blog/draft/2012-copyright-taxing.txt

   1 Title: Why isn't the value of copyright taxed?
   2 Tags: english, freeculture, opphavsrett
   3 Date: 2012-11-17 09:00
   4
   5 <p>While working on a
   6 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
   7 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a>, which talk
   8 about the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
   9 creativity, one thing occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
  10 office to help us make more works enter the public domain and help us
  11 make it easier to clear rights to use copyrighted works.</p>
  12
  13 <p>The idea is partly based on the argument that copyrighted works are
  14 "intellectual property", but the core requirement is that copyrighted
  15 work have value and the tax office like to collect their share from
  16 any value in a country.  Sharing it here to let others think about it
  17 and perhaps shoot it down.</p>
  18
  19 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
  20 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
  21 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
  22 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
  23 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
  24 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
  25 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
  26 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Perhaps it
  27 should?</p>
  28
  29 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it will want a
  30 database of all the copyrighted works and who are the rights holders
  31 for the works, to be able to associate their values to the right
  32 citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such database exist, it will
  33 become a lot easier to find out who to talk to for clearing
  34 permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very hard operation
  35 with todays copyright law.</p>
  36
  37 <p>If copyright causes the citizens to have to pay more taxes, they
  38 will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let the
  39 work enter the public domain or at least state (in the database) that
  40 they do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to use the work.
  41 I assume the copyright law would stay the same, allowing creators to
  42 pick a license of their choosing, and also allowing them to put their
  43 work directly in the public domain.  The existence of such database
  44 will make it even easier to clear rights, and taxing the owners listed
  45 in the database would increase the amount of works that enter the
  46 public domain.</p>
  47
  48 <p>The effect is that the tax office help all of us to get more work
  49 into the public domain and make it easier to get rights to use the
  50 works that have not yet entered the public domain.</p>
  51
  52 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
  53 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they thought of it.</p>