Why not treat I(ntellectual|maginary) Property like actual physical property, and levy a property tax on it, or the income earned? Maybe with a 14-28 year tax free period to encourage creators?
I realize this would create a huge accounting burden... but only in cases where it's worthwhile to continue charging for the property.
You'd get little to no traction with that if you frame it as a tax, leaving aside that many potential allies for such an approach would object to enshrining the characterization of copyright as "property". (Also, income earned is already taxed.)
Now, on the other hand, if you phrase it as a renewal fee, that would go over much more smoothly. Patents, for instance, have maintenance fees required at 4, 8, and 12 years, and they double each time.
I'd love to see, as a step towards limited-duration copyrights again, an exponentially increasing scale of renewal fees. For instance, after the first 5 years, it could cost $1000 for the next 5, $10k for the next 5, $100k for the next 5, and so on. (Throw in a grace period where all existing works get 5 years from the date this is passed, so people can adapt, and have time to evaluate what to renew.)
On that scale, after 5 years, any work producing value would be worth renewing. Some works will be worth renewing for 20 years. Incredibly high-value works might be worth renewing for 30 or even 35. But there'd be a serious tradeoff there; is it worth spending that much to renew the copyright of an old work, or to create a new one that grabs people's interest?
And as a bonus, abandoned works that no longer have anyone around to care about renewing would move into the public domain.
I like idea of renewal fee, with an exponentially increasing scale as time passing by. Real properties are already being taxed twice, once on the rent produced and once on the property itself. Intellectual properties should be "taxed" the same way.
I have thought about a model where if you want your IP protected by government, you can register your IP and pay an ever increasing annual fee for the protection. Say, first year the fee is 100 dollars and doubles every year, so that around 25 years you would be paying more than a billion dollars.
At any time you have the option to quit paying and give your IP to public domain. Also, any IP not in the registry would automatically be in the public domain. This would solve the issue about orphan works and give some benefit from the IP to the society that enforces the IP.
This would put many of the most vulnerable artists at a huge disadvantage. A $100 registration fee per work is practically a rounding error to a major media corporation, but it's prohibitive to a struggling band or a fine art student.
Copyrighted material is not a property so it doesn't make sense to act like it is. The goverment should give a short period of exclusive rights for their creation but it should be as short as possible.
The material may not be a property (an intellectual concept can not be property), but the copyright itself is a property. You can own it. You can buy it. You can sell it. I very much dislike the term "intellectual property" because it conflates a lot of very different issues. Rights like rights of monopoly, mineral rights, rights of way, etc, etc, etc, though, are legal properties even though they do not represent physical things. It is ineffective (and I would also say incorrect) to argue otherwise. You're not going to get much traction trying to backtrack 800 years of legal framework. The concept of legal ownership of certain rights is an important part of how freedom is structured in modern society and I don't think you intend to try to dismantle that.
Exclusive right to copy something (or make derived works) is not an intrinsic right. It's a right given to you by society. As above, it's great that once it is given to you, that you own it. It would suck if society could just arbitrarily take it away from you. What I think you are trying to argue is related more to the fact that copyright is not an intrinsic right. As a society, we do not have to grant a copyright at all if it is not beneficial to us. We need to do a better job of balancing the interests of all parties.
Copyright exists from the moment an expression is created. When you write a letter it is copyrighted. You don’t have to register it. There is no way to tax it.
The proper way to solve the problem with excess copyright is by properly limiting the duration as written in the constitution.
Not sure why, since the average voter won't be affected by this tax. Only the media companies. In fact, most voters would benefit greatly by having unlimited legal, free access to a vast library of content that is still relevant to them.
And, it can be morally justified -- if someone is sitting on the rights for a work, and isn't using it, then it makes sense to levy a tax against it as they are utilizing the expensive resources of the world governments in order to defend the copyright.
It doesn't matter whether it actually affects voters. The media companies with lots of money will "donate" millions to politicians willing to defeat such a bill, and maybe even run ads/frame the discussion as if it's against voters' best interests.
There is no large concentration of wealth on the other side of the issue to support it, therefore it will never happen.
Sorry folks but that's how politics in the USA works.
Who will swiftly pass the additional cost on to their customers. Voters who see it that way won't vote voluntarily to pay more just so content creators can keep their copyright.
I realize this would create a huge accounting burden... but only in cases where it's worthwhile to continue charging for the property.