| rdfs:comment | - Hi Gang, Sorry I’m late to the game on this but I’ve been a bit busy lately. I did have some thoughts on the Copyright tax which I like the idea of, but I think it might prove to be a bit untenable. First-You could tax this property if you wanted to. (Just thinking (Buzz) out loud now-no real research done on any of this.) The Government’s right to grant Copyright protection comes directly from the Constitution, and presumably this question of taxation would only come up as an issue of Interstate Commerce-which The Federal Government can collect on. So we wouldn’t have to worry about which state the work is in, or if it crosses state lines because it would be a Federal, not State, issue (for those two reasons). States pretty much don’t protect copyright because the ‘76 Act grants protectio
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| abstract | - Hi Gang, Sorry I’m late to the game on this but I’ve been a bit busy lately. I did have some thoughts on the Copyright tax which I like the idea of, but I think it might prove to be a bit untenable. First-You could tax this property if you wanted to. (Just thinking (Buzz) out loud now-no real research done on any of this.) The Government’s right to grant Copyright protection comes directly from the Constitution, and presumably this question of taxation would only come up as an issue of Interstate Commerce-which The Federal Government can collect on. So we wouldn’t have to worry about which state the work is in, or if it crosses state lines because it would be a Federal, not State, issue (for those two reasons). States pretty much don’t protect copyright because the ‘76 Act grants protection at the moment of fixation. You just get it from the Federal Government straight away-so state protection is (pretty much) moot. With regards to IP existing in someone’s head a la the Coke Formula-that’s not a problem here. Again, protection is extended (as the Magician pointed out) when it is fixed (again for Copyright only now). The protection is for the content of things, but only after it has been fixed. So there would have to be tangible thing somewhere-even if the thoughts and expressions can be retained intangibly. The real problem I think is deciding who to tax: We all have copyrights on things we have written, but should we all be taxed based on that? Should my blog (which I do have protection for) be taxed simply because its protected? If everyone starts going to because of the insightful reviews of Lost, or the stellar coverage of the Buffalo Bills in the off-season, or just for the charming wit of the author and I can start selling ad space is that enough for the tax to kick in? If that happened, I presumably would be paying taxes already on the revenue I generate-should I be doubly taxed then? Or I if I’m not making any money, but I just don’t want people to pass of my work as their own should I have to pay for that right? Remember-even a Creative Commons License only works because the copyright is already in place, so even giving permissions and limitations to people with such a license doesn’t get around the notion that you are using the copyright protection. Further, if you file at the Copyright Office to retain a record of the ownership of your work (which grants you a few extra perks such as the right to sue in Federal Court) you have to pay a fee-should there be a tax on top of that as well? I’m with you guys, I want there to be some way that major copyright holders who exploit the long protection period for financial gain at the cost of the public domain to either be paying a bit more for that privilege, or to be forced into letting the work go-but I think the collateral damage to smaller publishers could be huge and, at first glance anyway, there doesn’t seem to be an easy workaround. Frank L.
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