6 ms·

I say go simple on the copyright extension formula. If you treat it as a tax (scaling by revenue or similar), it gets messy, encourages dishonesty, and pretty m

I say go simple on the copyright extension formula. If you treat it as a tax (scaling by revenue or similar), it gets messy, encourages dishonesty, and pretty much forces a new subindustry to spring up. But if you keep it simple, you can achieve much the same result without needing more staff in the tax or copyright offices, or inspiring the existence of copyright lawyers or accountants. Ten years of free protection, then costing $10 × 1.5 ⁿ ⁻ ¹ for each subsequent year. Year 10 costs $0, year 20 about $380, year 30 about $22,000, year 40 about $1,300,000, year 50 almost $75,000,000—and few fifty-year-old things will be worth $75,000,000 per year and growing to retain copyright to. And I doubt any individual work would be worth the $4.25 billion of year 60 (10 × 1.5⁴⁹, incidentally just 1% short of 2³²), so that’s a rough absolute cap of 60 years. You could scale the $10 base figure to inflation, or you could just schedule a review every decade or so, or you could even ignore inflation altogether, which would slowly extend average copyright terms (e.g. year N today would cost similar, indexed, to year N+1 20 years ago). Concerning your registry, I don’t think you want to require a registry for the first ten years, but only for any extensions—and make it that if anyone can prove beyond reasonable doubt that you actually published the thing earlier than the date you claim when you register it, then your work is thrown into the public domain as punishment.

mchusma 5y ago
I generally like this, but think it can be bought for 5 years at a time. Yearly stuff is annoying for everyone. Agree copyright as written is maybe ok for a ten-ish year period. Maybe 5.
- chrismorgan 5y ago
  Could do roughly what most domain name registries do: you can renew for between one and ten years at a time. So if you wanted to pay for years 11–20 all at once, you’d just cough up your $1,133.30 in one go rather than paying it annually as $10, $15, $22.50, …, $384.43.
  - d110af5ccf 5y ago
    I honestly never thought I'd see someone citing the ICANN DNS system as an example of a good thing but in this case I agree, it fits. It's an interesting point. Yearly is terrible for individuals but if you think about it for a tax such as this large blocks are just paying for the smaller pieces all at once. It probably doesn't make sense to offer discounts since the express purpose is to discourage holding the copyright in the first place.
jedberg 5y ago
I like your general concept, but my concern with any fixed fee is that it pushes out small publishers in favor of big ones. A small publisher who is making say $300,000 from their work after 40 years can't afford to register it, but Disney can easily afford the 50 year fee. Also, the reason for registration right away is because otherwise you can't be sure a work is in the public domain or who to license it from for at least however long the no registration period is. If it's 10 years, then you have to wait at least 10 years to find out if someone has a claim on it.
- chrismorgan 5y ago
  I don’t see how it would favour people with money, as it should become simple economics: Disney can afford the $1,300,000 at year 40, but if they project that their revenue from the work will be $300,000 in that year, why would they renew the copyright? They would instead allow it to lapse, and probably get somewhat reduced revenue. Cash flow should be the only situation where people with money could be favoured, and copyright renewal loans would become a thing to smooth that out (though I wouldn’t expect them to ever be common). Registration is a heavy burden that has caused all sorts of pain in the past, and although terms are unreasonable these days I do think that automatic copyright is reasonable. You’re not unsure for ten years, you know for ten years from publication that it’s copyrighted—so you contact whoever wrote it, if you can find them, or you wait and see if not (which would be the case if it was registered anyway, since you can’t predict whether they’re going to renew the thing). Actually, another argument against requiring registration: it strongly favours big publishers, who know the rules and are used to filling in the paperwork, and makes life harder for individuals, especially in the case of unexpected success (“I didn’t bother registering it because it’s been a waste of time every other time and I didn’t expect it to get popular”). After ten years, you’ll have a fairer idea whether your work is of meaningful commercial value, for which the answer is normally “no”.
  - fastball 5y ago
    I think jedberg's point is that revenue generated is not being factored in. So Disney, who effectively has a monopoly on certain popular content can copyright it for a long time because they're making so much money off of it, while a small time copyright owner who is making $10k a year will not be able to make money for very long.
kbenson 5y ago
> or you could even ignore inflation altogether, which would slowly extend average copyright terms Just what we need, a Disney incentivized to cause rampant inflation... I originally thought of that in jest, but honestly putting money is more stable assets or other currencies and supporting and lobbying for inflationist policies would probably be in their best interest, and they're powerful enough that it probably wouldn't be a good thing.
khafra 5y ago
> If you treat it as a tax (scaling by revenue or similar), it gets messy, encourages dishonesty, and pretty much forces a new subindustry to spring up. Not if you treat it as a Harberger* tax. If you do that, the small-time writer gets to keep his characters for a pittance, but Disney pays royally for all their princesses. * https://academic.oup.com/jla/article/9/1/51/3572441 https://academic.oup.com/jla/article/9/1/51/3572441
- chrismorgan 5y ago
  > We propose a remedy in the form of a tax on property, based on the value self-assessed by its owner at intervals, along with a requirement that the owner sell the property to any third party willing to pay a price equal to the self-assessed value. I’m not convinced this would be a good fit for copyright in general, but it sounds very problematic for application to private persons in any field; in this case, your small-time writer would surely either overpay, or undervalue and have their work legally stolen from them by a Disney. Sounds like it’d favour the big entities that can play to the laws of averages. But more generally, Harberger taxation seems a pretty cool concept, a genuine alternative to the current model of capitalism. I’m glad you mentioned it!
- dahfizz 5y ago
  I think the only time a Harberger tax makes sense is for illiquid investments, such as investment real estate. Everywhere else, the forced buying and selling creates more problems than it solves. In this example of Disney's IP - it takes a lot of time and money to make a movie. A competitor to Disney could wait until they announce a new movie and then forcibly buy up enough rights to make the movie illegal to release. It encourages and creates a framework for sabotage among competitors. The steady state is that one mega corp emerges victorious. Disney sets up a script that forcibly purchases any "super hero" adjacent IP. No small time creators would ever be allowed to exist, when large corporations are allowed to smother them so easily. I also strongly disagree that this is the simpler option. Figuring out how to price your property and how often to re-asses would definitely bring about OP's concern of "gets messy, encourages dishonesty, and pretty much forces a new subindustry to spring up."

mchusma 5y ago

I generally like this, but think it can be bought for 5 years at a time. Yearly stuff is annoying for everyone. Agree copyright as written is maybe ok for a ten-ish year period. Maybe 5.

chrismorgan 5y ago
Could do roughly what most domain name registries do: you can renew for between one and ten years at a time. So if you wanted to pay for years 11–20 all at once, you’d just cough up your $1,133.30 in one go rather than paying it annually as $10, $15, $22.50, …, $384.43.
- d110af5ccf 5y ago
  I honestly never thought I'd see someone citing the ICANN DNS system as an example of a good thing but in this case I agree, it fits. It's an interesting point. Yearly is terrible for individuals but if you think about it for a tax such as this large blocks are just paying for the smaller pieces all at once. It probably doesn't make sense to offer discounts since the express purpose is to discourage holding the copyright in the first place.

jedberg 5y ago

I like your general concept, but my concern with any fixed fee is that it pushes out small publishers in favor of big ones. A small publisher who is making say $300,000 from their work after 40 years can't afford to register it, but Disney can easily afford the 50 year fee. Also, the reason for registration right away is because otherwise you can't be sure a work is in the public domain or who to license it from for at least however long the no registration period is. If it's 10 years, then you have to wait at least 10 years to find out if someone has a claim on it.

chrismorgan 5y ago
I don’t see how it would favour people with money, as it should become simple economics: Disney can afford the $1,300,000 at year 40, but if they project that their revenue from the work will be $300,000 in that year, why would they renew the copyright? They would instead allow it to lapse, and probably get somewhat reduced revenue. Cash flow should be the only situation where people with money could be favoured, and copyright renewal loans would become a thing to smooth that out (though I wouldn’t expect them to ever be common). Registration is a heavy burden that has caused all sorts of pain in the past, and although terms are unreasonable these days I do think that automatic copyright is reasonable. You’re not unsure for ten years, you know for ten years from publication that it’s copyrighted—so you contact whoever wrote it, if you can find them, or you wait and see if not (which would be the case if it was registered anyway, since you can’t predict whether they’re going to renew the thing). Actually, another argument against requiring registration: it strongly favours big publishers, who know the rules and are used to filling in the paperwork, and makes life harder for individuals, especially in the case of unexpected success (“I didn’t bother registering it because it’s been a waste of time every other time and I didn’t expect it to get popular”). After ten years, you’ll have a fairer idea whether your work is of meaningful commercial value, for which the answer is normally “no”.
- fastball 5y ago
  I think jedberg's point is that revenue generated is not being factored in. So Disney, who effectively has a monopoly on certain popular content can copyright it for a long time because they're making so much money off of it, while a small time copyright owner who is making $10k a year will not be able to make money for very long.

kbenson 5y ago

> or you could even ignore inflation altogether, which would slowly extend average copyright terms Just what we need, a Disney incentivized to cause rampant inflation... I originally thought of that in jest, but honestly putting money is more stable assets or other currencies and supporting and lobbying for inflationist policies would probably be in their best interest, and they're powerful enough that it probably wouldn't be a good thing.

khafra 5y ago

> If you treat it as a tax (scaling by revenue or similar), it gets messy, encourages dishonesty, and pretty much forces a new subindustry to spring up. Not if you treat it as a Harberger* tax. If you do that, the small-time writer gets to keep his characters for a pittance, but Disney pays royally for all their princesses. * https://academic.oup.com/jla/article/9/1/51/3572441 https://academic.oup.com/jla/article/9/1/51/3572441

chrismorgan 5y ago
> We propose a remedy in the form of a tax on property, based on the value self-assessed by its owner at intervals, along with a requirement that the owner sell the property to any third party willing to pay a price equal to the self-assessed value. I’m not convinced this would be a good fit for copyright in general, but it sounds very problematic for application to private persons in any field; in this case, your small-time writer would surely either overpay, or undervalue and have their work legally stolen from them by a Disney. Sounds like it’d favour the big entities that can play to the laws of averages. But more generally, Harberger taxation seems a pretty cool concept, a genuine alternative to the current model of capitalism. I’m glad you mentioned it!
dahfizz 5y ago
I think the only time a Harberger tax makes sense is for illiquid investments, such as investment real estate. Everywhere else, the forced buying and selling creates more problems than it solves. In this example of Disney's IP - it takes a lot of time and money to make a movie. A competitor to Disney could wait until they announce a new movie and then forcibly buy up enough rights to make the movie illegal to release. It encourages and creates a framework for sabotage among competitors. The steady state is that one mega corp emerges victorious. Disney sets up a script that forcibly purchases any "super hero" adjacent IP. No small time creators would ever be allowed to exist, when large corporations are allowed to smother them so easily. I also strongly disagree that this is the simpler option. Figuring out how to price your property and how often to re-asses would definitely bring about OP's concern of "gets messy, encourages dishonesty, and pretty much forces a new subindustry to spring up."