> There's zero benefit to society
Wouldn't it result in additional tax revenue while preventing Disney's movies from proliferating throughout society unimpeded?
In all honesty, I really think you should think this idea through. Compared to the status quo, where we get zero tax revenue from intellectual property, this system would guarantee an expiration based on commercial viability. It couldn't sustain forever because the scale would always accelerate at a rate faster than any economy could sustain it. But it would have this additional benefit in that the more some intellectual property becomes commercially sustainable, the more revenue society can collect.
How does that even begin to approach horrible when it's magnitudes more equitable than the status quo?
> Wouldn't it result in additional tax revenue while preventing Disney's movies from proliferating throughout society unimpeded?
I mean they already pay taxes (allegedly). When artists create good works that become popular the state also gets sales taxes from the consumer side as money changes hands in exchange for the work. If we just wanted money we'd be better served by getting rid of the loopholes and tax games the wealthy can take advantage of to avoid paying their share.
I'm pretty adverse to the idea of codifying a system where people with vast sums of money can pay for extra rights under the law. If anything we should offer more support to small artists and not turn them into an underclass, but at a minimum we should enforce an even playing field. It's a bit twisted to call a "rights for those who can pay" system "equitable"
Remember that the goal here is to end rent seeking, not allow it but only for the wealthy for as long as it's profitable for them. If the tax is high enough to stop the bad behavior we might as well have just banned it in the first place because if it isn't high enough to stop it, then the tax just becomes another cost of doing business and that's ignoring the fact that more tax money doesn't nessesarily benefit society to the extent that it should. Far too many tax dollars end up in the pockets of private corporations seeking profits (although that's a different problem)
The fact is that our economy and our culture will both benefit by works entering the public domain as that allows new creators to build on and explore those ideas which means more people being hired to work on those new projects, more products for consumers to purchase from retailers, and more taxes going to the government from a wider variety of sources which is itself a very good thing since mega-corps with monopolies on our culture and the tax revenue those cultural works generate can give those corporations a greater influence over government.
i understand your logic , but there's a problem with that assertion.
the thought is that the copyright value accrued out of some accident and thus, the owner does not deserve its value . That thinking is flawed. If anything, the copyright owner contributed to the equity accrued to the copyright. They should be able to pay the high price to keep adding value to it. This does not discriminate. IN fact, i would say the opposite, what you are proposing, feels like stealing.
If i dump millions into developing a copyrighted work, why could any random artist with nothing to lose be able to exploit the work by paying a small/no fee? This seems incredibly unfair. Do you agree?