Re:What will enter the public domain in 2022
by jedberg on Thursday December 02, 2021 @08:40PM
(#29425601)
> I also don't like percent of revenue - that's basically taxes, people already pay that, there's little point in doing it via copyright. What's the issue you are trying to solve with percent of revenue, that is not also solved with a fixed amount?
It's supposed to be a tax. You're being taxed on holding something out of the public domain, which in theory is harming the public. Using a percent of revenue makes it more fair -- if it were a fixed fee, there is no fee you can make that Disney won't happily pay to keep everything forever that would be affordable to the small creator.
At the very least, if you don't want to do revenue, make the fee a percent of the total income of the owner. Of course Disney could again avoid that by making small companies to own things.
> Registration is a good idea, but I would do it different. Everyone gets 20 years automatically for free, with no registration needed. (Small players, for example I write an essay and put it on a website, need to be protected. You don't want to force 12 year old students to deal with registering their works.) After that you can pay to register a work, a fixed fee that goes up each year for the final 20 years.
If registration is fee I don't see why there would be a burden on anyone. But sure, you can make it automatic for the first five years or whatever. But that makes it hard to tell if a work is an orphaned work or just not registered yet. If you find a work you like, you'd have to wait in your system 20 years to make sure it wasn't unregistered.
> My issue with your idea is people holding things, and refusing to sell them - for example old software.
How can you set a fee that's high enough to stop Microsoft but not be a burden to a small developer?
> First I would drastically shorten the time, and not link to the life of the author, instead I would have fixed time from first release, with a max of 40 years.
My system is also not linked to the life of the author. We can certainly debate the number of years, but under my system, you'd be giving 1/3 of your total income from your work as a tax after 40 years on top of your regular income taxes.
It's supposed to be a tax. You're being taxed on holding something out of the public domain, which in theory is harming the public. Using a percent of revenue makes it more fair -- if it were a fixed fee, there is no fee you can make that Disney won't happily pay to keep everything forever that would be affordable to the small creator.
At the very least, if you don't want to do revenue, make the fee a percent of the total income of the owner. Of course Disney could again avoid that by making small companies to own things.
> Registration is a good idea, but I would do it different. Everyone gets 20 years automatically for free, with no registration needed. (Small players, for example I write an essay and put it on a website, need to be protected. You don't want to force 12 year old students to deal with registering their works.) After that you can pay to register a work, a fixed fee that goes up each year for the final 20 years.
If registration is fee I don't see why there would be a burden on anyone. But sure, you can make it automatic for the first five years or whatever. But that makes it hard to tell if a work is an orphaned work or just not registered yet. If you find a work you like, you'd have to wait in your system 20 years to make sure it wasn't unregistered.
> My issue with your idea is people holding things, and refusing to sell them - for example old software.
How can you set a fee that's high enough to stop Microsoft but not be a burden to a small developer?
> First I would drastically shorten the time, and not link to the life of the author, instead I would have fixed time from first release, with a max of 40 years.
My system is also not linked to the life of the author. We can certainly debate the number of years, but under my system, you'd be giving 1/3 of your total income from your work as a tax after 40 years on top of your regular income taxes.