7 ms·

A model I like is as such: Copyrights are possible to extend indefinitely. The owner must declare a value every year for their copyrighted material. The owne

A model I like is as such: Copyrights are possible to extend indefinitely. The owner must declare a value every year for their copyrighted material. The owner must pay X% of the material's value per year as tax. The owner can release the copyright at any time. Others may bid to own the copyright. If it is higher than the owner's declared value, the owner must raise their bid to match, or else the copyright is sold to the highest bidder.

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
I'd like a law where the copyright ends as soon as the content is no longer sold.
- _nalply 5y ago
  Then the company would find someone who buys the content whenever they need it.
nynx 5y ago
This is not a good idea. Giant companies could buy the copyrights for all intellectual property and no individuals would be able to own valuable intellectual property.
- _nalply 5y ago
  That's true. Perhaps increase tax such that even giant companies can't afford the copyright after one or two decades. Let's say start with 10% and increase by 2.5% every year. The twentieth year the copyright would cost 60% of the declared value.
- tryptophan 5y ago
  Well, artists only have to sell if they don't think their copyright value is worth the price, so they would be getting nice payouts. Don't really see how it could be a loss for artists, unless maybe they undervalue their own work. Also it would mean that large corps pay for their copyright enforcement, unlike now, when a 1 man book is given the same protections as disney's stuff for the same cost, despite the fact that it costs 1000x more to protect disney.
lotsofpulp 5y ago
Unnecessary complications only add avenues for corruption.
ModernMech 5y ago
Couldn’t a large corporation just bid any competitors out of existence by saying their works are worth absurd amounts that are trivial for them to pay but impossible for a small copyright holder?
ItsMonkk 5y ago
Granting a monopoly on something with zero marginal costs creates massive dead-weight losses for society. Creating that information is a positive externality, so that positive externality should be subsidized. The problem we need to work out is how much value is a particular bit of information worth. This is an idea I came up with, so likely has many issues to be worked out, but the core of the idea seems valid. We need to find out how much people value this information. We know how to get people to bid their actual values. We put IP and copyright and open source software into a Vickrey Auction. To do this you need not ask everyone every bit of IP, you would need to work out a statistically significant sampling of the population. This would be a multiple item auction, so you might have 1000 people in the auction, but only the top 750 bidders would walk away with access. The bottom 25% would have to go the year without. But since they would get access to all OSS and IP that they did not have to sample, they would still win out. The top 75% would, like any other Vickrey Auction, pay the amount of the highest bidder that did not win. Owners would have the option to either keep it secret, or release it into the auctions. As the societal value of the item would be much larger having it open, every IP owner would choose to open it up so that they could get their share of the pot. Once an item has a fairly stable price, you wouldn't have to get a sampling every year for it. You would then either take funds from some other tax, or just print it, and subsidize the owners based on the value that the sampling provided.
curun1r 5y ago
I’d prefer a model where more content enters the public domain rather than the copyright changing hands. Declare somewhat-short, fixed terms (5 years?) for every bit of content. The first term is free and then subsequent terms increase in cost geometrically. The first renewal could be an almost insignificant amount…but just the fact that it’s something would mean most content that is unmonetized would enter the public domain after the initial free term. Successive terms would start to only make sense for the most profitable content. Being able to balance a healthy public domain with the ability for content creators to put out content that costs a ton to produce seems like it should be the goal of the copyright system.

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago

I'd like a law where the copyright ends as soon as the content is no longer sold.

_nalply 5y ago
Then the company would find someone who buys the content whenever they need it.

nynx 5y ago

This is not a good idea. Giant companies could buy the copyrights for all intellectual property and no individuals would be able to own valuable intellectual property.

_nalply 5y ago
That's true. Perhaps increase tax such that even giant companies can't afford the copyright after one or two decades. Let's say start with 10% and increase by 2.5% every year. The twentieth year the copyright would cost 60% of the declared value.
tryptophan 5y ago
Well, artists only have to sell if they don't think their copyright value is worth the price, so they would be getting nice payouts. Don't really see how it could be a loss for artists, unless maybe they undervalue their own work. Also it would mean that large corps pay for their copyright enforcement, unlike now, when a 1 man book is given the same protections as disney's stuff for the same cost, despite the fact that it costs 1000x more to protect disney.

lotsofpulp 5y ago

Unnecessary complications only add avenues for corruption.

ModernMech 5y ago

Couldn’t a large corporation just bid any competitors out of existence by saying their works are worth absurd amounts that are trivial for them to pay but impossible for a small copyright holder?

ItsMonkk 5y ago

Granting a monopoly on something with zero marginal costs creates massive dead-weight losses for society. Creating that information is a positive externality, so that positive externality should be subsidized. The problem we need to work out is how much value is a particular bit of information worth. This is an idea I came up with, so likely has many issues to be worked out, but the core of the idea seems valid. We need to find out how much people value this information. We know how to get people to bid their actual values. We put IP and copyright and open source software into a Vickrey Auction. To do this you need not ask everyone every bit of IP, you would need to work out a statistically significant sampling of the population. This would be a multiple item auction, so you might have 1000 people in the auction, but only the top 750 bidders would walk away with access. The bottom 25% would have to go the year without. But since they would get access to all OSS and IP that they did not have to sample, they would still win out. The top 75% would, like any other Vickrey Auction, pay the amount of the highest bidder that did not win. Owners would have the option to either keep it secret, or release it into the auctions. As the societal value of the item would be much larger having it open, every IP owner would choose to open it up so that they could get their share of the pot. Once an item has a fairly stable price, you wouldn't have to get a sampling every year for it. You would then either take funds from some other tax, or just print it, and subsidize the owners based on the value that the sampling provided.

curun1r 5y ago

I’d prefer a model where more content enters the public domain rather than the copyright changing hands. Declare somewhat-short, fixed terms (5 years?) for every bit of content. The first term is free and then subsequent terms increase in cost geometrically. The first renewal could be an almost insignificant amount…but just the fact that it’s something would mean most content that is unmonetized would enter the public domain after the initial free term. Successive terms would start to only make sense for the most profitable content. Being able to balance a healthy public domain with the ability for content creators to put out content that costs a ton to produce seems like it should be the goal of the copyright system.