+
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
+by 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. To ensure that copyright
+holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
+requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
+copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
+correct right holder.
+
+
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.
+
+