Paul's Comments

I have been thinking about this for several months, and the actions of a number of organizations to infinirely expand the length and scope of copyright protection compels me to come to the conclusion that if organizations are getting extended copyright protections on their works, that when such extensions are given, those works should have additional property taxes imposed upon them in the same manner and scope as other property is taxed.

They should already be paying some property tax on their copyrights, what should be done is the tax should be adjusted to the increased value those copyrights now have since the copyright lobby has gotten congress to increase the length of copyright (through term extension) and the scope of copyright (through such statutes as the Digital Millenium Copyright Act), so therefore, these works have much higher value than they did before these increases in length and scope, the property tax on them should be increased proportionately to compensate for their increased value.

Originally, (that is to say, during my lifetime), these works had copyright terms of 28 years with a renewal for 28. This term has been drastically enhanced to a varying term of 95 years from creation (for a work for hire or pseudononymous work) or 75 years from the death of the last surviving author of a work. So, therefore, every work that existed had a massive boost in copyright protection of at least 40 years. Since this is a boost in value, the property tax assessed by the local authority where the copyright owner operates should have been increased proportionately.

Let's take a company like Disney, and estimate that the increase in protection has raised the value of their copyrights by say, US$1 billion. (Just estimate how much money in licensing is taken in on, say its works older on a per-year basis, average it out over an additional 40 years, and figure out that this is the increase in value the company has thanks to its lobbying for increased copyrights). Maybe there is a declining balance formula since some works have lesser value over time. Still, there has been an increase in protection, therefore there should be an increase in the property tax on that copyright property which has been extended. Now, this estimate is not the amount these properties are worth, these are the amount by which these properties have increased in value over what they were worth, since these copyrights have extended life for an additional 20 to 40 years depending on how old they were.

Now, if the current property tax is, say, 2%, then the Disney company alone should be paying an additional $20 million a year in property taxes to Los Angeles County. This is above whatever they were paying before, since the additional copyright protection is additional value added to their company as a result.

And in New York City, all those publishing companies that hold books, and in Memphis, all those recording companies. As well as Los Angeles, again, the record companies out there.

Now, it might be asked, how do you figure the value of, say, recordings for the purpose of assessing a property tax on them. Well, we already have a floor figure: the RIAA has been claiming copyright violations in their lawsuits against people doing file sharing by claiming a value for each infringement of $750 per recording. So we should take that as a floor value. For other works, estimate some minimum value, say $500 for a book or movie, or some other number.

Quite simply, as long as someone holds a copyright upon a work - even one not being distributed - there should be property tax imposed upon that work, since the owners of copyrights are claiming that they should be treated the same way as other property holders and are essentially demanding de facto perpetual copyright on their works, they should pay taxes on that property same as everyone else. If you abandon property then you don't own it any longer, but as long as you hold a copyright property you should pay property tax on it. If the protection is increased, the value of that copyright is increased and you should pay more property tax to compensate for the additional protection.

As long as the copyright on the work is not abandoned, the copyright on the work should be taxed even if it goes out of print or is discontinued.

And there is another issue: licensed software. If software isn't "owned" by the people who buy it, then it is essentially "leased" and the owner should be paying property tax to every jurisdiction where their software is under lease, in the same way that if you lease, say, a vehicle to someone you owe property tax. It wouldn't be fair to impose property tax upon the person who is leasing the software, they don't have ownership. So there's another avenue of revenue for cash-strapped local governments.

In fact, every time the copyright lobby gets the terms extended, there should be a proportionate increase in the property tax to capture the increased value on those copyrights. And since the owners of those copyrights are on record, it's easy enough to tax them on it.

The copyright lobby is demanding increased protections and wants their copyrights treated like other property, then they should be taxed on that property same as everyone else.