4 ms·

I don't see anyone winning against Disney. Copyright will be infinite and I don't think anything from the last half century will ever enter the public domain. B

by Asooka 10y ago

I don't see anyone winning against Disney. Copyright will be infinite and I don't think anything from the last half century will ever enter the public domain. Better just give up on this battle and think of ways to work within the system.

marcus_holmes 10y ago
This makes sense to me. One of the problems we have is abandonware; copyrighted stuff stuck in the limbo of "we know it belongs to someone, so no you can't use it, but we don't know who, so no you can't ask them if you can use it". Paying some kind of copyright tax would give a mechanism for abandoning things.
- AnthonyMouse 10y ago
  The biggest problem with taxing copyright is how to value it, which ranges from wildly arbitrary to completely impossible. The most rational way would be to tax licensing revenue, but that makes it a non-solution to your problem because if nobody knows who to license the copyright from then nobody is licensing it and there is no revenue to tax. It also seems rather unlikely that if you can't stop a completely irrational copyright term extension, you could nonetheless bring about a copyright tax on the same people. You're more likely to be able to prevent further copyright term extensions. And there is a well known solution to the orphan works problem, which is to require copyright registration after some period (e.g. after every 14 years).
  - marcus_holmes 10y ago
    yeah, these are good points. If you're taxing revenue then what do you do in the case of person A who licences the copyright (for nothing) to person B who then makes a living from it. All those loopholes... But it does seem that attaching revenue to a law makes it more likely to get passed. "Screw Disney, we can alleviate budget problems with this..."
  - Spivak 10y ago
    > taxing copyright is how to value it, which ranges from wildly arbitrary to completely impossible. It doesn't have to be impossible, you just have to create a system where the copyright holder values it for you. Imagine you decided to have a 1% copyright tax. To maintain your copyright you pay the government some amount of money. That amount will be extrapolated to determine the true value of the copyright. So if you pay 10 million then you get a 1 billion valuation. Here's the catch. In order to incentivize copyright holders to value their IP accurately anyone is allowed to purchase full ownership of the copyright at the value of their valuation. The holder can of course counter a purchase by paying more tax and you prevent predatory buying by requiring the money up front.
    - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
      Consider what you're doing to startups. You've created the next big thing but have little cash, someone shows up with a lowball offer and now you have to take it because you don't have the cashflow to pay the tax yet. There is also the political problem that you would be forcing artists to sell the rights to their art to the highest bidder, even if the highest bidder is their enemy, or a censor who would erase their public image by locking their work in a vault and never showing it to anyone.
cookiecaper 10y ago
There is no doubt that copyright is one of the least discussed but most significant factors in the American economy. Because people who depend on copyright control our political dialogue, they ensure that copyright almost never comes up, because they know the current state is repugnant to anyone who understands the extent of it. In the U.S. copyright will never be "forever". The Constitution requires that the monopoly be granted only for a limited time in order to promote the progress of the Sciences and Useful Arts. Jack Valenti infamously suggested copyright terms of "forever minus one day" in light of this fact. I wouldn't give up hope yet, though. Things change. Interpretation of the law by SCOTUS will eventually shift to more closely approximate the experience of people familiar with modern information technology. Cornerstores of American law like the first-sale doctrine exist because judges in the pre-internet era could relate to and understand the inherent fairness in being able to resell an object that's in your possession. Law affecting the internet is horrible right now because many judges are technically illiterate, but that's gradually improving, and I'm sure as the internet continues to come of age and judges with experience and understanding of it take the bench, we'll start to see much more hopeful outcomes. We're already starting to see this a little bit, with cases like Nguyen v. Barnes & Noble and QVC v. Resultly. Disney may seem like a invincible behemoth today, but they've been close to the brink before, and I'm sure they'll get there again. Nothing lasts forever. Enforcing copyright more aggressively may be a good way to cause a sufficient ruckus to at least get the law revised. In the meantime, the internet affords the ability to deal semi-anonymously, and it may as well be used. This provides protection from suits under some of our insane copyright and network access laws (incorporation doesn't).
- Asooka 10y ago
  "While taxes are paid" is, technically, some sort of limited time.

by Asooka 10y ago

marcus_holmes 10y ago

This makes sense to me. One of the problems we have is abandonware; copyrighted stuff stuck in the limbo of "we know it belongs to someone, so no you can't use it, but we don't know who, so no you can't ask them if you can use it". Paying some kind of copyright tax would give a mechanism for abandoning things.

AnthonyMouse 10y ago
The biggest problem with taxing copyright is how to value it, which ranges from wildly arbitrary to completely impossible. The most rational way would be to tax licensing revenue, but that makes it a non-solution to your problem because if nobody knows who to license the copyright from then nobody is licensing it and there is no revenue to tax. It also seems rather unlikely that if you can't stop a completely irrational copyright term extension, you could nonetheless bring about a copyright tax on the same people. You're more likely to be able to prevent further copyright term extensions. And there is a well known solution to the orphan works problem, which is to require copyright registration after some period (e.g. after every 14 years).
- marcus_holmes 10y ago
  yeah, these are good points. If you're taxing revenue then what do you do in the case of person A who licences the copyright (for nothing) to person B who then makes a living from it. All those loopholes... But it does seem that attaching revenue to a law makes it more likely to get passed. "Screw Disney, we can alleviate budget problems with this..."
- Spivak 10y ago
  > taxing copyright is how to value it, which ranges from wildly arbitrary to completely impossible. It doesn't have to be impossible, you just have to create a system where the copyright holder values it for you. Imagine you decided to have a 1% copyright tax. To maintain your copyright you pay the government some amount of money. That amount will be extrapolated to determine the true value of the copyright. So if you pay 10 million then you get a 1 billion valuation. Here's the catch. In order to incentivize copyright holders to value their IP accurately anyone is allowed to purchase full ownership of the copyright at the value of their valuation. The holder can of course counter a purchase by paying more tax and you prevent predatory buying by requiring the money up front.
  - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
    Consider what you're doing to startups. You've created the next big thing but have little cash, someone shows up with a lowball offer and now you have to take it because you don't have the cashflow to pay the tax yet. There is also the political problem that you would be forcing artists to sell the rights to their art to the highest bidder, even if the highest bidder is their enemy, or a censor who would erase their public image by locking their work in a vault and never showing it to anyone.

cookiecaper 10y ago

There is no doubt that copyright is one of the least discussed but most significant factors in the American economy. Because people who depend on copyright control our political dialogue, they ensure that copyright almost never comes up, because they know the current state is repugnant to anyone who understands the extent of it. In the U.S. copyright will never be "forever". The Constitution requires that the monopoly be granted only for a limited time in order to promote the progress of the Sciences and Useful Arts. Jack Valenti infamously suggested copyright terms of "forever minus one day" in light of this fact. I wouldn't give up hope yet, though. Things change. Interpretation of the law by SCOTUS will eventually shift to more closely approximate the experience of people familiar with modern information technology. Cornerstores of American law like the first-sale doctrine exist because judges in the pre-internet era could relate to and understand the inherent fairness in being able to resell an object that's in your possession. Law affecting the internet is horrible right now because many judges are technically illiterate, but that's gradually improving, and I'm sure as the internet continues to come of age and judges with experience and understanding of it take the bench, we'll start to see much more hopeful outcomes. We're already starting to see this a little bit, with cases like Nguyen v. Barnes & Noble and QVC v. Resultly. Disney may seem like a invincible behemoth today, but they've been close to the brink before, and I'm sure they'll get there again. Nothing lasts forever. Enforcing copyright more aggressively may be a good way to cause a sufficient ruckus to at least get the law revised. In the meantime, the internet affords the ability to deal semi-anonymously, and it may as well be used. This provides protection from suits under some of our insane copyright and network access laws (incorporation doesn't).

Asooka 10y ago
"While taxes are paid" is, technically, some sort of limited time.