[HN Gopher] What's entering the public domain on January 1
___________________________________________________________________
What's entering the public domain on January 1
Author : sohkamyung
Score : 179 points
Date : 2021-12-30 08:45 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| hericium wrote:
| Public Domain banned in China in 3... 2...
| reedf1 wrote:
| This kind of thing is always so exciting, especially for mediums
| like comic books where classic characters can finally be
| deconstructed.
|
| Also - did anyone else read the title think "Winne-the-Pooh,
| Ernest Hemingway Classic?!"
| MichaelMoser123 wrote:
| Today i learned, that there is a latin translation of Winnie the
| Pooh. https://www.amazon.com/Winnie-Ille-Pu-Latin-
| Milne/dp/0140153... It even became a bestseller, and appeared on
| the list of New York Times bestsellers. Is it known, if
| translations of the work need to pay for copyright too?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Yes it's used in lots of schools.
| MichaelMoser123 wrote:
| Fascinating detail. My father used the book to teach me some
| English as a second language, the book is written in a clear
| and simple language. I wonder if these qualities have been
| preserved in the translation.
| shakna wrote:
| The spine on my Latin translation is far too tattered for
| me to crack open and scan an example page, but, yes. It's
| very, very simple and easy to read.
|
| One of the peculiarities of the translation, that makes it
| so simple to read, is that it opts to use genderless words
| where possible. Using words like "illi" instead of "eae"
| for example.
| kragen wrote:
| Only in the US; Pooh was published in the UK, and there, it
| doesn't enter the public domain for several more years yet,
| because the UK sentences copyrighted works to life plus 70 years.
| Christopher Robin died of old age 25 years ago, never ceasing to
| hate the books, and his daughter (A.A. Milne's last descendant)
| died nine years ago, but still you can go to jail if you share
| your copy of the Pooh books with a friend using a computer.
| pwdisswordfish0 wrote:
| Huh, this really surprised me, because Winnie The Pooh shipped
| for free with Apple Books when that came out, and I thought it
| was precisely because it was so old. So Apple actually licensed
| it then?
| kragen wrote:
| I haven't seen the contract paperwork, but I assume so.
| charcircuit wrote:
| How do you go to jail if there is no one to sue you?
| shakna wrote:
| Winnie-the-Pooh hasn't belonged to the Milne estate for a
| very long time. Most of the rights rest with Disney. The
| estate has been involved in a multi-decade legal battle to
| get the books back, so that they could be released to the
| public domain.
|
| Source - I'm a Milne.
| [deleted]
| kragen wrote:
| You can't go to jail in the US or most countries for a civil
| case (a civil case is what happens if someone sues you), only
| a criminal case. Since the No Electronic Theft act, even
| copyright infringement without profit motives can be criminal
| copyright infringement, and so for example Aaron Swartz was
| hounded to suicide by state prosecutors even against the
| apparent will of the copyright holders.
|
| I don't know who owns Milne's copyrights, but given how
| profitable they are, I am sure they are jealously guarded.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| I would be _very_ surprised if the Disney company wouldn 't
| be protective of their adaptations, at the very least. How
| would that interact with the book and its illustrations
| entering the public domain?
| kragen wrote:
| It's going to be interesting. Most of the copyright
| infringement going on is clearly of Disney's adaptations;
| so, for example, when a couple sold me a house in 01999
| with a Pooh painting on the wall of the children's room,
| that was probably criminal copyright infringement of
| _Disney 's_ version, because the painting looked nothing
| like the illustrations in the books. (And I'm sure she
| didn't get a license from Disney to do her painting.)
|
| This legal situation is appalling; it makes a mockery of
| justice and humanity.
| [deleted]
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| https://longnow.org/ideas/02013/12/31/long-now-years-
| five-di...
| Jon_Lowtek wrote:
| > _that was probably criminal copyright infringement_
|
| sounds more like "Fair Use", unless you imply the
| painting was made for the purposes of commercial
| advantage or private financial gain. As in: they painted
| it right before selling and used the image to advertise
| the house to young couples.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Actually getting jailed for copyright infringement is quite
| difficult, but getting sued is quite likely: the copyright is
| now owned by Disney. Like everything else.
|
| (Weirdly, the UK has a special law granting _permanent_
| copyright in Peter Pan, with the royalties going to Great
| Ormond Street children 's hospital.
| https://www.gosh.org/about-us/peter-pan/copyright/ )
| lr1970 wrote:
| > Actually getting jailed for copyright infringement is
| quite difficult...
|
| May be actually getting in jail is difficult but a threat
| of jail in a criminal copyright infringement persecution
| can be devastating as the tragedy of Aaron Swartz [0] so
| vividly illustrates [1].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Swartz
| kragen wrote:
| Hopefully it isn't _actually_ quite likely that you will
| get sued for copyright infringement just for copying some
| files onto a USB stick. That would involve the use of
| something like Apple 's dystopian surveillance system being
| used for copyright enforcement, which I think is still two
| or three years out.
| mountainb wrote:
| Copyright was intended to provide a means of support for
| individual artists, not as a means of guaranteeing profits to
| super-conglomerate shareholders for a period that nears on a
| century.
| WalterBright wrote:
| "they contain some subtle humor suitable to both adults and
| children"
|
| I enjoyed them as a child. As an adult, I discovered the sly
| humor in them, which I like very much.
|
| The first season of Spongebob had a lot of sly adult humor mixed
| in, which I enjoy a lot, too. Later Spongebob seasons seem to
| have lost it.
| ykevinator2 wrote:
| Copyright laws have outlived their useful laws. We give 72 years
| of public funded enforcement for leisure and entertainment but
| only 17 years for patents. This has overly incentivized leisure
| and created irrational wealth in exchange for very little work.
| We worship football players while biochemistry majors with a
| bachelor's degree struggle to find jobs.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >We worship football players while biochemistry majors with a
| bachelor's degree struggle to find jobs.
|
| you think people idolize sports figures because of copyright?
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I think they're just pointing out that it's part of a larger
| cultural trend.
| DnDGrognard wrote:
| WTF do "football players" have to do with Copyright laws?
| unityByFreedom wrote:
| Lifetime of the author plus some time seems fair to me for
| copyright. And for patents, that's an exchange, the public sees
| the details and provides protection for some years.
|
| My major gripe is with software patents which are already
| covered by copyright.
| grishka wrote:
| No, it's anything but fair. Those heirs did nothing at all.
| Why should they benefit from these works? On the opposite,
| copyright should not be transferable.
|
| It should last maybe several years, and that's it. Only then
| most people would have any semblance of respect for it. And
| then something entering the public domain would be actually
| an event people would be looking forward to. Right now
| everyone considers copyright to be an effectively eternal
| thing.
|
| It's also really depressing that the entirety of our pop
| culture is copyrighted, mostly by large faceless
| corporations.
| castwide wrote:
| Heirs benefit because intellectual property is inheritable
| in the same way as any other property, such as real estate.
| If I owned a valuable copyright, I'd certainly want my
| children to get it in the event of my death. (Though I
| still agree that copyrights endure longer than they
| should.)
| Veen wrote:
| > It's also really depressing that the entirety of our pop
| culture is copyrighted, mostly by large faceless
| corporations.
|
| But if those faceless corporations hadn't paid for our pop
| culture to be produced and distributed, it wouldn't exist.
| grishka wrote:
| No, it would exist but it would be different because it
| would have been produced for self-expression, not profit.
| thesimon wrote:
| Why is it fair? After you are dead, no copyright protection
| can convince you to write more books. After you are dead,
| there is no point in protection.
| DnDGrognard wrote:
| So you cannot provide for your children then? you basically
| saying that on death the state should confiscate for
| example your house.
| Scandiravian wrote:
| A copyright holder will already have earned money on it
| during a fixed time period.
|
| Your argument is a straw man. Why should author's have a
| different right to provide for their children more so
| than other professions?
|
| There's something inherently unjust in protecting the
| works based on the death of the original author. A 25
| year old will, on average, enjoy a significantly longer
| period of protection than a 75 year old.
| jtbayly wrote:
| So the 25yo with a wife and child finishes a book, signs
| with a publisher, and dies.
|
| The book sells a million copies and the publisher refuses
| to pay the widow and child anything because the work is
| now in the public domain. Justice has been done?
|
| I think a simple period of time, like 7 or 14 years, or
| even 50, makes more sense.
| mopsi wrote:
| If money was already made, then it should go to
| descendants. However, I see no reason why further copies
| made after death should get taxed in favour of
| descendants for 70 years. What do they have to do with it
| anymore? What value do they provide to justify the
| compensation?
| jtbayly wrote:
| What value do they provide? Their existence is in all
| likelihood one of the reasons the author put pen to paper
| in the first place. It _is_ rewarding the author and
| encouraging creative work to be able to pass on ownership
| of creative works just like other belongings.
| izacus wrote:
| The widow and child get a pension, just like all other
| widows of non-authors. Widows and children of other
| people don't get the right to receive wage from work
| perpetually so it's insane that we're supposed to pay
| wages to authors families for decades and decades.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Because he never got paid for his work?
|
| What you are saying is that all of the benefit goes to
| the publishing company, not the public. Not really.
|
| The reality of normal people is that a big part of the
| reason they work is in order to provide for the people
| they love. This is why copyright exists in the first
| place--to protect the motivation to produce creative
| work, knowing that the benefit won't be stolen from you.
| Knowing that if you die, the benefit to your children is
| immediately forfeit actually reduces the willingness for
| people who aren't misanthropes to take on that risk.
| DnDGrognard wrote:
| How ?
|
| Most pension systems only allow minimal contributions to
| third party's about PS3.6k in the UK and the USA's 401
| system is to be blunt a bit crap.
| DnDGrognard wrote:
| Or an author has a disabled child who will require
| support for life?
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >Your argument is a straw man. Why should author's have a
| different right to provide for their children more so
| than other professions?
|
| I'm pretty sure that people from other professions can
| leave their property to their children as well, and that
| property does not suddenly become a public good a set
| amount of time afterwards.
| mopsi wrote:
| I'm sure Levi's wouldn't mind a small license fee every
| time you wore jeans, but fashion designers - and most
| other professions - actually don't get the same
| privileges.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| you can sell copyright for $____ and that's it.
|
| but I guess in whatever wonderful country you live in
| there are no such things as landlords, or perhaps its a
| dystopian hellhole because there isn't any government
| enforced property rights so warlords just grab whatever
| real estate they want? Just trying to get my head around
| this analogy you were making.
|
| on edit: I see you completely changed your comment from
| being an example with real estate to being something with
| Levi's.
| mopsi wrote:
| Real estate works the same way. Why are you not paying
| builders a license fee every time you enjoy the fruits of
| their labor that protect you from rain and wind? Builders
| get only a microscopic fraction of the value that their
| commercial building or a factory produces over its
| lifetime. Is this fair or unfair?
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| so now that we're off the real estate analogy - you
| picked Levis - a clothing brand and fashion design? It
| seems a weird argument to make that authors shouldn't
| have copyright on their books while using as the
| counterpoint another industry that is also protected by
| copyright https://copyrightalliance.org/education/qa-
| headlines/copyrig...
| mopsi wrote:
| From your link:
|
| > The way that design elements are cut and pieced
| together is not protected by copyright. The U.S. Supreme
| Court recently addressed this topic in Star Athletica v.
| Varsity Brands, stating that copyright affords "no right
| to prohibit any person from manufacturing [clothing] of
| identical shape, cut, and dimensions."
|
| Levi's in particular has distinct cuts that they are
| famous for. Should we start embedding RFID tags in jeans
| to collect licensing fees every time you wear them in
| public?
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| since you just quoted the part saying that is one of the
| things not covered by copyright I guess the answer would
| be no?
|
| I'm sorry but are you under the impression that
| everything an author does is covered by copyright, that
| is to say there is nothing an author does that they will
| be unable to copyright?
|
| on edit: at any rate Levi's cuts etc. are trademarked
| https://iptica.com/register-clothing-brand/levi-patents/
| DnDGrognard wrote:
| Why is "unjust" and wanting some thing for free is not a
| valid legal argument here.
|
| And TBH with all due respect trotting out rhetorical
| devices like "straw man" does sound like sealioning.
| notahacker wrote:
| Before you are dead, you might want to be able to get a
| cash advance from a publisher even though you might die
| before they sell enough copies to recoup their investment.
| midasuni wrote:
| Why does it seem fair?
| unityByFreedom wrote:
| Because you deserve to be compensated for your work. And
| maybe there is value in allowing you to sell your work for
| continued publication and protection against copying. The
| idea is that copyright encourages quality content. I don't
| know what the exact duration should be, but lifetime of
| author as a basis plus some time seems fair to me.
| midasuni wrote:
| Why more than lifetime? Why not lifetime? Or 59 years? Or
| 27? Or 13? Or 6 months?
| xfz wrote:
| Does it even have to be their lifetime? 50 years from
| creation should suffice and they can put some of the
| profits during this time into a personal pension plan
| like the rest of us have to.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| 50 years is too long. It is basically saying everything
| culturally relevant from someone's youth should not enter
| the public domain until they are pretty much dead. At
| which point no one is going to car about the copyrighted
| material.
|
| 20 years seems like a sufficient term, I would even go
| for 10 or 15. Creators were still creating before
| copyright terms were extended to infinity.
| hajile wrote:
| Thought experiments are inherently thoughts.
|
| The argument is actually that copyright encourages more
| public works without regard to quality.
|
| Copyright should be for a fixed number of years so that
| everyone receives equal benefit and that time period
| should be closer to 10-20 years rather than a hundred.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| How's enforcement public funded? Don't infringers pay court
| costs?
| xfz wrote:
| It's indirectly funded. The state passes a law granting a
| monopoly, and the copyright holder can sue for a breach.
| However this relies on the state providing courts, police,
| jails etc. (for people who breach court orders).
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| 17 years is far, far too long for many patents. I'd hate to see
| what science looked like if we made this even longer.
| paraknight wrote:
| There's a difference. If you invent a character or create some
| art and it gets popular, you deserve to be protected from
| people making money of off that work, to a reasonable extent
| (fair use etc).
|
| The difference to patents is that they're routinely abused.
| Patent trolls file or buy up patents that are as general as
| possible to drag smaller companies through the courts, or
| charge exorbitant licensing fees, stifling innovation. Pharma
| companies build monopolies around life-saving drugs and engage
| in price gouging. The patent holders get rich, not the biochem
| majors. Extending the effective period for patents will make
| things worse, not better, as the real problems are elsewhere.
| grayfaced wrote:
| Trademark law is what protects your character after the
| copyright expires. Mickey Mouse is safe. It would allow other
| companies to sell Steamboat Willie (as is), but it wouldn't
| allow them to make a derivative work and sell it as "Mickey
| Mouse".
| djbebs wrote:
| No you don't deserve anything. Just like a rice farmer
| doesn't deserve to have a monopoly on selling rice to the
| village he lives in.
| Veen wrote:
| Rice farmers have a monopoly on the rice they grow--if
| someone else takes it without permission and sells it they
| are considered thieves. But it doesn't really make sense to
| compare physical goods and creative goods like that. You
| can't "copy" rice in the same way you can copy a novel;
| rice doesn't need copyright.
|
| The reason copyright was invented in the first place was to
| encourage creative work by allowing the creator to profit
| from it for a period. It aims to balance potential benefits
| --the one that accrues to the creator and the one that
| accrues to the general population once copyright expires.
| You might think that the creator does not deserve any
| benefit from their creation, but most creators would
| disagree with you.
|
| Code is a possible exception. The benefits of open source
| development may greatly outweight the benefits that would
| accrue to an individual developer if the code couldn't be
| copied, but I'm not sure that the balance is the same for
| novels and movies. I suspect many valuable creative works
| would simply not be created if the creator had no way to
| benefit.
|
| Perhaps we need a more nuanced discussion that considers
| the actual benefits/harms of copyright periods on
| particular artforms and creative endeavours.
| beardog wrote:
| Ironically in some jurisdictions, you can patent crops.
| Patent != copyright of course, but it is related as in
| this case it would partly be used to prevent sale of the
| same type of rice.
| djbebs wrote:
| Have you ever heard of farming? It's this new technology
| that let's people copy grains of rice, just like copying
| a book.
| Veen wrote:
| Farming is not like copying a book. I just wasted a fair
| bit of time commenting about how farming is not like
| copying a fucking book and the implications that arise
| from that. But apparently you didn't bother to read it,
| are too thick to understand it, or simply prefer to
| respond with cretinous sarcasm, so I won't waste my time
| any further.
| Zigurd wrote:
| Disney owning what amounts to a controlling share of mass
| culture is roughly comparable to patent trolls. The copyright
| clause that enables copyright law is about protecting
| creators from rogue publishers. It was never meant to control
| what individuals could do with copyright protected works,
| short of publishing for profit.
| hajile wrote:
| Are you implying then that copyright is not routinely abused?
| Big companies do this all the time (eg, Google v Oracle or
| the Unix lawsuits).
|
| There's fan fiction of almost every character you can
| imagine. Can you name even ONE fan fiction you'd rather
| consume instead of the original author's work?
| Uehreka wrote:
| Millions of people seem to have purchased the Fifty Shades
| books/movies, and some portion of them did not read/watch
| Twilight, so...
| marcodiego wrote:
| IANAL, current public domain rules are basically:
| - author explicitly uses public domain as a license, -
| 120 after publication, - 120 after registration,
| - 95 years after publication if it is corporate work or
| - 75 years after the death of the author; whatever comes first.
|
| Most significant arguments I hear defending current copyright
| status are: - author have the right to make money
| from what they create, - their children must still get
| some of it in the case their parents are authors and die early.
|
| I still think the time for content to become public is too long.
| There are old music recordings from the 50's and 60's which
| nobody is making any significant money out of it and you simply
| can't copy to anybody. The same applies to a lot of games from
| the 90's and the 80's.
|
| I think that it would be much more fair if copyright holders had
| to prove they are still making money out of a published work. If
| very little money is being made, this means nobody is paying for
| it or the copyright holder can't sell it well. In this case, the
| content should be declared abandoned and free to be copied unless
| the copyright holder demonstrates that money can be made with the
| content.
|
| Reason: abandonware sites are on the fringe of legality, GOG was
| able to contact a few producers but that is not an easy or even
| possible task for everything. There are also music from early
| 1930's to 1960's for which it is not easy to even know who are
| the copyright holders and you fall on the fringe of legality if
| you distribute sheet music of it.
|
| Also, there are other kinds of works: books, films, cartoons...
| jkepler wrote:
| For anyone interested in a Christian theologian's ruminations on
| whether copyright laws are just or actually prevent people from
| loving their neighbor, see "Copyrights and Copying: Why The Laws
| Should Be Changed" by Vern Poythress (Westminster Seminary,
| Philadelphia), https://frame-poythress.org/copyrights-and-
| copying-why-the-l....
| johnhowardstein wrote:
| robin_reala wrote:
| Keep an eye on https://standardebooks.org/ebooks on January 1st
| for some upcoming goodies.
| midasuni wrote:
| After an initial period of a few years 7 or 14 sounded good to
| the US founding fathers), Copyright holders should declare the
| value of their copyright, and have to pay an escalating fee based
| on that value (1% per year for the first 10 years, 2% per year
| for the next 10 years etc) as a tax.
|
| If anyone wants to put the work in the public domain, they simply
| have to pay the value the company declared.
|
| Disney could declare Star Wars is worth $5b, as it's 40 years old
| they'd have to pay say $150m a year tax to deny the rights to the
| public.
|
| If they declared it to be worth $50m to save on that tax, then
| netflix could pay for it to go public domain.
| snarf21 wrote:
| We should just drop to 50 years. Most people have a working
| career of 50 years. Having 50 years to earn off your creation
| seems fair to everyone.
| bacchusracine wrote:
| >Having 50 years to earn off your creation seems fair to
| everyone.
|
| Everyone? Hold on there a moment, Jack.
|
| I'm a copyright minimalist. Seven years with one renewal for
| a total of fourteen years seems much more fair to me
| considering all the years we've already had of continually
| delayed releases into the public domain. We the people have
| paid to enforce those years of copyright without the
| corresponding payoff at the end of the term release to the
| public. There's nothing fair about that situation and it
| needs to be addressed.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Way too unnecessarily complicated. Just reduce copyright terms
| to 10 years, maybe 20, and be done with it.
| koheripbal wrote:
| It has the added benefit of generating tax revenue and
| incentivizing the government to protect copyrights both
| domestically and internationally.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Income tax generates tax revenue just as well, and the
| government's incentive to protect copyrights domestically
| is the fact that it is the law. Internationally is a matter
| of politics, but I do not see a clear black and white
| answer for why copyright would need to be enforced
| internationally.
| Beldin wrote:
| > _Income tax generates tax revenue just as well_
|
| Income tax generates tax revenue. Whether it's "just as
| well" as other forms of taxing is debatable. In at least
| some countries, wealth is taxed less than labour, which
| increases a class distinction. Less income taxes in
| favour of other taxes may redress that balance.
|
| Or it may not - economists and ouija boards can give you
| predictions.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Sure, but I do not see the purpose of creating a special
| tax scheme just for copyrighted works. If you want to hit
| everyone with a wealth tax, then do it the same way for
| all assets.
| johnhowardstein wrote:
| throwawaycities wrote:
| > Copyright holders should declare the value of their
| copyright, and have to pay an escalating fee based on that
| value (1% per year for the first 10 years, 2% per year for the
| next 10 years etc) as a tax.
|
| I hope this doesn't come as a surprise but copyright holders do
| in fact declare the amount of money generated on their
| copyright and pay taxes on it annually, it's called...taxes and
| it's usually going to be a minimum of 10x all the way up to 40x
| your suggested rate.
|
| Realistically for a company like Disney to pay $150M/year on
| Star Wars would be a joke and drop in the bucket compared to
| the amount of taxes attributable to Star Wars annually. All
| this would do is benefit big business that brush off those
| extra costs and harm new properties that couldn't afford these
| taxes to protect their copyrights.
| newsclues wrote:
| I think the suggestion is to put a buy it now price on
| everything so that it can be liberated.
| kaibee wrote:
| It also creates a disincentive for holding onto IP without
| using it. Its kind of an LVT on intellectual property. I
| like it a lot.
| bruce511 wrote:
| Can you define "liberated" here?
|
| Because I'm thinking the effect is the opposite on things
| that are already liberated - I'm thinking specifically of
| GPL protected freedoms...
| brownbat wrote:
| > copyright holders do in fact declare ... and pay taxes on
| [IP]
|
| Or they sell the IP to a shell company in a tax haven and
| lease it at an artificial price, so the balance sheet shows
| no profit or even a loss. It's one of the largest sources of
| tax evasion out there.
|
| A system like the one midasuni proposed would actually be an
| interesting patch for the tax system.
|
| Here's a similar (but different) idea from some IP law
| professors: https://www.uclalawreview.org/pdf/62-1-1.pdf
|
| It's not perfect or fully fleshed out. Derivative works would
| raise a bunch of questions. And you couldn't use one
| regulatory framework for all different types of intellectual
| property, obviously, even though different kinds of IP can be
| used in this sort of tax dodge.
|
| It's a proposal to enrich public access to orphaned works
| while closing a major corporate tax loophole. Saying "all
| this would do is benefit big business" is a surprising take
| here. It'd probably have some unintended consequences, any
| change this big would. Might be unworkable in practice. But
| it certainly wouldn't ONLY help big corporations. A ton of
| ordinary people would benefit immediately from something like
| this.
| lekevicius wrote:
| This is quite similar to Harberger Tax.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Harberger
| rhino369 wrote:
| That is a very interesting idea. But I think you would want at
| least a 14 year grace period with no property tax.
|
| Another possibility is a use-it-or-lose-it scheme like that
| used in Trademarks. If you built a game that is now
| abandonware, it should be fair game for someone else to
| remaster it, etc.
| notahacker wrote:
| This would probably work better for the big conglomerates than
| the status quo. The tax would be less than the royalties they'd
| no longer have to pay to the actual creators, because emerging
| artists aren't able to afford to pay tax up front in the hope
| someone will eventually offer them a big advance.
| efsavage wrote:
| I've long advocated something generally like this, for patents
| and other IP as well. I would propose a longer initial term
| (~30-50 years) since the nature and value of IP has changed
| significantly since the 1700s. I would also put an upper limit
| on it, since the most valuable IP is now held by immortal
| corporations.
|
| The hard part for copyright is tracking what has been renewed
| and what has not, without some kind of registration system,
| which I don't think we want to add. Without this, it would make
| it very difficult to know if the work you intend to
| use/copy/distribute is protected or not.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Don't see why the government should be profiting so much out of
| that.
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| Copyright only exists because the government uses its
| monopoly on violence to protect it. Why should it not get a
| decent cut of the pie after a decade or so?
|
| The average property tax is about 1%, so why should copyright
| be treated as something special? Especially, if the rent is
| collected by a third party that purchased the rights, their
| relationship to the creation of the underlying asset is no
| different to a landlord.
|
| I'd dispense with this self-valuation business though and
| just charge a 1% tax on net present value of the asset.
|
| If the copyright holder releases their claim early, then
| they'll get a tax refund for previous payments at the
| recalculated net present value.
| missedthecue wrote:
| " _Why should it not get a decent cut of the pie after a
| decade or so? "_
|
| well i guess it depends on if you view the government as a
| profit seeking entity trying to maximally price its IP
| protection product, or if you view it as societal
| infrastructure.
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| Society works when people feel better off within than
| without, when that's not true, then people stop
| respecting laws and generally act asocial.
|
| Copyright holders get an excellent deal by living in a
| society that allows them to collect rents that can add up
| into the millions of even billions.
|
| But how about the work-a-day folks? What's in it for
| them? An abstract idea that allowing the descendants of
| creators to collect economic rents for generations after
| their death, might result in a greater throughput in
| creative works... somehow. No, for society to work, then
| rent seeking must be reigned in.
|
| A copyright wealth tax would still allow rights holders
| to become fabulously wealthy, but they'd have to give
| something back in return. Something more than normal
| income tax, because of the rent seeking nature of their
| enterprise.
| missedthecue wrote:
| I'm not sure if I would call profiting off of an
| intangible invention or creation "rent". Is profiting by
| selling other property rent? Such as your labor? Or your
| used car?
|
| It's a lot easier to steal your music or your blueprints
| than it is to steal physical property, but that doesn't
| change the fact that it's all still property, at least in
| my mind. And society seems to work best when theft is at
| a minimum.
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| If I build a bridge across a river and setup a toll
| booth, then yes, I should expect a return that reflects
| the capital, time, and risk I took in constructing the
| bridge. However, when I abuse my monopoly over the bridge
| to extract a return in excess of that, then I'm seeking
| economic rent.
|
| Renting out a property is (by definition) a form of rent
| seeking, but it only becomes a problem when rent seekers
| have monopolistic market power as the rents they seek
| cannot be restrained by normal market forces. One only
| needs to look at the consolidation of the movie industry
| to see such power in action.
|
| I'm not defending intellectual property theft, I'm (quite
| modestly) suggesting that rights holders should pay a
| surcharge (similar to real property taxes) in return for
| the state allowing for them to extract monopolistic
| profits from their copyright holdings.
| laumars wrote:
| Far more complicated and harms the little players far more than
| the current system.
|
| Any law has to treat everyone equally otherwise it's always
| going to be the Disney's et al who win.
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| It might help to think about the idea that the "little"
| players here are the public who, in aggregate has the largest
| stake in the game but who simultaneously has the lowest
| financial stakes and the least monetary incentives to lobby
| for their real interests.
|
| I say that as someone who has produced a whole lot of content
| at the least-monitizable end of the system.
|
| Disney is the one who is winning right now, both in terms of
| me "as a content creator" and me "as a member of the public".
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Every time the copyright law is discussed, little players and
| harm done to them is always brought in the conversation. In
| practice, however, the corporate media behemoths are the ones
| who benefit most from these laws.
|
| It's 'think of the children!!' argument of the IP laws.
| iovrthoughtthis wrote:
| i'd prefer it work like mario kart tbh, easier for the little
| co, harder for the big co
| laumars wrote:
| That's nearly impossible to do though because the bigger
| the company the more resources they have to figure out
| loopholes and then to exploit them. And the more profitable
| exploiting those loopholes becomes thus the more tempting
| it is to act first then beg for forgiveness later.
|
| It's not even as if anti-competition laws have much effect
| these days. There's a real culture in the US of acting
| dishonourably and then asking for forgiveness later. And
| more often than not, the punishment for breaking the law is
| significantly less than the profit earned from those
| unlawful acts. So they're incentivised to be unlawful.
|
| This is why you need clear rules that equivalent regardless
| of income so everyone is clear where the line is drawn; but
| penalties that are weighted so that rule breaking cannot be
| gamified.
| wholinator2 wrote:
| I've had this (admittedly naive) idea for a while now:
| what if there were a way to declare fines for corporate
| offenses based on a percentage of the money earned from
| committing such an offense? This percentage could be
| greater than 100% to ensure it is never incentivized to
| break the law. The main issue is determining how much
| money a corporation made based on a decision. This would
| require statistics and analysts and the minimum possible
| fine should be the minimum possible fine currently
| imposed by law.
|
| The whole shell corporation, off shore tax haven bullshit
| would probably make this infeasible but is there actually
| anything that can stop that? I don't have any good ideas,
| but I know corporations should not make money off
| breaking the law.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > what if there were a way to declare fines for corporate
| offenses based on a percentage of the money earned from
| committing such an offense?
|
| That basically sounds like "actual damages", which is
| already the norm for calculating penalties in civil
| suits.
|
| > This percentage could be greater than 100% to ensure it
| is never incentivized to break the law.
|
| ... and "actual damages" is by definition 100%, though
| you can get higher than 100% by adding on "statutory
| damages."
|
| (You can see this as applied to copyright infringement in
| 17 USC SS504:
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/504).
| bsenftner wrote:
| Easily gamed: the big company creates a new, tiny company
| that owns assets but is buried in debt and loopholes any
| such regulation.
| verve_rat wrote:
| Nah, a wholly owned subsidiary is not a magic shield
| against legal liability. Legislation with phrases like
| "beneficial ownership" can fix that stuff.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Seems similar to a release or buyout clause often used in
| sports.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buyout_clause
| mr_toad wrote:
| I don't want to have to declare some "value" on my code and
| then actually pay some real money on the off-chance it might
| become valuable later on.
|
| I appreciate that copyright is often abused - milked - for all
| it's worth. But I think your proposal goes too far. As bad as
| it is copyright has some uses. With copyright I can apply a GPL
| license and attempt to conjole others to contribute to the
| greater good.
| koheripbal wrote:
| If even the author cannot value the product, even after the
| initial 10 years, the it _should_ fall to public domain.
| bruce511 wrote:
| so, to be clear here;
|
| You're suggesting that Copyleft licenses should be _public
| domained_ after a short period of time, or the copyright
| owner should pay a tax?
|
| So, let's take say the Software Freedom Foundation. They
| should declare a value on the GNU Tools - and if say
| Microsoft is prepared to pay that value then all GNU tools
| should be public domain - meaning they can be used in say
| Windows (as closed compiled binaries?)
|
| Alternatively the FSF needs to come up with some % of value
| to prevent MS from using their work under a closed license?
|
| I mean, copyright works both ways right? It's equally
| protecting those that want to commercially profit from
| their work, and also those that don't want it to be used in
| a "non freedom" way. So, assuming most GPL authors aren't
| swimming in cash, this would make more-or-less all GPL'd
| works lose their freedoms?
| esrauch wrote:
| You obviously disagree but it seems very reasonable to me
| that 20 year old FSF code should fall into the public
| domain including for Microsoft or MomAndPopSoftwareCo or
| whoever to use.
|
| Note that they still couldn't just take the current grep
| or vim or whatever code and use it; copyright on later
| revisions isn't based on the first published moment of
| the same project.
|
| Instead the code has tons of changes made within the past
| 20 years and all of those deltas will still be covered by
| copyright. Microsoft could only be able to take the code
| of grep as it was as of 2001. I actually kind of doubt
| they would, but if that much time has passed and
| something is still useful it should belong to everyone
| and not just one person.
| AuthorizedCust wrote:
| Why do so many proposals to increase liberties come with a new
| tax?
|
| The government isn't some beast we have to appease. It's us! If
| we want to reform copyright, we don't need to bribe ourselves
| with a new tax.
| esrauch wrote:
| Taxes (and tax deductions) are generally one of the best ways
| to align incentives. If it's a binary condition then you have
| tons of derelict content that should really be public domain,
| but because of the big ticket well-maintained Disney content
| the laws are written to be "reasonable" for that content and
| it ends up unnecessary locking up all of the other content
| from the 1970s
| nsgi wrote:
| How would you value the product of a startup, or some open
| source software that doesn't make any money but the creator
| wants to use a copyleft license for? Also, how would this work
| internationally? Would you have to pay a proportion of the
| value to the US government even if the US is a small market for
| you?
| tlbsofware wrote:
| My guess would be that after the initial period of no taxes
| if the company wasn't able to turn a profit on the patent
| then they would have to either sell the patent to avoid taxes
| or list it as a value that they would manage to be able to
| pay taxes and start raising money, might help with
| patent/copyright squatting
| izacus wrote:
| What kind of "startup product" is 15 or 20 years old and has
| been unchanged since then?
|
| That would be older than Google for example.
| bhelkey wrote:
| > That would be older than Google for example.
|
| Google was incorporated in 1998 [1]. To be fair, the patent
| for PageRank has since expired [2].
|
| [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150623193037/https://www.
| googl... [2] https://patents.google.com/patent/US6285999
| quags wrote:
| Ideally, in a perfect world this makes sense but will not work
| in reality. This just gives a way for any larger player to
| easily get something in the public domain from a smaller player
| with less resources. The tax concept is a good concept, maybe
| like how we have large banks under more scrutiny over a certain
| level - but this may lead to small IP companies that just hold
| ip in order to get below the threshold. Star Wars LLC licensing
| to disney to be under whatever threshold is designed. Copyright
| in reality should protect the smaller players from the bigger
| players, a 30 year time frame for an author to profit before
| the public domain, so a company can not horde IP makes more
| sense.
| samwillis wrote:
| Interesting idea, although I want to understand why do this?
| What is fundamentally wrong with the current system, I honestly
| want to know?
|
| Also, this is a tax on unrealised gains is it not?
| omgitsabird wrote:
| I would think that long lasting copyrights stifle innovation
| and competition.
|
| Where is the incentive to do something new or to allow new
| players an ability to use works in a new way?
| vaylian wrote:
| > What is fundamentally wrong with the current system, I
| honestly want to know?
|
| Consider all those works that are in the public domain and
| that can be shared freely. Iconic pictures like the Mona Lisa
| are available to the benefit of everyone. No one owns the
| exclusive rights and everyone has access to this shared
| cultural history.
|
| There's also collateral damage with the current copyright
| system. A lot of lesser known works have little
| commercial/brand value. But they remain illegal to share.
| These works are at risk of becoming lost culture. And in many
| cases the original authors don't own the rights to release
| the works into the public domain at an earlier time, because
| they have contracts with publishers.
| MereInterest wrote:
| To add to this, many works are simply unavailable. Works
| from before copyright became effectively perpetual are
| easily found. Works from the most recent decade or two are
| easily found. Anything in-between is frequently lost, with
| only the outliers remaining.
|
| https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120330/12402418305/why-
| m...
| dmitriid wrote:
| > What is fundamentally wrong with the current system, I
| honestly want to know?
|
| It effectively locks away cultural heritage for more than a
| hundred years with no tangible benefit to the society.
|
| Disney became Disney because it used works in public domains
| (Brothers Grimm tales) and expired copyrights (Alice in
| Wonderland). Current copyright laws effectively blocks anyone
| from using 20th century works (and some _late 19th century_
| works) for ... well, anything, really.
|
| Additionally, great swaths of culture are simply lost because
| of:
|
| - the fear of potential copyright violations. This affects a
| great number of orphan works
|
| - copyright holders doing nothing with their properties and
| others not being able to do anything with them. Can't find it
| now, but at one point Amazon carried more new books with
| works from the 19th century, than books with works from the
| 20th just because of that
|
| But even that isn't the main problem. Copyright was intended
| to protect the author and incentivize them to create other
| works. I'm eagerly awaiting Tolkien's new works in 2047 (the
| copyright on The Fellowship of the Ring expires in 2050).
| consp wrote:
| If there are no gains, the option is to release it or value
| it as nil and let someone else do it. So it's up to the owner
| of the copyright and I see no real unrealized gains tax.
| samwillis wrote:
| Say you own the copyright on an old film you made, but are
| doing nothing with it (and making practically nothing) but
| plan to in the future (you have a plan to in say 10 years
| time). You are projecting that the value of the IP is
| something based on what you plan to do with it.
|
| So it is 100% a tax on unrealised gains.
|
| I complexly understand why some people will not be
| sympathetic to this.
| aasasd wrote:
| Pooh written by Hemingway would probably feel quite weird.
| Zigurd wrote:
| Damn. Bother.
| [deleted]
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