Taxing Copyrights?

Should copyrights be taxed so that socially valuable work with little economic value is forced into the public domain?:

Copyright this, by Dallas Weaver, Commentary, LA Times: Jon Healey correctly points out that the debate over intellectual-property theft is complex because we are often dealing with "non-real properties." These properties cost nearly nothing to produce, and an infinite number of people can use the same property at the same time. And yet, we still want to treat them as if they were "real" property.

Significantly, some of these non-real properties have major effects on human welfare. Take, for example, the formula for "oral rehydration therapy," a mixture of salt, sugar and water. Although it could potentially be copyrighted, it has saved more lives in the Third World than almost anything else. The world is lucky that this formula is in the public domain, not copyrighted and subject to use charges that people who need it couldn't afford.

The present system treats these copyrighted works as a funny kind of real property with no carrying costs, taxes or significant fees. Without carrying costs, copyrights remain in force almost forever - even though, over time, the demand for the copyrighted material can fall to almost nothing. As the demand decreases, ... it becomes effectively unavailable to, as the Constitution puts it, "promote the progress of science and useful arts." Witness all the copyrighted books, scientific journals, audio works and visual works that are out of print or otherwise unavailable because copyright law prevents the new, low-cost methods of distribution from being utilized.

In the scientific field, this has devastating effects on the advancement of human knowledge - which is just the opposite of the intent of copyright law.

As a member of a scientific journal's editorial board - and as a senior citizen - I see reams of manuscripts that just reinvent the wheel. Because the whole scientific enterprise has become so complex that non-electronic research is effectively impossible, many young scientists don't know and can't find out what has already been done from older, copyrighted, paper-based literature. This results in a huge waste of resources. The same can be said for copyrights in creative areas such as music and writing, in which older works with limited distribution could be built upon to "promote the progress of science and useful arts."

A solution to determining which works are in the "Mickey Mouse" category of copyrights and which are in the more socially valuable "oral rehydration therapy" class of work is not feasible for a government bureaucracy. However, if all copyrights were taxed at a fixed (but significant) amount per year to maintain the copyright..., there would be a significant carrying cost and most of the copyrighted material would revert to "public domain" and become available to "promote the progress of science and useful arts." As intellectual property and copyrights become an even more significant part of our economy, and as copyright holders ... make claims of "stealing" as though it is real property, it should be taxed. Relative to copyrights' significance in our economy, the amount of revenue from this source should be in the hundreds of billions of dollars per year.

With a proper tax system, publishers like the L.A. Times or scientific journals may maintain a copyright for only a year or so before letting the content revert to public domain and letting Google and everyone else utilize the material for its small, but socially significant, remaining value. The human enterprise could continue to build on itself ... creative ... ways, with copyrights only applying to a small subset of this enterprise.

It should also be noted that some of the most valuable and significant intellectual property and creative works can't be copyrighted. For example, Mickey Mouse is copyrighted, but E=MC² could not have been. Which was truly the more significant creative work?

I'm not so sure about this. If I have something in my house with sentimental value - a real piece of property worth something to me but worth nothing to anyone else - people shouldn't be able to take it just because it has no market value. Should a song with sentimental value but no market value - it was a hit briefly 30 years ago but nobody else cares now but you - be any different? If someone takes an apple off of my tree and it magically replaces itself instantly so that I have lost nothing, why should I care? Why should I care if the song falls into the public domain and someone else sings it? Isn't it the same as the apple since placing the song in the public domain doesn't stop me from singing it?

Perhaps not. What if someone else sings the song in public and it's terrible - it appears on YouTube, it is widely ridiculed, and it becomes known you were the author. It seems like the creator of the song should have some control over how the song is performed. If the copyright was purely to protect market value, then I might be in favor of something like this, particularly work with academic value (though I haven't thought it through completely). But I think copyrights are more than that, they also allow for control over how works are used, and a "significant" tax on copyright protection would force some works to lose this type of protection.

Comments

[pgl]

Copyrights are a form of monopoly power. If the tax discourages their use by driving up the price of the product (a big if I'll admit) then we get less use not more. Some would advocate ending the monopoly power, which would lead to lower prices and more use.

[reason]

Aren't both Mark and PGL ignoring the real point of the article, the very real scientific cost of copyrights. (By the way he does clearly confuse patents and copyrights in the article). I think the issue is complex, particularly in a free society. Maybe there should REALLY be a sliding scale of what can be charged for the copyright over time. After all the way to make money from a copyright is normally to produce lots of copies.

[Bob]

I have a question for the group. Don't we already have taxes on copyright? If Disney sells a pair of mouse ears, the value of which is tied to the value of Disney's copyright on Mickey, it pays a state sales tax (where applicable) and federal and state income taxes. No? And the tax is "progressive", that is, it's based on how much value Disney can wring out of the franchise (and boy can they wring it out). Am I wrong here?

The larger point of whether patent and copyrights last too long and whether companies have learned to keep them nearly forever is completely different and deserves more consideration. But it seems to me that copyrights are already taxed.

Bob

[save_the_rustbelt]

Gee, this is really bad writing - I doubt anyone will steal this copyright.

Why do we always want to muck up the tax system to solve problems (real or imagined). The left needs a new playbook.

[Marcus Pivato]

Bob: It is true that Disney pays taxes on sales of copyright-related merchandise. But the tax it pays is directly proportional to the revenue generated. In other words, Disney only really pays tax on the `commercially valuable' copyrights it owns. Weaver's point is that the vast majority of copyrights have little or no commercial value (although they may still have social value). Taxing these commercially valueless copyrights will encourage their owners to release them into the public domain, instead of hoarding them. Weaver's tax would not significantly alter Disney's policy towards its high-value copyrights like `Mickey Mouse'.

Mark Thoma considers the hypothetical scenario where a song I wrote is performed badly, parodied, or publicly ridiculed; shouldn't I be able to stop this? The answer is no. Blocking parody (or simply bad performances) is an infringement of freedom of speech. In principle, all of us would like the power to prevent people from saying offensive and hurtful things. But in practice, such power could be far too easily used to censor people. It is probably impossible to construct a law which prevents parody or ridicule which could not also be used to censor legitimate criticism. Furthermore, do we even _want_ to prevent parody? Some of the best cultural products of our time are satires of pop culture icons (e.g. most of the funniest jokes on `The Simpsons'); should the `owners' of the pop-culture icons be able to block such satire?

What about imitative works? What about `tribute bands' or `fan fiction'? If some wannabe author wants to write an unauthorized `Harry Potter' sequel, or if some indie band wants to perform a cover version of `Stairway to Heaven', they should be able to do this ---as long as they make it clear that these are unauthorized tributes, so that consumers can always easily distinguish the `real' J.K. Rowling or Led Zeppelin from the pale imitations. To block such imitative works is to stifle an important genre of creative expression.

The important thing is that J.K. Rowling or Led Zeppelin retain the `right of attribution' ---in other words, they must be legally recognized as the original author of the work. This is the central principle of academic research. I am quite happy if my research is made freely available ---indeed, I want it to be as freely available as possible. I am even happier if other people `imitate' my work ---as long as they cite my prior publication. In other words, my only desire as an academic is that I am recognized as the original author of that research.

PGL has observed the real problem here: copyright (and patents) are not really `property' at all ---they are monopoly rights. Creative works are public goods: they are nonrival and (without copyright or patents) nonexcludable. The government grants and enforces these monopoly rights because it believes that otherwise these public goods would be underprovided, because the authors of creative works would not be financially rewarded.

But government-enforced monopoly is only one way to provide public goods, and perhaps it isn't the best approach. Using modern communications technology (i.e. the internet), perhaps we could create a system whereby the consumers of a creative work could pay the author some small amount (e.g. a dollar). Think of this as the electronic equivalent of putting a dollar in the guitar case of a busker on a street corner. Call this `micropatronage'. An artist could immediately release a creative work into the public domain, (reserving only the `Right of Attribution') and then collect the revenues from the resulting micropatronage.

The financial viability of the `micropatronage' model is already proven, because this is exactly how many buskers make their living. If people are willing to put a dollar in the guitar case of a stranger in a subway station, surely they would be willing to electronically send a dollar to their favourite band or author ---if only there was a simple way to do this (i.e. with virtually zero transaction costs). The major advantage of the micropatronage model is that it avoids the massive legal overhead of recognizing and enforcing copyrights. It also obviates the massive market distortions which inevitably result from any form of monopoly power.

[reason]

Bob...
No you have it wrong, you have to read the article in full. Essentially it is arguing that you a maintenance fee for keeping old copywrites, to encourage their early expiry.
Rusty...
He is not really talking about a tax, but about a fee. Perhaps he is trying to sucker us progressives with the word tax, but really it is a user fee. That should sucker you conservatives.

[Alex Tolley]

Why not just change the rules and shorten copyright instead? Copyrights have now been extended to 75 years in the US - a ridiculously long period. Why not just have copyrights for 20 years as per the patent system, or even a shorter period?

[ddt]

I'd like to see a 10 year limit on copyrights or patents across the board. To my mind , the only justification for the protections is to allow someone to get their idea to market, after that I don't think they deserve monopoly on the idea.

The IP regime is either going to have to radically adjust, or fail in the face of China. The Chinese just don't seem to believe in intellectual property. They have counterfeited entire cars and light rail systems. I am told that it is common practice for many factories to do an unauthorized extra run of product after completing the order, in order to sell domestically. There are factories in china solely dedicated to producing fake Microsoft holographic seals of authenticity, and 80% of the Chinese government's computers run pirated windows.

The situation faced by developing countries does seem unfair to me. How can one country basically 'own' many of the scientific advances of the last 50 years? We don't have to pay a Chinese company licensing fees for every piece of paper or gunpowder produced, so why should they have to license processes for manufacturing medicines etc.?

[reason]

ddt..
No I think we need a wider intellectual debate on this. If we are really heading for an "information society" and 3-D Copiers and the like, then owning copywrite is going to be come the only feasible way to make a good living. That sucks, not least from the point of view that it will result in endless lawsuits and chronic spying, as well as making us even more of a lotto society than we already are.

[Danack]

"What if someone else sings the song in public and it's terrible - it appears on YouTube, it is widely ridiculed, and it becomes known you were the author. It seems like the creator of the song should have some control over how the song is performed."

You wouldn't have much recourse even now if the terrible performer claimed that he was making a parody of your performance.

http://www.publaw.com/parody.html

Either protecting your song is worth the tax to you or not. If it is then you can prevent this, if not, you shouldn't be able to prevent people from using the song for zero cost to yourself.

[mike]

Same logic applies to vacant, undeveloped land. Do you want a federal land tax to get this resource into better use? (There are some constitutional issues regarding any sort of federal property tax -- which the copyright tax would be -- but we will assume those away for the moment.)

[reason]

Mike...
I'm wondering what you are trying to say here? That a registry maintainance fee is illegal? After all the "property" is a fairly artificially created property right in the first place. Is copyright mentioned in the constitution?

[Patricia Shannon]

I have read that the result of the lack of protection for intellectual property rights in China is that there is a lack of new music and scientific innovation.

For the arts, 20 years is way too short for copyright protection, given the length of time it can take for a work to become profitable. Although that can also happen in the sciences. There should be a limit. 75 years may be too long.

Being a songwriter, I have first hand experience. It usually takes me many hours, over a period of weeks, months, in one case 3 years, to get a song "complete". (Even then, I am likely to improve it later). I spend time performing my songs at songwriting critiques, where I have to hear my "babies" criticized, in order to try to get the best song I can. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. To produce a recording that you would want to listen to requires the time and expertise of people who have spent years practicing their instruments (including vocal performance). It requires the expenditure of money for musical instruments, sound and recording equipment, the services of such professionals as those who can "master" a CD, so you don't have some songs recorded much louder than others, for example. Most recordings lose money. If publishers and recording companies could not make enough money on the occasional exceptions, they would go out of business. Even getting a good enough recording to use as a demo to send to music publishers costs several hundred dollars. I certainly can't afford to invest money in promoting my songs if I have no chance of making enough money to make the gamble worthwhile.

[Noni Mausa]

Marcus Pivato: ...The government grants and enforces these monopoly rights because it believes that otherwise these public goods would be underprovided, because the authors of creative works would not be financially rewarded...

It's a sticky problem, and has been for a long time. I come at it from the angle of creative people -- writers, musicians, artists.

These days the produce of all three can be copied and broad cast within minutes. It is not true that they "...cost nearly nothing to produce...", they require time and attention and skill, lots of it. To get any of these artists to the point they can begin doing high quality work requires years of preparatory work.

A doctor puts in similar levels of work, and is paid handsomely. An artist, when they begin to produce high quality work, have no such remuneration.

Are artists valuable to a nation? Yes. The way in which they are valuable varies, It is not just a matter of profit or entertainment, but image. And except for a few unusual successes, (1% or less?) the importance extends beyond any monetary repayment or support to the artist.

Here is an example: As Canadian philosopher and writer J.R. Saul said in a 1995 paper "Culture and Foreign Policy", "... not being a player in international communications today implies disappearing from the planet. It isn't simply a lost cultural and financial opportunity. It is a major problem for foreign policy. Countries dependent on American structures to present them will be visible only as much and in the way that structure wishes. A handful of slightly larger countries have images which go beyond their culture. But that is the result of aggressive military policies of the sort we avoid. Or of high-profile involvement in regional crises.

Culture is therefore the face of Canada abroad. To the extent that foreign policy is dependent on foreign public recognition -- an identifiable image and a sense at all levels of what we stand for, what kind of society we are, what we sell -- that policy is dependent on our projection of our culture. What is more, we are more dependent on that cultural projection than a handful of larger countries who are our allies and our competitors and have other ways of projecting their image." http://tinyurl.com/32ajfa

So, conceding the value of cultural produce, why the poor reward? The underpayment of original creators is so widely known that in order to get bank loans, most artists have to present themselves as having some other, more stable, source of income such as dishwasher or taxi driver. Obviously, copyright law doesn't do the majority of artists a damn bit of good. But their efforts do the rest of society a lot of good, and continue to do so for decades or even centuries.

A possible way around this problem would be to dedicate a small part of the tax base to stable, reliable remuneration for artists. How this would be apportioned is difficult but not insuperable -- possibly a structure similar to funding and support for Olympic and other athletes.

Let me make mention that I have a small stake in this discussion, having had a book published a few years ago. It has a modest circulation although it was well received, and as far as royalties go the numbers are just about up to the level of buying me a beer every month or so.

However I am also registered with the Canadian Public Lending Rights Commission, which compensates registered authors for the presumed losses of sales due to the book being present in public libraries. Over the past four years, a check has appeared each February, and the cumulative value of those checks is about equal to what I was originally paid in royalties. Despite the tiny size of the check, it is a mark of legitimacy and an encouragement to further work.

Noni

[reason]

So Patricia Shannon,
are you in favour of the logic of the article. That you pay to renew your copywrite (perhaps paying less to start with). That way if its a flop you would stop paying, but would gladly pay for a classic?

[reason]

Noni...
I think the cost almost nothing to produce refers to the copies, not the original.

[eightnine2718281828mu5]

---
Is copyright mentioned in the constitution?
---

copyright clause in US Constitution

---
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
---

[hari]

I think the article is simply begging the issue. In other words, the advent of information technology/globalization, concepts based on intellectual rights have been turned on their heads. I'd go further, and argue, it's NOT the copyright law which is the problem, stupid, it's our inability to cope with advances in IT and its infinite reach...

There're good knowledgeable guys here (from Silicon Valley) who can provide some technical basis of understanding the dichotomy between what's called intellectual property...and its valuation at cross-cultural transfer.

BTW - not long ago - we est. a global "intellectual property" institution (Geneva) for the purpose of bringing some global order on how to protect such property rights. I've no idea what they're up to now days...

[reason]

So the limited Times could be set to 1 month? Constitutional problem solved.

[reason]

So the limited Times could be set to 1 month? Constitutional problem solved.

[Noni Mausa]

reason said: Noni...I think the "cost almost nothing to produce" refers to the copies, not the original.

Quite right, I understood that. But treating the original artist as an externality is to try to make wine without yeast. True, you only need a pinch of yeast for 5 gallons of wine, but without it you have nothing.

Noni

[robertdfeinman]

A couple of examples to show the current status of rights protection.

In a documentary a woman in the film was walking down the street when her cell phone rang. She had programed it to play part of a pop song. The producers had to pay $1500 for the "rights" for this to appear in the movie. If they hadn't they wouldn't have been able to get the required insurance that all films need if they are going to be shown commercially.

A noted copyright attorney discussed this and said the use was protected, but the costs of going against the system make it too expensive to risk the chance of not paying. This isn't even copyright, it's extortion.

J.K. Rowling is suing to prevent a fan from publishing a dictionary of Harry Potter trivia. She claims copyright extends to the characters (which it doesn't). Copyright law specifically permits critical works, parodies and other "fair use" adaptations. Once again it is the extortionate threat that is being attempted. In this case the author of the dictionary has chosen to fight and has several noted legal scholars supporting him.

As for scientific material, Harvard has just announced a program where all scholarly material published by its staff will be made available online. It can continue to be published in journals, but how that is done will be under the control of the publishers.

In physics there has been a free, online distribution system in place for several decades and it hasn't affected the parallel publication system. Most faculty (and promotion committees) want to see their publications appearing in a prestige journal. This has nothing to do with knowledge and everything to do with career advancement. Unless universities adopt a new way to judge faculty this in unlikely to change.

As for the claim that many workers are re-inventing the wheel because they can't find the prior work, this is not the fault of the restricted publications. It is a failure on the part of researchers to do adequate investigation before they embark on a project and on their funders as well for allowing them to proceeded without an adequate literature search. Even if the publications are inaccessible, the vast majority of them are indexed and can be found through the usual bibliographic searches. Perhaps what is needed is a course in how to use a library...

Any researcher in a commercial lab who undertakes an expensive study without first checking for prior work is going to be on the hot seat if all his work turns out to have been already patented.

If copyright was put back to a limited number of years (it used to be 28) and then it was required that it be renewed, the issue of orphan works would not arise. Any work that failed to be renewed would enter the public domain. The fee for renewal would be the type of charge being suggested, although the amount is nominal these days.

Orphan works, which are still under copyright, but where no one can determine who holds the copyright, are the biggest concern at the moment. It is stopping Google, for example, from scanning a good part of the holdings that they want to add to their digital library.

The real scandal has to do with patents. It's not duplicate research which is the issue, it is allowing firms to "patent" life, seeds, important drugs and then charge extortionate amounts that is the problem.

[hari]

The other (social) point, he raises, is with this new generation of copy-cats!

You see it, here, in basic economics, how easy it is to misuse knowledge. In physical sciences, there's a lot of problem protecting (original) intellectual property. I recall, at IBM Lab, in Lidingo (Sweden) this same question was raised before Microsoft became a competitor.

How do you maintain a lock on knowledge, today, I don't know. With a click of a mouse, info is passed across the globe...just as in hi fi.

[reason]

Robert D Feinman,
I don't disput that patents are the bigger problem. And the problem is more basic. Patents are stopping science from working properly. Science not "inventions" are the main driving force of progress. Science and the patents do not mix, because the process of science is open and cooperative and the logic of patents (at least pre-patent) is secretive and competitive. Any view of human nature that doesn't see that BOTH competition and co-operation are important is wide of the mark. Hyper-competition is just as unproductive as collectivism.

[hari]

While promoting technolgy transfer in pharma sector, in India, I ran into US patent requirements on "generics" and OTC drugs. As you know, today, India is the bulk supplier of basic chemicals and pharma products. How did this develop?

Well, you just have to click on DR Naidu's Lab (Hyd) to find out the history of their entry into US patented pharma product markets. FDA finally approved their products and allowed competition with US Pharma Co. Diabetes is one area in which the Indians have done remarkable product development in lab. And, don't forget, they hire ph.d. chemists in 000's to work independently on product development, and once FDA was able to codify their excellence, the rest was simply pricing in US and EU markets.

[eightnine2718281828mu5]

---
It is a failure on the part of researchers to do adequate investigation before they embark on a project and on their funders as well for allowing them to proceeded without an adequate literature search.
---

Maybe we should eliminate the US deficit problem by storing a single copy of the tax code at the IRS facility in DC and charging people for both access to the code and for violations if they fail to adhere to it.

Obviously anyone afoul of the law is the culpable party since they didn't exercise appropriate due diligence in filing their tax returns.

[The Baron]

There is a good essay by John Ewing, the Executive Director and Publisher of the American Mathematical Society.

From that site:
"For the past several hundred years, publishers have promoted a simplistic view of copyright. Copyright is a matter of fairness to authors, they argue. Authors own their creations and therefore should be free to control them. But the history of copyright and its underlying philosophy contradicts that simple view. Copyright is not about fairness to authors; copyright is about balancing interests, including the interest of the public."

I would just like to add, using Disney as the example, because they are such a blatant target, where would Disney be if the original heirs of the authors of all of their plagiarized works had been given the same copy controls that Disney is demanding for itself? Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Hunchback of Notre Dame, etc.?

The point being that no one creates a work in a vacuum. If you write a book, a story, a song, even this blog post I am putting down, all comes from what society, and the public domain has given. It is your responsibility, even duty, as a creative individual to give over those works after a reasonable time period so that your peers and posterity can use and reuse them in their own creative works. Only thus, can creativity spread and expand. And this world is far too bleak and constrained as it is to do anything to prevent beauty and light from increasing at the best rate we can encourage it.

Spider Robinson wrote a great short story called Melancholy Elephants That I would hope anyone, on either side of the copyright debate, will take the time to read.

[acerimusdux]

Mark Thoma said:
"But I think copyrights are more than that, they also allow for control over how works are used, and a "significant" tax on copyright protection would force some works to lose this type of protection."

I think this is a good point. A better example might be something like the GPL which is important to the open source software movement. The GPL depends on a work being copyright protected. The copyright holder (the author) then licenses it under a license which allows other developers to modify and make improvements, as long as they also make their code freely available.

Because the code is not public domain, it can't be stolen and used for commercial purposes in ways that don't make further innovations available to the community. If open software developers, who often aren't getting paid for their work, had to pay for this protection, I suspect many would simply release the code into the public domain.

Another issue might be how to value the wide range of copyrighted works for taxation purposes. A tax based on actual sales is really a sales tax. It doesn't sem to be practical to charge a fee for every copyrighted work. Anything you create can be copyright protected. Every photograph you take, picture you draw, paragraph you write, etc.

I think a more practical implementation for this suggestion might be to keep the current system intact but for a limited period of protection, say 15 years. Perhaps it wouldn't be too much to ask that protection beyond that require some filing and fees which would lead to mostly only economically significant works seeking extended protection.

Otherwise, the idea seems more practical for something like patent protections, which require a filing, than copyright, which is more automatic and widespread.

[Prasad Rao]

The copyright law guarantees to authors/scientists/researchers the fruit of their labor and preserves their incentive to engage in privately and/or publicly useful research. If there are pieces of work that are socially useful or otherwise associated with a positive externality in public use, then the same could be identified early and bought out with public money. This would preserve the copyright system and avoid the public loss alluded to in the blog.

[baileyman]

If you need a bit of monopoly to make some dough from your invention/work, sure, whatever to motivate you to contribute it to the world. But surely you're motivated over a very short term and on the scale of your individual wealth, not approaching forever or at a measurable percent of GDP level.

[reason]

Prasad Rao,
while I think your suggestion is good, I'm wondering
a. How the funding would be found
b. How the appropriate price would be decided?

[reason]

Prasad Rao,
while I think your suggestion is good, I'm wondering
a. How the funding would be found
b. How the appropriate price would be decided?

says...

clearly this is about
non `commercially valuable' copyrights

its a re up annual fee

science journals news papers
book publishers
would cull obviously

since as a practical matter
only a `commercially valuable' copyright
if violated would be enforced
in the first instance
its the various electronic gated material confines
now with toll booths
given a carying cost
for each copy righted work
many present cost free inmates would be liberated

essentially
the owner of the right
now gets to keep his/her /their right
for 75 years for free
mayhaps an odd shot revival occurs
and
the damn thing becomes
`commercially valuable' again

repeat with glee
this applying of a carrying cost
will lead to massive sluffing

bravo
make the owners/horders pay
for protection

if it can't pay its fees
directly out of its own cash flow
then make it require
a spec charge
on a long shot possible revival of value

[reason]

acerimusdux
Excellent comment - but perhaps 15 years is too long a "pre-registration" period. 5-10 years might be better.

[Willliam Smith]

Sung 30 years later, not a big deal. Sung 75 years after the death of the original singer, suddenly seeming like a bigger deal.

[Bruce Wilder]

The popular economic analysis of intellectual property -- and I include most of what I see written by economists for popular audiences -- is profoundly confused, usually as a result of hacks pleading a special case -- Michael Eisner hiring someone to plead his right to Mickey Mouse. Dennis Weaver seems well-intended, but all of that hackery seems to have left him confused as well. As reason has already noted, his argument turns on a confusion of copyright and patent. There is also a third category, trademark, which goes unmentioned.

The idea of a tax reflects the effect of hack economics -- it comes right out of the idea that Intellectual Property is the right to charge a kind of toll.

If there was a bridge, which cost nothing to maintain, and could never be crowded or congested, and we charged a toll for crossing, that toll would create a deadweight loss. People would refrain from using the bridge, to avoid the toll, even though the real opportunity cost of using the bridge was zero. A non-zero toll would be inefficient.

Lawyers and hack economists will do their very best to ignore that basic economic analysis: that anytime you charge for information qua information, you are creating an inefficiency.

Astute readers of my comments will recognize that I am about to mount my all-time favorite soapbox: the standard textbook analysis of production is total crap, and provides a stupid, lousy foundation for thought. (OK, now I feel better.) Seriously, there are profound questions about IP (intellectual property), involving the analysis of production: is IP properly a factor of production? and what are the efficiency implications of such (artificial?)factors earning income?

The deep answers do not focus on the toll, to return to my magic bridge example, but on the effect of the bridge on the value of land where the bridge goes. The economically important question is not whether the bridge is used efficiently, but whether the bridge's destination becomes more valuable.

Thomas Edison, contrary to legend, was not the first to invent the incandescent electric light. A whole bunch of people can claim to have contributed to that technical advance. If Edison had made use of his first light to read a recent copy of Scientific American lying around his lab, he would have learned that the Englishman, Swan, had beaten him to the use of carbon filament. What Edison accomplished, though, was far greater: with financing from J.P. Morgan, Edison developed a whole system for generating and distributing electric power for useful purposes: Edison assembled the technical foundation for both the electric utility company -- many of which in the U.S. bear his name, as a consequence -- and for the electrical equipment and appliance manufacturer -- the epitome of which was to be the General Electric Company. In true Schumpeterian fashion, the profit to be had was not a license fee, but an economic rent: with the knowledge of how to organize an electric utility or an electrical equipment/appliance manufacturer, it was possible to finance the assembly of resources, purchased at buggywhip prices, and employ those resources generating racecar output. As Edison himself put it, he made candles a luxury item.

There are some really profound issues involved with intellectual property, and a good case to be made that the legal framework is broken in several places, to our economic detriment. In trying to discern where that legal framework is broken, we ought to keep our eyes on where the legal framework is inhibiting, rather than facilitating, the employment of information to make more productive use of available resources.

says...

marcus p

you may miss
a point
the analogy would be asecretly recorded
u tube video of the busker
put up for free
after the busker gets the live donation
the internet down loads all
are the user free

pirating the author's site ???

didn't steven king try this ??

got some unbrake able viewer
un copy-techable
then the busker analogy holds up

[Winslow R.]

I'd say this is a market problem.

Anyone try to buy a patent or copyright lately? Where are the records of ownership? Where are the listings for sale?

Governement helps create efficient markets.

Create efficient markets then consider taxing them. So far government has been used to inhibit the market by granting 75 year monopolies. I'd like to see anyone try an enforce a copyright without the help of government, hence they should be willing to pay for that help.

Call it a tax if you'd like.

[Winston]

Intellectual property - whether copyrights or patents - exists to encourage innovation by granting the creator of a work a period where they can profit from it exclusively. Instead of encouraging innovation and new creation, current copyright law stifles it. Why should a work remain under copyright for 75 years? The creator of the work is likely dead and all the copyright does is to stifle creation of derivative works. Consider a move like Cinderella. It was released 57 years ago and was itself a derivative work of Grimm's compilation of fairy tales. The copyright on this film, which has outlived all of its creators, continues to stifle new work despite it being a significant part of our culture and despite the fact that Disney's first animated Cinderella (made in 1922) was closer in time to Grimm's Fairy tales than the later version is to us.

It's time to cut copyright down to 5 or 10 years. Anything longer does more to stifle new work than it does to encourage its creation.

[paine]

free access to all non fee paying written material
but only at an independent public authority portal

problem
externalities for profit
at any private portal
one might build
ads ala google

as bruce wild one points
there are rents for the reeping
at the two start/end points bridges

[paine]

btw

the fee can replace time limits obviously

now lets set the optimal fee structure

says...

don't you think
the full Edison dc electric generation and grid story
has a few too many ugly chapters in it
for such a glow coated version eh bruce ???

[paine]

"Same logic applies to vacant, undeveloped land"

already taxed
but
while we're on
the rich man's grounds
lets tax his collections

[Callahan]

Gouge 'em, gouge 'em good.

[Cynthia]

Bruce Wilder,

I like your toll-bridge analogy.:~) And something tells me that Mickey Mouse is nothing but a deadweight as he's crossing the toll bridge.;~)

[paine]

hey

mark's proviso :
the right to authorize use

how can this not lead
to hidden payments

[Andrew]

I believe goodman Wilder hits the crux of the issue: efficiency. How could an economic discussion of copyrights and IP be had without addressing efficiency?

What is the deadweight loss to society from enforcing these laws? Lawyers, public court costs, security devices, international negotiations, global enforcement...the list goes on. Surely there is a more efficient way to deal with creative works in our society. Noni's notion of simply paying artists a stipend has to be more efficient than this current mess.

[Bruce Wilder]

In general, patent, copyright, and trademark are badly in need of, not just conceptual and legal reform, but of some serious "innovation". Neither trademark nor copyright should become the favorite tool of luddites.

Where creative works are concerned, we need to allow micro-pricing, and even nano-pricing, not so much of whole works, but also of snippets and pieces. The advances in communication and computing technology underlying "publishing" has made the mash-up the hot thing.

I think we need a system that facilitates and rewards making information available and useful. In important ways, Google, Microsoft, and the YouTube/Facebook/Shareware communities are doing that.

Music publishing developed institutions to collect fees, even for elevator music. In Scandanavia, taking a book out of a public library results in a fee to the author.

In the absence of institutions that allow nano-pricing, Google, Microsoft et alia will rely exclusively on an advertising-supported model.

Advertising is a toll on the information superhighway, and not one with good, long-term or broad implications.

Applying a serious theory of production, one thing I would suggest is that information is about control, and the best thing one can do with information is improve feedback. We need to develop institutions that improve feedback: make feedback finer and cheaper.

Advertising-supported information licensing is resulting in the development of feedback and control systems that track and control individual consumers -- destroying privacy and corrupting consumer choice. And, not incidentally, the feedback to content producers like writers, performers, programmers etc., is also pretty lousy; an adveriser finds out from Google who has seen his banner ad right down to incredible detail, but no one knows the fate of a semi-popular song or comedy skit on YouTube -- and no one is paid for the creative effort, either.

Advertising-support is giving us a culture and politics dominated by business corporations, built on an institutional foundation of information and pecuniary feedback, which disempowers creative enterprise.

says...

GPL type "public good clubs "
could receive exemptions
like schools do on real property

[oren]

The Oral Rehydration example seems seriously mistaken. Copyright applies to the specific expression of an idea, not to the idea itself. Anyone else would be free to publish / disseminate / use the formula, even if the original expression of it was copyrighted (which it might very well have been, if it were published in a typical science / medicine journal). The creator of an idea doesn't gain exclusive use of it by publishing it. You need a patent for that.

[paine]

"Advertising-support is giving us a culture and politics dominated by business corporations, built on an institutional foundation of information and pecuniary feedback, which disempowers creative enterprise "

user fees will de ad sites ??

what did we used to have bruce
and when did we lose it ???

b4 we got
a culture and politics dominated by business corporations

[Bruce Wilder]

"don't you think
the full Edison dc electric generation and grid story
has a few too many ugly chapters in it
for such a glow coated version eh bruce ???"

To use the all-encompassing Russian literature metaphor, unlike Friedman-Greenspan-Mankiw, I think the economy-as-morality-play is more of a Dostoyeski or Tolstoy novel than an Ayn Rand novel, and more interesting as a result.

says...

the feedback to content producers like writers, performers, programmers etc., is also pretty lousy

cut out the middle men
let the creatrix
get the spondoolix

nano toll trolls uber alles

[Bruce Wilder]

paine: "what did we used to have bruce
and when did we lose it ???"

We never had it, but all we have to lose now is our chains.

I've never understood why Men so need the myth of a Golden Age Past to move forward. Get over it, I say; the past is just a good-bye.

[paine]

more of a Dostoyeski or Tolstoy novel
than an Ayn Rand novel,
and more interesting as a result

yikes but madison ave
makes of it wallmart quality
finnegans wake earish and eye rish

[paine]

the past is just a good-bye.

ahhh but t'is a long good bye me lad

[Holly W.]

"What if someone else sings the song in public and it's terrible - it appears on YouTube, it is widely ridiculed, and it becomes known you were the author. It seems like the creator of the song should have some control over how the song is performed."

I think if that someone paid you the appropriate royalty for use of the song, that's all the protection you get, no matter how badly they perform it. So even with an active copyright, you aren't protected from a terrible rendition of your work ... deliberate parody or not.

says...

"How could an economic discussion of copyrights and IP be had without addressing efficiency?"

the true trade off ---claimed ----
is between
efficiency and creation

strict efficiency
would here
destroy the incentive to create

no one doubts for example
credit money production
at the margin cost near zero
and if we needed more
we could make as much as we want
yet we do carefully guide
it's sliding path
despite its entirely
artificial value

margin cost pricing can destroy markets

[ddt]

"reason says...
ddt..
No I think we need a wider intellectual debate on this. If we are really heading for an "information society" and 3-D Copiers and the like, then owning copywrite is going to be come the only feasible way to make a good living. That sucks, not least from the point of view that it will result in endless lawsuits and chronic spying, as well as making us even more of a lotto society than we already are."

I think you have it backwards. In every historical case, the 'owners' of knowledge have lost the battle against the technological means of copying. The best example is probably the ancient scribes and the clergy. Despite denouncing the first shipment of printed Bibles as the work of the devil, they lost. The music industry has now lost, despite denouncing Napster as the work of the devil. Now the parasitic lawyers who make their living by gumming up the free flow of ideas are completely panicked at the implications of the internet. They will lose their battle, despite the multi-million dollar summits they are holding to rally the troops (my friend sells space at IP law conferences - $40,000 for a weekend. I can only imagine how much is spent on lobbying). The most appalling aspect of it is Monsanto and co. trying to patent plants etc. as one poster noted above.

On the topic of music that some other posters brought up: In terms of making money on creative works without treating it as property, most GOOD and honest musicians (not Lars Ulrich) are faring quite well in this difficult transition, ie Radiohead, Madonna. They have realized that you simply can't charge for the music itself, but that there is plenty of money to be made in other ways (live shows, merchandise - selling experiences, cultural identity, and authenticity). The lie about having to cover production and promotion costs is just that: a lie. The costs of producing and marketting music have come down just as quickly as the cost of copying music, but the record companies completely failed to reform themselves. Now they are paying the price, see EMI. It is entirely possible to record a decent sounding album, market it on myspace, facebook etc. and make a decent living doing gigs with an outlay of under $10,000 or less - if your music is good. I know many young people who have gone this route with great success, but who would never have had a chance in the music industry of the 80's.
The way I see it going in the future is that the only money made on recordings will be in the form of a small fee for convenience. That is how I see the iTunes store. You could download anything in it for free, but for $1 its just easier to buy it on iTunes. In general I think that money will be made in the distribution of content, but at very narrow margins with digital music files becoming a commodity and essentially a means of selling other products and services that can't be copied (iPods and concerts). iTunes has basically pioneered recordings-as-loss-leaders and it seems to be the way of the future.

[Holly W.]

A reasonable copyright period seems to me to be about 30 years OR until the death of the creator, whichever comes second. The person who made the effort to create a work should get to benefit from it for her/his whole life so long as demand exists. I do not, however, see the point in that person's heirs getting to continue to benefit indefinitely, which seems to be the result of current US copyright law.

[Patricia Shannon]

I think 75 years is probably too long, but 5 years is way to short. Because of changing styles, and pure luck, it might require 20 years or more for a song or literature or art to become fashionable.

The copyright fee is $45, which is more than many people (eg., waiters) can afford. When I worked for Waffle House, I didn't have $30 for a doctor's visit, much less a copyright fee.

Info to songwriters & poets: the copyright office has instituted a great advance. In a group copyright, you can pay $1 extra per song to have the individual songs listed, not just the group name. So if you use this for 10 songs, you would pay $45+$10 = $55, instead of $45*10 = $450, and still have the individual songs listed.

[robertdfeinman]

I'd just like to point out how blogs like this (and their free use of copyrighted material) are challenging the current IP landscape.

There hasn't been much push back over inclusion of copyrighted printed newspaper, magazine and online written material as yet. I take this as an indication that the value to be extracted from trying to charge Mark Thoma a fee for quoting something is not worth the bother. As I said above, being in the wrong legally is no impediment to copyright holders if they think they can make some money from extortion or intimidation.

On the other hand, we see the amount of energy being expended in the video and music areas, where there are large markets prepared to spend for use of the material (and conditioned to do so from the days of CD's and videotapes and discs).

More interesting is the attitude of those who take time to respond to articles and think nothing of throwing their creative work into the public sphere without any thought of copyright or compensation.

So why don't people who comment on blogs try to protect their words?

[Alex Tolley]

Noni: A possible way around this problem would be to dedicate a small part of the tax base to stable, reliable remuneration for artists. How this would be apportioned is difficult but not insuperable

Why not give everyone a basic living allowance and give people a choice whether to create art or take a job?

BW: If there was a bridge, which cost nothing to maintain, and could never be crowded or congested, and we charged a toll for crossing, that toll would create a deadweight loss. People would refrain from using the bridge, to avoid the toll, even though the real opportunity cost of using the bridge was zero. A non-zero toll would be inefficient.

But how will the design and construction of the first bridge be paid for, assuming all the others are costless copies?

Creators have always worried about theft, from the days of traveling troubadors. Today much of the copyright issue is about "piracy" or the near costless reproduction of information. But suppose in the future we all owned a replicator, that could make a copy of any object it was presented with. How would that impact the way economies were structured? I think we would see exactly what Esther Dyson had said as regards the arts back in the early 90's. The object per se has almost zero price, but the intangibles to the consumer have a price. For artists that meant shifting the revenue stream from the sale of the artwork to the performance, much like we still pay to go and see a play. For manufactured goods, the value will probably lay elsewhere.

I agree with BW that IP is broken, I just don't think that we have yet seriously come to grips with how to create an economy without IP protection in the face of costless reproduction. Benkler's "The Wealth of Networks" is a nice start on discussing how we might reorganize our economy without IP.

[cm]

reason: If your product is not "stateless" (in the sense that the very product makes is obvious how to produce it) and/or has substantial room left for improvement, then the original designed will be able to maintain a considerable edge over copycats -- (1) the currently sold product does not contain the whole "state of the art" (which keeps evolving), (2) the finished product shows only the "what" but not the "why" of the design, (3) it may not be obvious how to produce it effectively and efficiently from raw materials, (4) servicing the product (if applicable) usually requires extra know-how not visible in the product, etc.

Now most of this is moot when the product is commodity, or has to compete against "good enough" replacements. This appears to be the case in this day in many areas of business. Customers can simply wait it out going with the current stuff. Look at anything computer-related and its tumbling prices. Do you really need to upgrade? Only when it breaks.

[Alex Tolley]

rdf: "So why don't people who comment on blogs try to protect their words?"

I assume this was rhetorical. Because the value of community is far higher than any gain from re-use of those words as a property. BW's deadweight loss would be horrific if we had to make micro-payments for every bit of extracted quote. I believe Mark T has already commented on problems with copyrighted materials appearing in his blog, and of course dear Anne is a shameless pirate in this regard.

However, when content is infinite, the scarce commodity shifts from the product to the consumers attention span. At some point, it makes far more sense to offer free content and use it gain attention that can be monetized in other ways, than to try to charge for the content. My perception is that while content providers are trying desperately to maintain the scarcity conditions for their content, other players like Google are getting their revenue from the attention of the consumer.

[Patricia Shannon]

The author has rights to do the first recording.
After that, as Holly said, anybody can record it, as long as they pay the royalties. They don't need permission from the copyright holder. I don't know details about what liberties they can take with it, but parodies are protected.

I, like many, am a songwriter, not a performer. Songwriters are often poor singers, and good singers are often not able to write good songs. Most income for songwriters (if any income) is from royalties on the sales of recordings.

Do those who are extolling the new world of lack of effective copyright think the result has been great music? I am not the only one who rarely listens to radio stations that feature current "popular" music. In fact, at Waffle House, I noticed that the young people almost always listened to older songs, rarely the current stuff.

[Patricia Shannon]

I try to make a habit of copying links to original articles, and the minimum content of the original article to make a point, to encourage people to go to the original site, where the providers of the material may be getting ad revenue.

[messels]

i think mark thoma misread the article. it's not about a piece of REAL property [in your house] but ethereal property--stuff that isn't really here nor there--it just is. like a digital song on a server.

i really think the suggestion of a fee associated w/ maintaining a copyright is ingenious. if the firm feels compelled to maintain the copyright, then they can pay the fee. if it's not so important, then it regresses to being 'owner-less'. that has no bearing on the author. there's plenty of stuff on the net that is freely distributed.

i think so far as the intellectual property world is concerned, there's some real resistance to the forces of creative destruction.

btw, why does everything get polarized into "left" and "right"? so stupid how limiting that is...

[paine]

"Despite denouncing the first shipment of printed Bibles as the work of the devil, they lost"

did they ???
okay the scribes now work at
cube farm key boards
tapping out price quotes

but
the RC so far as i can see
still prefers the faithful
to listen and
not read

[ddt]

"Do those who are extolling the new world of lack of effective copyright think the result has been great music?"

yes. there would have been no great hip hop without complete disregard for copyright, and the backlash of the record companies basically killed New York hip hop.

[Noni Mausa]

someone said (I lost track):

Why not give everyone a basic living allowance and give people a choice whether to create art or take a job?

First, as I listen to the outraged sputtering of artists all over the blogs, I need to mention that creating art is a job, (i.e. valuable effort) as is parenting, cleaning house, and caring for aging parents. It just doesn't pay very well.

Moving on -- Japan has, last I heard, a program of recognizing and supporting "national treasures", which includes things, crafts, people etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Treasure_(Japan)

My body of work isn't large enough to be considered a National Treasure, but I wouldn't mind being a National Knicknack.

Noni

[ken melvin]

If the government wants it to be free, let them by the rights.

[paine]

"btw, why does everything get polarized into "left" and "right"? so stupid how limiting that is"

ya okay so you say
too many 2-D solutions
to N-D problems

help "we" out here

N = what ???

[ddt]

"paine says...
"Despite denouncing the first shipment of printed Bibles as the work of the devil, they lost"

did they ???"

Yes:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3636669624532830059

[grumpy realist]

One major difference between US patents and US copyright is that yes, you DO have to pay fees to maintain the patents. So I don't think that this idea of insisting on charging a fee for copyright is all that crazy.

[Alex Tolley]

Patricia: I, like many, am a songwriter, not a performer. Songwriters are often poor singers, and good singers are often not able to write good songs. Most income for songwriters (if any income) is from royalties on the sales of recordings.

I'm curious. Suppose songwriters got zero revenue from royalties because of lack of copyright. Wouldn't that mean that singers would have to pay you for that great content in order to make their own money via performances that people wanted to attend? Couldn't you just write a legal contract for some %age of revenues for each performance if they wouldn't pay for an upfront fee? I do see the problem that once the song is written, other singers could then freely copy it and pay you nothing, but how common is this? Don't singers try to make very individual versions of a song that becomes the "definitive" version?

Conversely, when you write a song, do you ever pay royalties on phrases that have been used elsewhere? Do you even check against a database of songs that your songs do not infringe other peoples copyrights? How much do you freely dip into the "cultural well" for free?

[Cynthia]

Sorry, but what Edison did to electromagnetism doesn't hold a candle to what Maxwell did to this field!

[Patricia Shannon]

ddt, you might think hip-hop is "great", but I bet it won't be around in 100 years.

[billy]

A reasonable copyright period seems to me to be about 30 years OR until the death of the creator, whichever comes second. The person who made the effort to create a work should get to benefit from it for her/his whole life so long as demand exists.

I think 75 years is probably too long, but 5 years is way to short. Because of changing styles, and pure luck, it might require 20 years or more for a song or literature or art to become fashionable.

Creators have always worried about theft, from the days of traveling troubadors. Today much of the copyright issue is about "piracy" or the near costless reproduction of information. But suppose in the future we all owned a replicator, that could make a copy of any object it was presented with. How would that impact the way economies were structured?

The IP regime is either going to have to radically adjust, or fail in the face of China. The Chinese just don't seem to believe in intellectual property.

No I think we need a wider intellectual debate on this. If we are really heading for an "information society" and 3-D Copiers and the like, then owning copywrite is going to be come the only feasible way to make a good living.

Being a songwriter, I have first hand experience. It usually takes me many hours, over a period of weeks, months, in one case 3 years, to get a song "complete". ..... If publishers and recording companies could not make enough money on the occasional exceptions, they would go out of business. Even getting a good enough recording to use as a demo to send to music publishers costs several hundred dollars. I certainly can't afford to invest money in promoting my songs if I have no chance of making enough money to make the gamble worthwhile.

All of these arguments assume the old business model. Hence the propensity to control. All of them assume that the creator somehow has full control on other people's enjoyment of the work.

Creators do not have such control, the copyright law is an attempt to balance the need of the public and the creator. It is not a law that seeks to give absolute control to the creator. The recent past is full of attempts by creators to kill all the rights of the public, and convert copyright law into one that gives absolute control to the creator. Such was never the aim of the copyright law.

Assume Disney. Fifty years back, Disney would have to make its profits from a movie like "The little mermaid" from a market that includes 20% of the population of the world. And they had to create a copy of the movie on film and distribute it. For arguments sake assume it took Disney 20 years to recoup the money and make its killing too.

Today Disney has a much larger market which includes most of the world. Producing a DVD costs very little. Distribution is much cheaper. Market saturation can be achieved in days. (Note that even that DVD is old tech now. In the age of online downloads, distibution is cheaper, and saturation is faster)

Disney should be able to recoup its investment in days. And they can if they choose to sell at the right price.

The attempt to meddle with copyright law and extend it is a pure wealth grab by creators. As the market expands and distribution gets cheaper and market saturation gets faster, copyrights should be granted for lesser periods. Copyright law should not give a windfall to creators from larger markets and efficiencies. In the new world, it would be right to reduce copyright terms, since the larger market and cheaper distribution will still ensure an adequate return to the creator.

The restrictions put into place in the age of block printing was required, to ensure a return to the creator in those markets. To carry over that rights to the digital age is looting the public.

[ddt]

"Patricia Shannon says...
ddt, you might think hip-hop is "great", but I bet it won't be around in 100 years."

um... what are you talking about?

[paine]

ddt

you may have missed my point

[anne]

Alex Tolley:

"Why not just change the rules and shorten copyright instead? Copyrights have now been extended to 75 years in the US - a ridiculously long period."

I think Europe is planning or acting on 95 years years for selected copyrights. Adding this to lengthening patent times, along with the drive to patents in developed countries creates all sorts of intellectual property rights issues in developing countries that are either stifling to reason for national stealing. Brazil, which has a fine public health founation, routinely threstens to stesl drugs when prices charged are abusive and as routinely Brazil bargains prices down in the wake of the threat.

[ddt]

hi paine, I definitly missed your point there, but I see what you mean now.

my reply would be that while the Roman Catholic church prefers that people listen, they can no longer FORCE them to do so. They lost the monopoly on the scripture (and with it the monopoly on Christianity to the protestants) that they had held for 1000 years. I would contend that it was a direct result of the invention of the printing press.

[lonesome_moderate]

The copyright period is not 75 years, it is 95. It was 75 until 1998, when many lucrative copyrights (notably the one on Mickey Mouse) were about to expire. Disney then made a business decision that the money they had to pay Congress to extend it was less than what they would lose by letting Mickey go into the public domain (well, they weren't quite that blatant about it, but this it was pretty clear at the time that that was what was happening). This is no doubt the "Mickey Mouse" reference in the article.

Realistically, Mickey Mouse will never go into the public domain, at least in the United States, as long as the numbers make sense for Disney to prevent that from happening. The authors are proposing a tax as a way of getting around the unintended bad consequences of the current system's corruption, while leaving the intended bad consequences in place. Half a solution is better than none, I guess.

[btg]

go back to john locke and the original justifications for property rights - namely, that society as a whole was better of if people could claim land and improve upon it.

yet, what if someone who owns land lets it sit idle - so that it actually produces the same or less than if it were left in nature? well, the idea of squatters rights came up. if someone abandons their property of fails to make us of it, why not let someone else claim it and make productive us of it?

originally, there was no justification form intellectual property rights - patents and copyrights - how could someone own an idea? well, the justification was that if people were not able to benefit from their labour, then there would be little or progress - no new art, no inventions, etc.

but if someone essentially "abandons" intellectual property - they fail to market it or exploit it, why not let it fall into the public domain, just as if someone abandons a piece of land?

look at obsolete software - if a company stops supporting software, and someone else wants to to claim it and improve upon it, why not?

and i agree that having copyrights go for 75 years or more has gone being a reasonable incentive for people to benefit from their work... i wish i could be paid for 75 years for something I did today in a few hours!

[lonesome_moderate]

Patricia - I have heard many times that music business managers would much rather manage somebody who is a decent singer/songwriter, rather than someone who was an exceptional singer but not a writer. The reason usually cited is that the business aspects of singing other people's songs are a total nightmare. Doesn't this imply that the current copyright system is broken, and counterproductive if the point is to help songwriters make a living?

[Patricia Shannon]

Billy, how many music CD's have you recorded of your own performances, and sold, and recouped your investment.

Creators do have control over whether they create something in the first place, and communicate it to others in the 2nd place.

[Patricia Shannon]

lonesome_moderate says...

Patricia - I have heard many times that music business managers would much rather manage somebody who is a decent singer/songwriter, rather than someone who was an exceptional singer but not a writer. The reason usually cited is that the business aspects of singing other people's songs are a total nightmare. Doesn't this imply that the current copyright system is broken, and counterproductive if the point is to help songwriters make a living?

At a music seminar I went to, an A&R person did say he would rather rather manage somebody who is a decent singer/songwriter, rather than two people, one an exceptional singer, the other an exceptional writer.
The reason was that he made more money that way. Singer/songwriters are usually only paid royalties on one aspect, performing or songwriting, not both.

How is doing away with copyrights going to help the songwriter?

[James Killus]

[very long sigh]

Read Bruce Wilder's messages for the best general background on intellectual property and economics. I'm going to confine my remarks to the non-economic aspect of this.

Copyrights and other intellectual property laws are the primary legal means of information control in the United States. I'm using the phrase "information control" but the simple fact is that it is censorship. Various organizations, not limited to corporations (in fact, churches are one of the worst offenders) use intellectual property lawsuits to quash free speech and expression on a regular basis.

As for writers, we grab every idea we can get our hands one, then some of us (a subset first limited by those who have money) sue anyone who tries to do the same to us. Okay, that's human nature. But it doesn't mean I have to like it.

[kthomas]

hari, that's some good news. Diabetes is such a massive problem in India.

[kthomas]

JK, so true. Those looney LRonHubbard scientologists (yes, anne, I was being serious) use these types of intellectual property lawsuits to do just as you say: intimidate, threaten, destroy.

[lonesome_moderate]

Patricia - I'm not an advocate of doing away with copyrights, I just think our current system is a counterproductive mess. Thanks for your thoughts.

[paine]

They lost the monopoly on the scripture (and with it the monopoly on Christianity to the protestants) that they had held for 1000 years

yaaaaaaa boy

[Patricia Shannon]

Some people misuse food by eating too much. Does this mean we should do away with eating?

[James Killus]

Patricia,

I haven't seen many people here advocating the complete elimination of copyrights. Most of the complaints seem to be that they are too long or are used in some form of abusive way. Both have potential solutions that stop short of abolition.

Just to take an example, did it impact your songwriting career in the slightest when the period of copyright was extended in the late 1990s to benefit the Disney organization? I know that it had no effect on my career, and I suspect I've made considerably more money writing fiction and non-fiction than you have made songwriting.

A writer I once knew was always warning about counting "ifcome." Don't let your opinion be formed by notions of ifcome. Income is a more useful indicator.

[reason]

cm...
while your comment is as usual well thought out and presented - I can't see how it relates to any of the many and very varied throwaway comments I made in this thread. Could you enlighten me?

[Patricia Shannon]

James,
I already said I think 75 years (much less 95) is too long a period for copyrights.
There have been comments here claiming that people don't have any right to intellectual property, or suggesting a copyright period of 5-10 years, which I think is too short.

I also disagree that a family should be able to acquire unlimited amount of land and hold it forever, so that many others have no chance of owning land. But I'll bet many/most of those who are against copyright protection would not agree with me.

[cm]

reason: Fair enough - "If we are really heading for an "information society" and 3-D Copiers and the like, then owning copywrite is going to be come the only feasible way to make a good living."

You're talking of "3D" copiers which suggests you don't aim at art/media but "stuff".

To reiterate my point, the original developer can maintain an "edge" to the extent the product does not represent the whole/final state of the art and has an obvious production process (by the time the copycats have figured it out, the original has moved on considerably). Secondly, this edge will translate into pricing power when not only the "original" product is superior, but its superiority also translates into a large utility differential for customers.

Conversely, when new product enhancements become utility-marginal, a production monopoly will not help much.

The latter part is where a large part of consumer and office electronics has hit the sound wall. Not that they didn't patent everything under the sun.

[reason]

cm...
OK, well I was just trying to say that IP is a very tricky area in general and well worth thinking through thoroughly. I don't think the present regime works very well, and the problems are likely to get worse not better.

[jgault]

The "oral rehydration therapy" formula could not be copyrighted under US law - it's a strawman argument. Copyrights do not cover formula or intellectual property. The author seems to confuse copyright v patent protection several times.

I disagree with the general point. The author or copyright holder expends effort or pays for the creation of the work. They can choose to freely license the work after some time period if they wish. Some copyrights cover material as ephemeral as a weather report, while others could apply to long-lasting works such as images of MickeyMouse or Shakespeare's plays. Many works have no commercial value until man years after their production. Is it fair to a screenplay writer or a novel author or composer to pay an onerous tax for the protection of their many work ?