While working on a +Norwegian +translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig (76% done), +which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles +creativity, one idea occurred to me. The idea is to get the tax +office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help +make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.
+ +I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays +presentation +from John Perry Barlow, and concluded that it was best to put it +in writing for a wider audience. The idea is not really based on the +argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the +core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright +holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value +controlled by the citizens in a country. I'm sharing the idea here to +let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of +arguments.
+ +Most valuables are taxed by the government. At least here in +Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property, +the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our +stocks and other valuables are all added together. If the tax value +of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some +taxes for these values. And copyrighted work have value. It have +value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the +work. But it is not included in the tax calculations? Why not?
+ +If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to +maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the +rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works +value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes. If such +database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to +for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very +hard operation with todays copyright law.
+ +If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes, +they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let +the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders +one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the +database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to +use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that +work. Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the +tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens +tax calculation. I assume the copyright law would stay the same, +allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also +allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain. The +existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights, +and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system +would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.
+ +The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to +get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public +domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .
+ +Why have such taxing not happened yet? I am sure the tax office +would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.
+ +