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.
-