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Fine, I'll take a stab at some numbers. Copy Right : Automatic, limit to 20 years. For more than 20 years each YEAR a tax of 2^(years of copyright, starting a

Fine, I'll take a stab at some numbers. Copy Right : Automatic, limit to 20 years. For more than 20 years each YEAR a tax of 2^(years of copyright, starting at 21) dollars PLUS 2^(Cyears - 20)% sales. Thus for year 21 this would be ~2million + 2% of sales. Year 25 would be ~33.5 million + 32% of sales. Year 26 would be 64% of sales, and year 27+ would be pointless. Trade Mark : Unlimited number of years, BUT, must be filed every year. Some sort of small filing fee per mark (more costly than the government processing, this is also to protect name-space pollution) plus 1% (* edit: n%) of sales on any TMed product. EDIT: * The additional tax per product should just be a flat n%, maybe even less than 1%. The administrative overhead of having different tax rates outweighs any benefits with my initial thoughts of a cap at 2%. Character and Likeness things would all file under the consumer protection of Trade Mark. Patents do not exist anymore, in the modern age no patent describes the 'useful art' in a way that is useful to anyone practicing that art in the scientific / applied engineering fields who should benefit from it, so it is unconstitutional by definition. Discuss and adjust the copyright duration and post-free copyright numbers according to real incentive (IMO even 20 years is too long and should be ramped down to more like a decade, but the 'back end' of exponential fee increase should be stretched out to around 30 years total). Ah also, REGISTRATION of the copyright should lead to triple (actual) damages for infringement. Registration would also include filing with the National Library and an association of libraries, an archive copy of the work with is unencumbered by copyright and free of any 'DRM' or other 'protection mechanisms'; to be 'unsealed' after it becomes public domain.

zarzavat 3y ago
I like this idea. If companies want to own the commons they should pay a tax to us as compensation. The current system is one of unlimited freeloading, we give away our commons for free and Big Mouse makes the $$$.
- dcow 3y ago
  Yes. We’re getting royally ripped off. This is where you need to start the thought train to get people to see that fundamental change is needed. Everything else is downstream from the fact that people don't understand they’re giving away ownership of common property to others for free. It’s absurd.
opportune 3y ago
I like your copyright idea in general even if I think maybe the formula could be tuned a bit. And I agree with your reasoning about patents although I don’t know enough about other industries to know if something patent-like may still be necessary (for example, as much as we hate big pharma for charging huge amounts on patented medicine, they probably do need a guaranteed payoff to incentivize the massive cost and risk of going through FDA trials). I don’t think trademarks need to be taxed like that, basically every single consumer product has a trademark and I’m positive you could work around the nested trademark thing. I think trademarks are good to disincentivize fraud or misleading consumers (you shouldn’t be able to infringe <highly trusted brand> with low quality crap), the problem is the legal system allows frivolous application of trademark, like one company suing another for using the same common word (eg Monster) in a tangentially related domain, or another company trying to enforce trademark of something that shouldn’t even be in scope of trademark, like a color. Especially for trademark I think we need to prevent its weaponization for anticompetitive/extractive purposes, more than we need to restrict or disincentivize its legitimate use. That probably requires some really clever lawyers with expertise moreso than HN comments
- mjevans 3y ago
  Thinking about TM more: * Corporations / Individuals, should pay more _per mark_ when they file for more marks. Again, I don't even have a good idea of an initial proposal for the fee, just a good reason for wanting that. The more brands, characters (names attached to types of likenesses) and products locked up the less space there is for competition and innovation. Also, again, this isn't supposed to start out as a huge cost, it should be reasonable for an individual to have a trademark or two on something they're trying to create as a brand. Maybe smaller groups (including of 1 / individual) could have a lower registration fee on their first N terms. However this also needs to be balanced against effects we currently see with patent trolls. Human review (with a HIGH bar for pass!) and a requirement for a real product that consumers can purchase should be hard requirements. * The additional tax per product should just be a flat n%, maybe even less than 1%. The administrative overhead of having different tax rates outweighs any benefits with my initial thoughts of a cap at 2%.
  - 3y ago

zarzavat 3y ago

I like this idea. If companies want to own the commons they should pay a tax to us as compensation. The current system is one of unlimited freeloading, we give away our commons for free and Big Mouse makes the $$$.

dcow 3y ago
Yes. We’re getting royally ripped off. This is where you need to start the thought train to get people to see that fundamental change is needed. Everything else is downstream from the fact that people don't understand they’re giving away ownership of common property to others for free. It’s absurd.

opportune 3y ago

I like your copyright idea in general even if I think maybe the formula could be tuned a bit. And I agree with your reasoning about patents although I don’t know enough about other industries to know if something patent-like may still be necessary (for example, as much as we hate big pharma for charging huge amounts on patented medicine, they probably do need a guaranteed payoff to incentivize the massive cost and risk of going through FDA trials). I don’t think trademarks need to be taxed like that, basically every single consumer product has a trademark and I’m positive you could work around the nested trademark thing. I think trademarks are good to disincentivize fraud or misleading consumers (you shouldn’t be able to infringe <highly trusted brand> with low quality crap), the problem is the legal system allows frivolous application of trademark, like one company suing another for using the same common word (eg Monster) in a tangentially related domain, or another company trying to enforce trademark of something that shouldn’t even be in scope of trademark, like a color. Especially for trademark I think we need to prevent its weaponization for anticompetitive/extractive purposes, more than we need to restrict or disincentivize its legitimate use. That probably requires some really clever lawyers with expertise moreso than HN comments

mjevans 3y ago
Thinking about TM more: * Corporations / Individuals, should pay more _per mark_ when they file for more marks. Again, I don't even have a good idea of an initial proposal for the fee, just a good reason for wanting that. The more brands, characters (names attached to types of likenesses) and products locked up the less space there is for competition and innovation. Also, again, this isn't supposed to start out as a huge cost, it should be reasonable for an individual to have a trademark or two on something they're trying to create as a brand. Maybe smaller groups (including of 1 / individual) could have a lower registration fee on their first N terms. However this also needs to be balanced against effects we currently see with patent trolls. Human review (with a HIGH bar for pass!) and a requirement for a real product that consumers can purchase should be hard requirements. * The additional tax per product should just be a flat n%, maybe even less than 1%. The administrative overhead of having different tax rates outweighs any benefits with my initial thoughts of a cap at 2%.
- 3y ago