’t making it.

> The point you say I disagreed with in the subsequent message is literally the point I agreed with.

Your comments (this one included) don’t do a particularly good job of expressing what you do and don’t agree with. Half your comments read like a rebuttal despite being an effective reiteration of former comments posted by those you’re replying to. The other half aren’t clear which comments you’re actually replying to (such as this post - it’s so vague as to the sequence of events you’re referring to that your comment is basically meaningless).

> You seem to be a bit obsessed with points.

> Total points score: 2-0 in my favour. Better luck next year

Are you 5 years old? That’s a pathetic way to handle a conversation.

It might help to think about the idea that the "little" players here are the public who, in aggregate has the largest stake in the game but who simultaneously has the lowest financial stakes and the least monetary incentives to lobby for their real interests.

I say that as someone who has produced a whole lot of content at the least-monitizable end of the system.

Disney is the one who is winning right now, both in terms of me "as a content creator" and me "as a member of the public".

> It might help to think about the idea that the "little" players here are the public

That was exactly who I was thinking about when I made my statement.

> Disney is the one who is winning right now, both in terms of me "as a content creator" and me "as a member of the public".

I agree. However the proposal made by the OP would only worsen the control that companies the size of Disney have while making it harder for individuals like ourselves to defend our own creative content.

So if you’re a contend creator (as I am too) then you really should oppose the suggestion made by the OP.

What you need to remember is that while copyright reform is needed - so badly needed - it doesn’t automatically make every possible suggestion better. In fact some of the suggestions that have been floated on HN are a lot worse than the status quo (and that’s saying something given how bad it already is).

But then I shouldn’t be surprised that a forum built around VC has members who think copyright can be “solved” simply by asking creators to throw more money at the problem…

How would you value the product of a startup, or some open source software that doesn't make any money but the creator wants to use a copyleft license for? Also, how would this work internationally? Would you have to pay a proportion of the value to the US government even if the US is a small market for you?

What kind of "startup product" is 15 or 20 years old and has been unchanged since then?

That would be older than Google for example.

> That would be older than Google for example.

Google was incorporated in 1998 [1]. To be fair, the patent for PageRank has since expired [2].

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150623193037/https://www.googl... [2] https://patents.google.com/patent/US6285999

My guess would be that after the initial period of no taxes if the company wasn’t able to turn a profit on the patent then they would have to either sell the patent to avoid taxes or list it as a value that they would manage to be able to pay taxes and start raising money, might help with patent/copyright squatting

I don’t want to have to declare some “value” on my code and then actually pay some real money on the off-chance it might become valuable later on.

I appreciate that copyright is often abused - milked - for all it’s worth. But I think your proposal goes too far. As bad as it is copyright has some uses. With copyright I can apply a GPL license and attempt to conjole others to contribute to the greater good.

If even the author cannot value the product, even after the initial 10 years, the it should fall to public domain.

so, to be clear here;

You're suggesting that Copyleft licenses should be _public domained_ after a short period of time, or the copyright owner should pay a tax?

So, let's take say the Software Freedom Foundation. They should declare a value on the GNU Tools - and if say Microsoft is prepared to pay that value then all GNU tools should be public domain - meaning they can be used in say Windows (as closed compiled binaries?)

Alternatively the FSF needs to come up with some % of value to prevent MS from using their work under a closed license?

I mean, copyright works both ways right? It's equally protecting those that want to commercially profit from their work, and also those that don't want it to be used in a "non freedom" way. So, assuming most GPL authors aren't swimming in cash, this would make more-or-less all GPL'd works lose their freedoms?

You obviously disagree but it seems very reasonable to me that 20 year old FSF code should fall into the public domain including for Microsoft or MomAndPopSoftwareCo or whoever to use.

Note that they still couldn't just take the current grep or vim or whatever code and use it; copyright on later revisions isn't based on the first published moment of the same project.

Instead the code has tons of changes made within the past 20 years and all of those deltas will still be covered by copyright. Microsoft could only be able to take the code of grep as it was as of 2001. I actually kind of doubt they would, but if that much time has passed and something is still useful it should belong to everyone and not just one person.

This would probably work better for the big conglomerates than the status quo. The tax would be less than the royalties they'd no longer have to pay to the actual creators, because emerging artists aren't able to afford to pay tax up front in the hope someone will eventually offer them a big advance.

Ideally, in a perfect world this makes sense but will not work in reality. This just gives a way for any larger player to easily get something in the public domain from a smaller player with less resources. The tax concept is a good concept, maybe like how we have large banks under more scrutiny over a certain level - but this may lead to small IP companies that just hold ip in order to get below the threshold. Star Wars LLC licensing to disney to be under whatever threshold is designed. Copyright in reality should protect the smaller players from the bigger players, a 30 year time frame for an author to profit before the public domain, so a company can not horde IP makes more sense.

This is quite similar to Harberger Tax.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Harberger

I've long advocated something generally like this, for patents and other IP as well. I would propose a longer initial term (~30-50 years) since the nature and value of IP has changed significantly since the 1700s. I would also put an upper limit on it, since the most valuable IP is now held by immortal corporations.

The hard part for copyright is tracking what has been renewed and what has not, without some kind of registration system, which I don't think we want to add. Without this, it would make it very difficult to know if the work you intend to use/copy/distribute is protected or not.

That is a very interesting idea. But I think you would want at least a 14 year grace period with no property tax.

Another possibility is a use-it-or-lose-it scheme like that used in Trademarks. If you built a game that is now abandonware, it should be fair game for someone else to remaster it, etc.

Why do so many proposals to increase liberties come with a new tax?

The government isn’t some beast we have to appease. It’s us! If we want to reform copyright, we don’t need to bribe ourselves with a new tax.

Taxes (and tax deductions) are generally one of the best ways to align incentives. If it's a binary condition then you have tons of derelict content that should really be public domain, but because of the big ticket well-maintained Disney content the laws are written to be "reasonable" for that content and it ends up unnecessary locking up all of the other content from the 1970s

We should just drop to 50 years. Most people have a working career of 50 years. Having 50 years to earn off your creation seems fair to everyone.

>Having 50 years to earn off your creation seems fair to everyone.

Everyone? Hold on there a moment, Jack.

I'm a copyright minimalist. Seven years with one renewal for a total of fourteen years seems much more fair to me considering all the years we've already had of continually delayed releases into the public domain. We the people have paid to enforce those years of copyright without the corresponding payoff at the end of the term release to the public. There's nothing fair about that situation and it needs to be addressed.

Don’t see why the government should be profiting so much out of that.

Copyright only exists because the government uses its monopoly on violence to protect it. Why should it not get a decent cut of the pie after a decade or so?

The average property tax is about 1%, so why should copyright be treated as something special? Especially, if the rent is collected by a third party that purchased the rights, their relationship to the creation of the underlying asset is no different to a landlord.

I'd dispense with this self-valuation business though and just charge a 1% tax on net present value of the asset.

If the copyright holder releases their claim early, then they'll get a tax refund for previous payments at the recalculated net present value.

"Why should it not get a decent cut of the pie after a decade or so?"

well i guess it depends on if you view the government as a profit seeking entity trying to maximally price its IP protection product, or if you view it as societal infrastructure.

Society works when people feel better off within than without, when that's not true, then people stop respecting laws and generally act asocial.

Copyright holders get an excellent deal by living in a society that allows them to collect rents that can add up into the millions of even billions.

But how about the work-a-day folks? What's in it for them? An abstract idea that allowing the descendants of creators to collect economic rents for generations after their death, might result in a greater throughput in creative works... somehow. No, for society to work, then rent seeking must be reigned in.

A copyright wealth tax would still allow rights holders to become fabulously wealthy, but they'd have to give something back in return. Something more than normal income tax, because of the rent seeking nature of their enterprise.

I'm not sure if I would call profiting off of an intangible invention or creation "rent". Is profiting by selling other property rent? Such as your labor? Or your used car?

It's a lot easier to steal your music or your blueprints than it is to steal physical property, but that doesn't change the fact that it's all still property, at least in my mind. And society seems to work best when theft is at a minimum.

If I build a bridge across a river and setup a toll booth, then yes, I should expect a return that reflects the capital, time, and risk I took in constructing the bridge. However, when I abuse my monopoly over the bridge to extract a return in excess of that, then I'm seeking economic rent.

Renting out a property is (by definition) a form of rent seeking, but it only becomes a problem when rent seekers have monopolistic market power as the rents they seek cannot be restrained by normal market forces. One only needs to look at the consolidation of the movie industry to see such power in action.

I'm not defending intellectual property theft, I'm (quite modestly) suggesting that rights holders should pay a surcharge (similar to real property taxes) in return for the state allowing for them to extract monopolistic profits from their copyright holdings.

Interesting idea, although I want to understand why do this? What is fundamentally wrong with the current system, I honestly want to know?

Also, this is a tax on unrealised gains is it not?

If there are no gains, the option is to release it or value it as nil and let someone else do it. So it's up to the owner of the copyright and I see no real unrealized gains tax.

Say you own the copyright on an old film you made, but are doing nothing with it (and making practically nothing) but plan to in the future (you have a plan to in say 10 years time). You are projecting that the value of the IP is something based on what you plan to do with it.

So it is 100% a tax on unrealised gains.

I complexly understand why some people will not be sympathetic to this.

I would think that long lasting copyrights stifle innovation and competition.

Where is the incentive to do something new or to allow new players an ability to use works in a new way?

> What is fundamentally wrong with the current system, I honestly want to know?

Consider all those works that are in the public domain and that can be shared freely. Iconic pictures like the Mona Lisa are available to the benefit of everyone. No one owns the exclusive rights and everyone has access to this shared cultural history.

There's also collateral damage with the current copyright system. A lot of lesser known works have little commercial/brand value. But they remain illegal to share. These works are at risk of becoming lost culture. And in many cases the original authors don't own the rights to release the works into the public domain at an earlier time, because they have contracts with publishers.

To add to this, many works are simply unavailable. Works from before copyright became effectively perpetual are easily found. Works from the most recent decade or two are easily found. Anything in-between is frequently lost, with only the outliers remaining.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120330/12402418305/why-m...

> What is fundamentally wrong with the current system, I honestly want to know?

It effectively locks away cultural heritage for more than a hundred years with no tangible benefit to the society.

Disney became Disney because it used works in public domains (Brothers Grimm tales) and expired copyrights (Alice in Wonderland). Current copyright laws effectively blocks anyone from using 20th century works (and some late 19th century works) for ... well, anything, really.

Additionally, great swaths of culture are simply lost because of:

- the fear of potential copyright violations. This affects a great number of orphan works

- copyright holders doing nothing with their properties and others not being able to do anything with them. Can't find it now, but at one point Amazon carried more new books with works from the 19th century, than books with works from the 20th just because of that

But even that isn't the main problem. Copyright was intended to protect the author and incentivize them to create other works. I'm eagerly awaiting Tolkien's new works in 2047 (the copyright on The Fellowship of the Ring expires in 2050).

> Copyright holders should declare the value of their copyright, and have to pay an escalating fee based on that value (1% per year for the first 10 years, 2% per year for the next 10 years etc) as a tax.

I hope this doesn’t come as a surprise but copyright holders do in fact declare the amount of money generated on their copyright and pay taxes on it annually, it’s called…taxes and it’s usually going to be a minimum of 10x all the way up to 40x your suggested rate.

Realistically for a company like Disney to pay $150M/year on Star Wars would be a joke and drop in the bucket compared to the amount of taxes attributable to Star Wars annually. All this would do is benefit big business that brush off those extra costs and harm new properties that couldn’t afford these taxes to protect their copyrights.

I think the suggestion is to put a buy it now price on everything so that it can be liberated.

It also creates a disincentive for holding onto IP without using it. Its kind of an LVT on intellectual property. I like it a lot.

Can you define "liberated" here?

Because I'm thinking the effect is the opposite on things that are already liberated - I'm thinking specifically of GPL protected freedoms...

> copyright holders do in fact declare ... and pay taxes on [IP]

Or they sell the IP to a shell company in a tax haven and lease it at an artificial price, so the balance sheet shows no profit or even a loss. It's one of the largest sources of tax evasion out there.

A system like the one midasuni proposed would actually be an interesting patch for the tax system.

Here's a similar (but different) idea from some IP law professors: https://www.uclalawreview.org/pdf/62-1-1.pdf

It's not perfect or fully fleshed out. Derivative works would raise a bunch of questions. And you couldn't use one regulatory framework for all different types of intellectual property, obviously, even though different kinds of IP can be used in this sort of tax dodge.

It's a proposal to enrich public access to orphaned works while closing a major corporate tax loophole. Saying "all this would do is benefit big business" is a surprising take here. It'd probably have some unintended consequences, any change this big would. Might be unworkable in practice. But it certainly wouldn't ONLY help big corporations. A ton of ordinary people would benefit immediately from something like this.

Seems similar to a release or buyout clause often used in sports.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buyout_clause

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