>Therefore, if at the end of the year neither yourself nor anyone else had made any money from your IP, just assign zero.
If you can declare $0 and not pay taxes on the IP you are basically coming full circle to existing taxation based on the income generated by the IP. However, the more important issue with your proposal is an IP holder might not want to declare $0, despite no current revenue, because your proposal would then tie that $0 valuation to potential damages in the instance of an infringement case.
>As for copyrights - the same framework would make infinite extension unaffordable even for Disney, so I hope we would all benefit.
As both a small business owner and consumer I have always been on the other side of the Disney argument. Why do you think we would all benefit from Disney losing IP protections? Most of the time its a innovation argument, but is their really any innovation being stifled by the Mouse?
As a business owner, if my company creates some form of IP, say a cartoon mouse whom I copyright/trademark to various degrees (name, logo, color(s), etc...),the company invests capital to create a movie starring the mouse and the market votes with their wallets, which the company pays taxes on, and like Steve Jobs I am fanatical about Quality Control and just keep reinvesting in the IP, creating products with the Mouse that the market love and keep paying taxes. Why, at some arbitrary point in time, should my company lose IP protections to the cartoon Mouse and all completed works with the Mouse? As a consumer, I currently know Disney for its high quality productions and there is a lot of goodwill with the brand that has been established over a lifetime, now with the floodgates opened and everyone able to profit off Disney IP there will be confusion in the marketplace leading toward loss of goodwill with the brand.
> Why do you think we would all benefit from Disney losing IP protections?
Copyright is willingly extended by the public to private interests for the purpose of fostering innovation and creativity.
The question isn't how do we benefit by Disney losing IP protections, the question is how do we benefit by maintaining what we have graciously given them? What return on investment, if you will, is the public getting for Mickey not being in the public domain?
> However, the more important issue with your proposal is an IP holder might not want to declare $0, despite no current revenue, because your proposal would then tie that $0 valuation to potential damages in the instance of an infringement case.
For that year (alone), and I proposed you set it when you pay your taxes - that is, at the end of the year, in retrospect. In this case, there is never a reason for you to file anything other than $0 unless someone else is making money of it (if you are, then you're already being taxed on it).
> Why do you think we would all benefit from Disney losing IP protections? Most of the time its a innovation argument, but is their really any innovation being stifled by the Mouse?
It's supposed to be the other way around. We have granted Disney limited monopoly in return for wide availability. "Steamboat Willy" was released with the understanding that it will become public domain within 50 years. The question is, why on earth did we retroactively give another 100 years of that monopoly for free?
And even if it wasn't retroactive - the current 100+ years doesn't seem reasonable to me at all.
> Why, at some arbitrary point in time, should my company lose IP protections to the cartoon Mouse and all completed works with the Mouse?
The only reason they currently have these protections is that they bought them from Congress.
Why do you, as an employer, stop paying your employees a couple of months after you fire them / they quit? IP is not the same as work-for-hire, but it doesn't deserve the eternal protection it currently has. I am not aware of anyone who did NOT publish in 1930 because "I only get 50 years of copyright protection".
And ... you are arguing a strawman. I did not argue that IP should be abolished. Just introduce an economic cost to the unlimited monopoly, which is currently free.
IP protection covers three things—patent, copyright, and trademark. Patent and copyright exist to encourage people to innovate; there's less incentive for the studio to produce next summer's big action flick if it were legal to copy it as soon as it's released; and there's less incentive to figure out which of many nearly identical, but subtly different contraptions actually work if someone can then take the working one and produce a thousand at some factory.
Trademark is different. That rewards not the act of creation, but the ongoing investment in a brand. Do I want a huge quantity of something for above average quality and below average price? Buy Kirkland Signature. Do I want outdoor gear that will be covered no matter what happens? LLBean has me covered.
Disney almost surely makes almost no profit off of Steamboat Willy as a film, and in fact according to the copyright laws of the time, it wouldn't be covered today, so Walt probably didn't factor in the 21st century when amortizing his costs. Is there some teenager out there who could create some truly inspiring film by remashing clips from Steamboat Willy? I have no idea, but would love to find out. But a Mickey Mouse mug is more about trademark, and Disney should get to profit off that as long as people want to buy them. And if the teenagers film hurts the trademark, then that's something that could be resolved without an indefinite extension of copyright terms.
If you can declare $0 and not pay taxes on the IP you are basically coming full circle to existing taxation based on the income generated by the IP. However, the more important issue with your proposal is an IP holder might not want to declare $0, despite no current revenue, because your proposal would then tie that $0 valuation to potential damages in the instance of an infringement case.
>As for copyrights - the same framework would make infinite extension unaffordable even for Disney, so I hope we would all benefit.
As both a small business owner and consumer I have always been on the other side of the Disney argument. Why do you think we would all benefit from Disney losing IP protections? Most of the time its a innovation argument, but is their really any innovation being stifled by the Mouse?
As a business owner, if my company creates some form of IP, say a cartoon mouse whom I copyright/trademark to various degrees (name, logo, color(s), etc...),the company invests capital to create a movie starring the mouse and the market votes with their wallets, which the company pays taxes on, and like Steve Jobs I am fanatical about Quality Control and just keep reinvesting in the IP, creating products with the Mouse that the market love and keep paying taxes. Why, at some arbitrary point in time, should my company lose IP protections to the cartoon Mouse and all completed works with the Mouse? As a consumer, I currently know Disney for its high quality productions and there is a lot of goodwill with the brand that has been established over a lifetime, now with the floodgates opened and everyone able to profit off Disney IP there will be confusion in the marketplace leading toward loss of goodwill with the brand.