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Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees

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Re: Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees

#61

Post by kube-system »

kstrauser wrote: post #49
tacticalturtle wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Touché. This will arouse the ire of the “copyright infringement isn’t theft” people - but we also have the government enforce shoplifting and larceny from retail businesses. I believe the legal cost to recoup the loss of either IP revenue or physical property will be born by the victim though.

Retail businesses pay property taxes to support that. I fully support copyright enforcement being funded by intellectual property taxes: * You declare your property’s worth. * You pay IP taxes on that worth. * You cannot sure for recovery of more than that worth, total. If you have a song worth $1M, and sue 2 people for $500K, then consider it sold. If someone steals a car from you, you can’t collect its full worth e…

Criminal cases aren't a substitute for civil suits, not for copyright... or for any other type of loss.

People generally do have to pay their own way to bring a civil case to recover for damages in a copyright infringement case... or any kind of case.

The fines/jail time typically ascribed by a criminal case do not go into a victims bank account. A criminal case is between the government prosecutor and the defendant. The copyright holder wouldn't even be a party to the case.

Re: Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees

#62

Post by bryanrasmussen »

boomlinde wrote: post #20
simonh wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creators pay tax on their income. We all get legal protections for our property.

Real property owners also pay tax on their income. Income is taxed. Real property is taxed. Intellectual property is not.

Real property is taxed, but often you do not pay capital gains on sold real property (this "often" of course varies by jurisdiction, so yes in lots of places you may pay some if the conditions are right), when selling intellectual property you often (same proviso as before, only inverted) pay capital gains.

Re: Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees

#63

Post by kube-system »

boomlinde wrote: post #20
simonh wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creators pay tax on their income. We all get legal protections for our property.

Real property owners also pay tax on their income. Income is taxed. Real property is taxed. Intellectual property is not.

Real property is sometimes taxed. Certain uses/users are partially exempt from taxation, and some uses/users are entirely exempt. It is not legal to rob these properties, nor should it be.

Re: Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees

#64

Post by bryanrasmussen »

closewith wrote: post #39
ralferoo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only a solution if you think it's fair to have a regular ownership tax on top of the tax paid when purchasing / selling something.

It's a solution to the problem raised by the GP - how to fairly value IP. This whole thread is about how many countries with land taxes don't similarly tax other assets like IP. Whether you think it's fair or not is another question - the blocker isn't fair valuation.

the solution to how to fairly value IP was provided by the owner, capital gains tax happens on sale of IP

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47220210

capital gains does not happen on sale of land generally. These two things are obviously taxed differently because it is to the value of the government to do so, and the value of the government is supposed in many countries to somehow translate into a value for society.

Re: Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees

#65

Post by dboreham »

Reminds me of when in my youth I thought it would be a good idea to re-tile my bathroom in the style of a Mondrian. This because I'd found that white, red, green and yellow tiles were available at low cost. Good to know that bathroom is not in breach of copyright now.

Re: Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees

#66

Post by goku12 »

observationist wrote: post #57
theragra wrote: post #2

As always, copyright is a supressor of creativity, not an enabler. Copyright terms should be 10-20 years max, or up to death of an author. Even current regime is ridiculous.

0-5 years commercial copyright - the author/creator has total say on any and all commercial use, fair use doctrine applies. Years 6-10, extended fair use: mandatory attribution and 15% royalty but otherwise unlimited for public use in any context, for any reason. Years 11+, goes to public domain. Simple system. Encourages creativity, 99% of all money made on media (books, music, movies,etc) gets made during the first…

Wait! Are you talking about the history or the future aspiration? I thought that the IP laws were initially like what you described here, until the greedy class stuffed the politicians' mouths with cash (aka lobbying).

Re: Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees

#67

Post by stevekemp »

lanceflt wrote: post #17
stevekemp wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while a piece of land pays property taxes. In some countries taxes are annual. In the UK you pay taxes when you buy/sell property, or land. You don't need to pay land/property taxes every year.

Council taxes are property taxes and are monthly.

Council taxes could be considered propertie taxes, I guess, though I've always thought of them as paying for rubbish collection & etc.

However council taxes are paid by the residents of a property rather than the owner of a property. Granted these are often the same, but consider the case of a landlord with five properties the tenants would be paying those.

In the sense that Americans talk about property taxes as an annual thing I believe that distinction makes it a slightly different thing..

(And council tax is only a thing for property, if you buy a chunk of land with no houses upon it you pay nothing.)

Re: Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees

#68

Post by toast0 »

nullc wrote: post #42
edent wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Up to death" would provide a perverse incentive for people to kill creators in order to liberate something from copyright.

The inheritors are in a better position to kill the author-- or just allow them to die from neglect-- and are incentivized to do so by postmortem profits. Any benefit from the work being public domain is diffuse, it won't create a windfall for any particular party. The residuals on the other hand are quite concrete, particularly when an author's preferences are capping the market for their work or when the publicity…

> The inheritors are in a better position to kill the author-- or just allow them to die from neglect-- and are incentivized to do so by postmortem profits.

An estate tax of 100% would eliminate this moral hazard; but the estate tax is already unpopular when its exemption amount means that few estates pay any tax.

> Any benefit from the work being public domain is diffuse, it won't create a windfall for any particular party.

A defendant in a copyright infringement case would have a windfall if the copyright was extinguished as a result of an untimely death.

Re: Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees

#69

Post by pyuser583 »

nullc wrote: post #42
edent wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Up to death" would provide a perverse incentive for people to kill creators in order to liberate something from copyright.

The inheritors are in a better position to kill the author-- or just allow them to die from neglect-- and are incentivized to do so by postmortem profits. Any benefit from the work being public domain is diffuse, it won't create a windfall for any particular party. The residuals on the other hand are quite concrete, particularly when an author's preferences are capping the market for their work or when the publicity…

The distinction between author and their estates is fascinating: the stereotype is estates mismanaging the art, but that usually happens because the estates want to be “artistic” themselves.

Most artists are terrible at business. They do dumb things for no reason.

JRR Tolkein and his estate is prime example. JRR signed away all movie rights for a nominal sum. His estate fought tooth and nail for their rights, while still allowing grey zone stuff to develop (Dungeons and Dragons).

Re: Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees

#70

Post by Tangurena2 »

edent wrote: post #30
kibwen wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking the death date into account is literally already how prevailing copyright law works. You can just make it conditional on publish date.

Sure, but Life + 70 means it is unlikely that anyone will benefit from the death soon .

One provision of the Sony Bono Copyright Extension Act [0] (which expired 6 months after passage of the law) allowed next-of-kin to revoke (the sale of) copyrights sold by the author without recourse (by the folks who paid for them). Allegedly, this was added by Disney in order to cut costs hundreds of millions of dollars in a dispute over licensing Winnie The Pooh IP/rights [1].

Expect something similar when the next big author dies; my prediction: JK Rowling.

Notes:

0 - https://www.congress.gov/bill/105th-congress/senate-bill/505

1- https://hughstephensblog.net/2023/12/18/winnie-the-poohs-cop...

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