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Honest question: Why isn't copyright something you simply pay to renew at some exponentially growing rate? You get X free years now and then year X + N costs 2^
by fovc 8y ago
Honest question: Why isn't copyright something you simply pay to renew at some exponentially growing rate? You get X free years now and then year X + N costs 2^kN, for some X and k. That way you internalize the negative externality of locking up interesting works. Disney is happy and estates who choose to renew copyright need to be sure they're doing something with it
- brownbat 8y agoSome have proposed even a token renewal fee to fund a registry, or even a postcard registry, which would eliminate the orphaned works problem while limiting the impact on publishers. Mostly this doesn't work because of the Berne Convention, which made assumptions about how copyrights should work, then enshrined them in a multilateral treaty, which in turn is implemented in a framework of laws among various signatories, making it all now incredibly difficult to unwind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention
- beefield 8y agoI have to study that in more detail, but is there something in Berne convention that prohibits taxation of intellectual property? I mean, I have thought that a country could say that, yes, we do recognize the intellectual property, but if the intellectual property holder is not recognizing and respecting our (tax) laws, we are for sure not going to use a dime to actually enforce that IP.