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2008-02-27 Home Front Economy

If Intellectual Property is actually property, why isn't it covered by a property tax?'

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Posted by 3dc 2008-02-27 02:36|| || Front Page|| [5 views ] Top

#1 (I should point out that this is the Slashdot discussion and not me or my Point of View.)

It will be interesting to see the positions of the two socialists/communists running on the Democratic party on this issue. I am sure Hillary will enjoy any new tax that can be invented.

Posted by 3dc 2008-02-27 02:47|| 2008-02-27 02:47|| Front Page Top

#2 Property tax is the only tax I'm in favour of.

It tends to prevent rent-seeking.

Posted by Bright Pebbles 2008-02-27 06:20|| 2008-02-27 06:20|| Front Page Top

#3 The founding fathers wanted to promote the arts and sciences, but were also loath to the centuries of royal charters and patents that granted generational privilege that was unending. Thirty years was the time when the property went public. If you can't make your money in that that time, you're in the wrong business. The Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act was a classical example of your Congress literally being bought by the gold dumped into their reelection funds. Another reason to quit living in the make believe world of citizen representatives, who plant in the spring, legislate in June or July, and return in the fall to harvest. We can pay the bums a million a year, and maybe, just maybe they'll work for us and not their benefactors. At a million a year, we'll at least get a greater selection in the process and there'll be someone who's hungry enough on their tail to keep them really in line come the next election.

Posted by Procopius2k 2008-02-27 08:19|| 2008-02-27 08:19|| Front Page Top

#4 If sea monkeys are actually monkeys, why don't they eat bananas?

Posted by Thinemp Whimble 2008-02-27 10:29|| 2008-02-27 10:29|| Front Page Top

#5 Instead of a tax, I have long advocated making copyright like the 19th Century US Mining Law (still in use, in modified form).

Anyone can copyright, but they have to retail what they copyright every year, to a certain amount of money, or lose their market protection from others retailing it.

This is like Mining Law, in which you can stake a claim, but you have to either improve that claim or show a profit from it, each and every year, or you lose it.

What this law would do would be to protect the interest of copyrighted materials of high value to a company or individual, but if they just wanted to store it away and not sell it, they would lose government protection of that product.

A good example of this in practice is Mickey Mouse, that Disney makes a lot of money from every year, vs. the Disney movie "Song of the South", that Disney refuses to sell, even though there is considerable market demand for it.

Disney would definitely keep its Mickey Mouse copyright, but they would have a "use it or lose it" decision with Song of the South.

A law like this would mean that the huge libraries of movies, music, and books would *have* to be sold each year by their copyright owner, or else anyone who wanted to could sell them. No more government protection to keep products off the market.

Posted by Anonymoose 2008-02-27 11:28|| 2008-02-27 11:28|| Front Page Top

#6 Might be able to pull this off with patents. Trademarks already expire if unused.

Won't work with copyright due to the Bern Convention, which basically makes your copyright good in every signatory country (nearly all countries that matter). The Convention requires that your local copyright law provide a basic minimum level of protection or you don't get to play, and what constitutes a minimum level is defined more or less by the French. Hence we have longer and longer copyright terms, no formalities, moral rights and other nonsense.

To sum up, if we lose protection under the Bern Convention our copyrights aren't worth much - international markets are bigger than just the US market. And the Convention won't allow us to add requirements to copyright law like the proposed tax.

Posted by Iblis 2008-02-27 16:11|| 2008-02-27 16:11|| Front Page Top

#7 Thinemp Whimble:

If dolphins are so smart then why do they live in igloos?

Posted by Iblis 2008-02-27 16:14|| 2008-02-27 16:14|| Front Page Top

#8 Iblis, you've just described the Chinese. It doesn't work in the international community. And everyone is whistling past the graveyard because no one is really willing to call them on it. It is wonderful however in thumping those within your own border [within reach].

Posted by Procopius2k 2008-02-27 18:14|| 2008-02-27 18:14|| Front Page Top

#9 Procopius2k:

To be fair, the US didn't have much of a copyright law during the 19th century. Most books then came from the UK, and we didn't want to pay perfectly good money to the Brits for something so easily copied for free. Charles Dickens complained bitterly about it when he toured the US.

Now the shoe is on the other foot. Most of the copyrightable media (in dollar terms) comes from the US, and China doesn't want to pay for it. That said, plenty of foreign nations do pay, and our software and media companies would be pretty upset about losing their European profits, for example.

Besides, taxing copyright in the US would do nothing to decrease Chinese piracy, espionage and theft.

Posted by Iblis 2008-02-27 18:26|| 2008-02-27 18:26|| Front Page Top

#10 That said, plenty of foreign nations do pay, and our software and media companies would be pretty upset about losing their European profits, for example.

So what you're saying is we should give up being Americans and enjoy being Europeans [which is what our ancestors came here to get away from] so that 'businesses' can collect levies beyond 30 years?

Posted by Procopius2k 2008-02-27 19:45|| 2008-02-27 19:45|| Front Page Top

23:54 RD
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