I hadn't heard before about Harberger's work from 1965, but circa 2004 I was inspired to come up with a similar idea but with a twist after reading someone's Sl

I hadn't heard before about Harberger's work from 1965, but circa 2004 I was inspired to come up with a similar idea but with a twist after reading someone's Slashdot sig that said something like "If copyrights are property, why aren't they taxed?". As I wrote in 2004: https://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/AchievingAStarTrekSociety.html https://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/AchievingAStarTrekSoc... "As an alternative to a direct buyout of media companies or other major copyright holders, since the copyright bargain has been broken now that copyrights are effectively indefinite in duration, copyright holders could be asked to pay an annual 5% tax on the value of their copyright. This value could be a self-assessed buyout value which anyone could pay to place the work into the public domain -- essentially, it is an amount at which the rightsholder would be happy to accept in exchange for returning the copyright to the public domain. Presumably copyright holders would review their portfolio for profitability and future use and only the most important copyrights to their business would be kept and paid for annually. Those copyrights which were maintained would have current contact information for potential licensors available through the IRS or a delegated copyright contact information management authority. Assuming the value of all strategic copyrights in the US would be self-assessed at a trillion dollars (a wild guesstimate) then this might bring in another $50 billion a year, to help offset the chilling effects, prison costs, court costs, enforcement costs, rightholder searches, missed opportunities for derivative works, and so on that effectively indefinite copyrights impose on society."