If IP Is Property, Where Is the Property Tax? 691
nweaver writes "In a response to the LA Times editorial on copyright which we discussed a week ago, the paper published a response arguing: 'If Intellectual Property is actually property, why isn't it covered by a property tax?' If copyright maintenance involved paying a fee and registration, this would keep Mickey Mouse safely protected by copyright, while ensuring that works that are no longer economically relevant to the copyright holder pass into the public domain, where the residual social value can serve the real purpose of copyright: to enhance the progress of science and useful arts. Disclaimer: the author is my father."
It isn't REAL property (Score:5, Insightful)
I am sitting in a chair, no one is going to TAX me on the fact that I own some chair (personal property).
Weak argument.
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Terrible idea for entertainment based copyrights (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, the kid who wrote Chocolate Rain [youtube.com] has a potential revenue stream from the YouTube advert. You can bet he wouldn't have guessed that he would get almost 15 million views - so he would automatically have ceeded his potential copyright into the public domain. Someone else who saw the potential could have stepped in, linked it to all the right sites, and took all the advertising revenue for themselves.
This is an issue which will resolve itself just as soon as the internet becomes the main (legitimate) medium for entertainment distribution. At this point all the money currently spent on old media advertising follows the shows to YouTube or whereever they are being distributed. This creates, in effect, a democratic marketplace which rewards creativity; which will allow viral video authors to generate a revenue stream and (if they wish) go mainstream. Well, that's the dream [livejournal.com], anyway.. and at that point all the big copyright trolls can go fuck themselves as their precious content they horde will have become almost worthless.
re Not so hot idea (Score:2, Insightful)
That's what mommy told you anyway. :->
The idea is very good. Even not performing assets (i.e. unrented buildings) pay property taxes; of course, if I'm getting $3,000 a month rent from an apartment it is very likely that my property taxes will be higher than if it is a rundown hole in the wall, but even then taxes must be paid.
The problem is that the companies seeking longer copyright terms are precisely those whose assets are generating income, so adding 3 or 5 percent tax will not stop them; it will be the consumer who has to pay it through an increase in prices.
The real solution is to limit copyright terms to a reasonable,/i> amount of time; no more than 20 years from registration. Period. No extensions, no games, nothing more. If in 20 years you haven't reaped the just reward for your work, then you will never do it.
If you have reaped your reward, then twenty years is a fair amount of time./P.
How about my name and likeness? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, but it should slip into the public domain unless you do.
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wow... (Score:3, Insightful)
No the real question would be how much would you have to pay for that comment you just wrote. Because you have that piece of IP assigned to you you now have to pay say a $.01 tax to keep that registered to you. Im sure that it won't be that extreme if it does get implemented but governments are generally bad at keeping the interests of the people.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
good point (Score:2, Insightful)
cc
Majority of Artists (Score:4, Insightful)
A better solution would be to only charge a copyright fee on copyrights held by corporations (i.e. created under a work for hire license or purchased from the artist). When the artist who created the work still holds the copyright (and has no contractual obligations to a company on the use of that work) the current system works fairly decently. Since a company's main priority is its bottom line, unprofitable works would be released into the public domain sooner, but the little guy would still be able to benefit from his / her individual work.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
So in other words only the rich now can make money on anything that would be considered IP such as books, poems, songs, software, etc. Because the larger companies can now buy the rights to your public domain IP and sell it? Yes that will probably be illegal but if its public domain its not like you have the rights to complain.
Re:Wow... (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe require you to file official copyright claims on anything before you can defend it (automatically approved, but chalangeable) and then a small flat fee to maintain that copyright until you declare it public domain (a decision that you obviously can't recant) in addition to a percent of your income based on that copyright as property tax? Or maybe a tax on how much total you've made on that copyright, or some assessment of its current market value if you were to sell it (that'd be hard to do...) until you declare it public domain? (if the former, that'd certainly be an incentive to declare something public domain once you stopped really using it...)
interesting... (Score:4, Insightful)
The same idea could be applied to intellectual property. The owners of intellectual property should be required to give something back to society. As some other posters have pointed out, the problem becomes valuing the property. The easiest way to value intellectual property is by how much income it brings in to the owner.
By that measure, intellectual property is already taxed. The tax is simply paid through the corporate or individual income tax.
Re:It isn't REAL property (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Valuating for Property Tax Purposes (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds great in theory. In practice, however, it would be untenable. Linus would never be able to afford the property taxes on Linux, and as a result Microsoft with its billions in cash reserves would be able to buy it for a steal (unless of course Linus let it into the public domain, a decision I'm not even sure he could make.)
Linux is obviously an example, and perhaps a bad one. But a shotgun buy/sell system as you are proposing dramatically favors those with larger revenue streams and ready cash reserves.
Would be bad for open source (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wow... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
The answer is easy: nothing. You're never required to pay the property tax. It's just that you lose your copyright if you don't pay. Since I don't really care about the value of my slashdot comments, I wouldn't pay and they'd lapse into the public domain.
That's exactly the point. Things like blog comments that have little monetary value to their creators shouldn't be protected indefinitely. Neither should books that their publishers care so little about that they're allowed to go out of print. They should move into the public domain so that other people can make use of them without fear of lawsuit.
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but by doing so he's pointing out one con to such a system. In that system, for instance, modifying and relicensing GPL software to be closed-source would be legal (in fact, encouraged) unless the author of that software paid a copyright fee.
Which would probably end with something like our modern-day patent system, where big corporations can easily absorb the copyright fees and be invincible while the smaller "people" it was designed to protect get shafted.
-:sigma.SB
Re:Valuating for Property Tax Purposes (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
For the case you mention, I can think of a very simple solution - some sort of "minimum IP tax". Hold the IP, pay at least the minimum tax. As your revenue stream rises from zero, you continue to pay the minimum tax, until the taxation on your revenue stream exceeds that minimum. You know, pay the greater value.
Then there needs to be a process for releasing content into the public domain, so you can prove it to the Tax Man.
Plus it may sound biased, but there probably needs to be some sort of "equivalent to public domain" status for open source licenses. After all, the purpose of public domain is to make the IP usable by others as a foundation for further work. But then again, that also means that the government would probably meddle in defining open source licenses, at least for tax purposes. I could readily foresee bsd licenses passing the muster, but perhaps not the GPL, though maybe the LGPL. Remember, one thing the US government *likes* is businesses making money, and if you assume that closing the source is *necessary* to making money, as some very powerful business players do, then the gpl can be considered hostile toward that end.
Re:Wow... (Score:3, Insightful)
This would destroy the GPL and probably all other copyright licenses that support FOSS.
I do not think that would be A Good Thing To Do.
Property Tax is the Worst Kind of Tax (Score:3, Insightful)
Moreover, if you are going to ask where is the tax on IP, why don't you ask where the tax is on everyday objects around your house. Where is the property tax on industrial equipment, where is the property tax on you bank account, your stock investments, the money other people owe you, labor contracts? All these things are forms of property that are used to generate revenue but are not taxed under property tax.
The government should not be able to place an arbitrary value and tax rate on any property. I should have the right to be secure in my possessions. If I don't have that right, I don't have any property at all.
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Valuating for Property Tax Purposes (Score:2, Insightful)
You don't get a "tax free" period on owning your home. You don't get a "tax free" period on owning a car. You don't get a "tax free" period on any other real property. Why should someone get that benefit for IP?
Re:re Not so hot idea (Score:4, Insightful)
The idea is very good. Even not performing assets (i.e. unrented buildings) pay property taxes; of course, if I'm getting $3,000 a month rent from an apartment it is very likely that my property taxes will be higher than if it is a rundown hole in the wall, but even then taxes must be paid.
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right, they should. It should be in the form of copyright that actually expires! That way, they give back the creative work to the public domain, as was intended by copyright law in the first place.
This isn't complicated, people. Trying to accommodate those who would forever lock up all popular culture since the 1930's is to be part of the problem, not the solution!
good ideas keep coming around (Score:4, Insightful)
Or, if that's too complicated, we could just ask copyright holders to identify which copyrights they care about and submit a simple application to maintain them [wikipedia.org] or let them flow into the public domain. We did that for nearly two centuries until 1976.
It's just amazing how little we demand that the holders of incredibly valuable copyrights do to obtain those rights and to keep them.
Re:Commercial exploitation (Score:3, Insightful)
It's pretty simple, really. We want to spur your creation of new works. But we want to do so for as little cost as possible, and what we're paying you, as an incentive, is with temporarily keeping the work out of the public domain. If you would create a work for a 1 year copyright, it would be wasteful to offer you a 100 year copyright. It would be just as stupid as if you were willing to wash my car for a dollar, but I paid you a hundred times as much.
It is tricky determining whether a copyright should be granted at all (some authors will create for free; we should allow them to), and if so, for how long. Ideally, we should have a means for authors to identify themselves as the kind that aren't working for free (lacking psychic powers, we probably can't do much better) on a per-work basis. And while we should have a maximum cap on how much and how long-lasting copyright we grant, we should offer it on a graduated basis, so that if an author stops bothering to opt-in every year or so, his work enters the public domain that much sooner.
Plus, as you'll recall, it is generally felt that free markets are better than monopolies. Why should the public have to suffer the indignity and abuse of a monopoly -- particularly one that exists by their own fiat! -- for one moment longer than is necessary to serve the public purpose? Who cares whether or not the monopolist has wrung every last cent out of the public with it? That's totally irrelevant.
Re:Property Tax is the Worst Kind of Tax (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:re Not so hot idea (Score:5, Insightful)
two things (Score:3, Insightful)
2. land property is an abstract concept. money in fact is an abstract concept. land property, or money, has no meaning except in relation to your relationship with society. there is no way to think of property as some sort of natural right, something that you innately possess as your own, on your own, like intelligence or age. as such, thinking of your property as some sort of natural appendage of yours is philosophcally false
libertarianism starts out with some very noble beliefs, but it is incredibly naive about how society really works. all libertarian ideals result in, in the real world, is aristocracy, and an underclass of poor. that's not the stated goal of libertarianism of course, but that is in fact what libertarian ideas result in: an unnatural concentration of wealth in some hands, and the absence of it in others. sure, libertarianism is championed in the name of equality and the middle class, but the results of libertarianism is to destroy equality and the middle class. the idea of libertarianism is founded on a flawed understanding of how society really works. you need a balancing force, a central government to make sure nothing gets out of hand. you don't simply let independent players proceed as they want without oversight. run that simulation: a few years later you get robber barons and starving poor. wealth accumulates. you must therefore exert governmental pressure to make sure the playing field stays level
Re:Wow... (Score:2, Insightful)
It doesn't exist. It can't exist.
The reason 'real property' has value and is taxed is that there is a finite amount of it. No matter how you slice, there's only so much land on this planet.
With intellectual property -- particularly in the digital age -- well, there isn't a finite amount of it. In fact, it's infinite -- I can make a gazillion copies of Windows Vista without ever removing the original from anyone or devaluing it anyway. (No matter how many copies I make of Vista Ultimate, it still sells for $400)
And that is the difference.
Re:Wow... (Score:3, Insightful)
You claim a value. You make up the value - whatever you want to say it is. You are then taxed on that value. The only caveat is that if someone wants it from you they can buy the whole damn thing from you for the price you claimed it was worth
I liked this idea a lot, until I realized that this would concentrate all the IP rights - patents, copyrights, the whole shebang - into the hands of the super-rich. Neither Joe Q. Inventor working in his garage or Sally S. Songwriter are going to be able to pay the taxes on a high valuation, meaning Evil Record Label/Evil Faceless Corporation will be able to buy everything they've created at a low price.
Besides, what would this do to licensing? I'm thinking the "copyleft" schemes that the GNU software falls under. That's intellectual property, isn't it? The right to license that software as open source, and the requirements to make source code of derivative works freely available? What kind of valuation would keep evil Bill Gates from buying it? Who would pay the taxes on it? What happens to licensing if the owners of the IP change?
We're looking at this the wrong way. Not "If Intellectual Property is property, we should tax it, too" but "If IP isn't taxed, why should real property?"
Re:Wow... (Score:2, Insightful)
IF you want to go live up north or somewhere really really rural with no supporting services - you generally don't pay property tax.
this would destroy linux (Score:5, Insightful)
>the IP in question goes into the public domain instead of to the purchaser.
GPL and public domain are not the same thing. Linus owns parts of Linux and holds a trademark on Linux in some countries. He could not afford to pay such taxes, so a company like say microsoft could come along and use his code under these laws.
In general, these laws make no sense and would hurt open source developers even more than closed source developers.
Finally, these are in no way analogous to property tax because property tax is just on land, not on the various other things you own. Also the federal government doesn't even collect property tax. It's a stupid idea that would hurt everyone.
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
There are flaws with that system no matter how you look at it:
Some dude in a garage invents something amazing, makes a few million bucks selling it. In 10 years time, maybe it's become even more relevant (ready for mass adoption), so $megaCorp steps in and 'bids' a few BILLION on it. Original inventor doesn't have that kind of capital, loses rights to $megaCorp. But the rights are now transferred to someone else for their exclusive use. The small guy gets locked out, and the public interest still isn't satisfied.
Under your other scenario ("for IP that drastically changes in value in a short time, a petition
Re:Wow... (Score:2, Insightful)
10, 20, 40, 80, 160, 320, 640, 1280, 2560, 5120, 10240, 20480, 40960, 81920, 163840, 327680, 655360, 1310720, 2621440, 5242880
Basically, to extend the protection of IP, the company has to pay just slightly more than they have already paid in total for the entire life of the IP. Even the wealthiest companies cannot squander what is likely to be common knowledge by that time.
This should give laypeople ample time to develop a business around a product, but make it prohibitively expensive to own it forever.
Obviously I'm against indefinite IP. And I just picked an arbitrary starting point and scale.
I wouldn't call it a tax, though... just a renewal fee. It would may help avoid potential Constitutional complications.
IANAL or an economist. Just an idea.
Re:It does... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wow... (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps that's true in the short term, but it's not in the long term. Assuming you've made the copies legally (i.e. copyright law doesn't exist), the value of Vista will go down due to supply and demand. If people can get Windows for free, no one (except the ignorant and those needing support contracts) would pay for it.
There needs to be a way for people to be compensated for the content they create. They may not be creating a tangible good, but you can't deny that they've put a lot of time into their creations. I'm a big fan of open source projects; many of them have been successful at earning their creators decent livings while they give away their code for free. Not every piece of intellectual property can work this way, however - you're not going to sell a support contract on a work of art or a musical composition, for example.
Let's face it - copyrights are necessary if we want the arts to continue to be a career option. While there are certainly many ways that the law is flawed, the underlying concept is not.
Re:If it produces income, then that is taxed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Valuating for Property Tax Purposes (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm going to guess they can keep, say, everything but $0.02 (payment of which may be deferred without penalties or interest - see Section 32, entitled "The RIAA Paid Us To Do This", appended to a war funding bill).
That's not to say corporations don't pay taxes, they clearly do, but you just know that anything pointed directly at Microsoft's monopoly or big media's stranglehold on content and culture is going to be lobbied into nothingness before one of us can finish tagging the news on IP reform 'suddenoutbreakofcommonsense'.
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
With the scenario of $megaCorp, the original owner could bid however much he wants (ten trillion trillion), and then he'll pay himself (so he doesn't actually need to have any money). However if he does that, his taxes will go way up, and he has to decide if the IP is really worth that much, and if it really is worth a BILLION dollars, and no more, he'll sell. If he's emotionally attatched to it and doesn't want it to fall into the hands of $megaCorp, he can just release to the public domain.
Re:Wow... (Score:2, Insightful)
Well said, though I am out of mod points. +1 Insightful/DuhBitchSlap!
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps that's true in the short term, but it's not in the long term. Assuming you've made the copies legally (i.e. copyright law doesn't exist), the value of Vista will go down due to supply and demand. If people can get Windows for free, no one (except the ignorant and those needing support contracts) would pay for it.
Sorry, but this is just economics 101.
Let's face it - copyrights are necessary if we want the arts to continue to be a career option. While there are certainly many ways that the law is flawed, the underlying concept is not.
No, this is also wrong. People do *not* have a right to be compensated. Let's say I go out into a field (designated as a public resource) and dig a hole. A really big hole. I work 10 hours a day in the blazing sun and now there is a hole big enough for 2 or 3 olympic sized swimming pools.
I've put a *lot* of work into that hole. Who is going to pay me? Probably nobody, because nobody wants that hole. Just because you work hard on something doesn't mean it has value.
There was never an "industry" for things like books and recorded music for most of history, yet music and writing have existed for thousands of years. Cavemen painted on the walls of their caves. Nobody paid them, but it was still done.
Frankly, I think music in general would be a lot better if there weren't a bunch of corporations making widgets out of it.
Re:Wow... (Score:3, Insightful)
Became the government's right there, so they kept the money when it was sold.
Re:this would destroy linux (Score:3, Insightful)
I suppose a compiler maker could try to arrange a sales contract where they had partial copyright and proceeds of the compiled object code as the producer of a derived work, but there's enough competition in that market that no software developer would accept that at this time.
Re:two things (Score:1, Insightful)
1. You ought not call any 'ism naive without first acknowledging the fucked up state of the current government, laws, and power structures.
2. Our most cherished values both start and end with "noble beliefs". E.g., freedom of the press and the Emancipation Proclamation. There are no valid excpetions to these noble beliefs.
3. "how society really works" is easily replaced with "how society doesn't work". I.e., the first step to fixing a problem is identifying the problem. Obviously, OBVIOUSLY, that is not how society really works otherwise the problem wouldn't be there.
4. No candidate no matter how centrist is likely to be a better, more statistically significant representation of your views - regardless of what your views are - because the odds of any strong similarity in both practice and effect are astronomically ridiculous.
5. Taxes and the tax structure exist to fund the behemoth of a governement. The little social ends trap you fall into is just that, a trap. Tax my property all you f-ing want, I'll still make 6+ figures after taxes. We need to look at what the government ought to be spending and focus on the simplest (most fair, efficient, and administratively feasible) means of funding.
6. You lack a grasp of economic history. The rise of the middle and upper-middle class has naught to do with government. The government has never been a balancing force but a drag on every capable person.
Re:Wow... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wow... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Valuating for Property Tax Purposes (Score:3, Insightful)
Therefore, the only way the government could do what you suggest is if the code were donated to the public domain, in which case it's not owned by anyone, therefore it's not property anyways.
Re:Wow... (Score:3, Insightful)
The reality is that we have a corrupt form of government in which money can buy laws. Since the "public domain" has no money it will therefore get screwed every single time.
Don't get me wrong, I don't want to take the wind out of anyone's sails. I would LOVE to see copyright reform (and Patent reform), but this seems like a classic case of putting the cart ahead of the horse. What's the idea here, that the thought of more tax money would encourage the government to act? That has to be enough money to counter the lobbyist's money. I wonder what the exchange rate is? An extra 100 million in taxes is equal to how much in re-election money? Now that would be a question I'd love to see research on.
d
Re:Wow... (Score:2, Insightful)
That guy in his garage is some beard writing code under the GPL. We'll say it's a pretty good piece of software called Chippewa. It grows and grows, ends up having a bunch of people working on it and is more widely deployed than MegaSofts competing version of the software commonly referred to by its acronym. MegaSoft has billions, can use a tax write off, and is willing to spend that money to cement dominance in the market. The people involved in Chippewa can, at most, come up with a few million of their own plus another few million from companies backing the development to defend the copyright. MegaSoft is aware of this and knows that since the product is GPL and distributed for free, the backers probably won't go all out to help the Chippewa foundation retain ownership. So, MegaSoft overbids, knowing they can take the hit, the developers end up in a legal fiasco since anyone who wrote even a single line of code that ended up in a release wants a piece of the pie and MegaSoft now owns Chippewa, which is quickly buried.
After all this, the community decides to fork the project, hoping that the GPL will save them, but MegaSoft still has loads of cash and really expensive lawyers in retainer just waiting to hang some free software schmucks out to dry. C&D letters are sent out to forks of Chippewa and suddenly everyone involved is embroiled in legal crap and all development is halted while the validity of the GPL is sorted out in a fight between MegaSoft and the FSF that makes the SCO trial look like child's play.
Re:flaw (Score:3, Insightful)
If he seriously TREASURES it for non-monitary reasons and doesn't want to let it fall into the hands (and he wants to be able to freely use it), all he has to do is announce that it's now public domain.
Taxes, gone. Mega corp gets their IP for free and poor $70k Bob gets to use his IP all he wants.
The ONLY REASON to keep IP exclusive, is for monitary gain, isn't it? Make it public domain if you value it for the esoteric social benefit it provides...
Your "vintage car" analogy is odd as IP isn't a thing that can be "taken away" when you have the option to make it public domain where the result is "everyone in the world who cares to have one gets their own, with my name stenciled on the bumper".
*shrugs*
SI
Re:IP tax assesment burden (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
Patents however are probably the most widely misused legal instrument in the 'IP law' realm. They're often filed and obtained purely for anticompetitive reasons and are rarely ingenious enough to actually deserve patent protection. Companies constantly reinvent the wheel with minor variations and continually repatent the wheel simultaneously(see recent "online" gift card for sale at POS counter).
I think if a patent is filed and the patent holder has not made any effort to commercialize or otherwise 'use' their patent within a predetermined time period(say 2 years, or 5 years), they should lose it. The benefit to society as a whole for so-called "IP holding companies" is negative and punitive reasons to prevent this situation from occurring should be created.
You have to realize the patent is a government granted temporary monopoly to encourage companies to innovate, or at least that was the purpose. Fast forward to the present and you see now the primary reason to invest in patents is to stifle the competition and raise the barrier to entry. Effectively this creates not a single monopolist for a specific product, but instead creating monolithic industries that are impenetrable to newcomers. The only companies routinely willing to sue others to force compliance with patent laws are those IP holding companies; since they don't actually manufacture, design, distribute, redistribute or retail anything, they have no fear of reprisal.
If someone creates a widget, patents it but fails to commercialize it and another person or company independantly comes up with the same widget and succeeds, what was the original inventor's benefit to society? None, but under current patent law the subsequent inventor is forced to redesign their widget differently from the original inventor even though the original inventor plays no value-adding role in this chain of research, design, invention, implementation and monetization.
So, the trillion dollar question is, how do you fix this conundrum without unfairly empowering tipping the balance of power? I could write a book on the subject, but nobody with the power to change this will read it.
Re:IP tax assesment burden (Score:2, Insightful)
To spin that perspective a little, if I were the mega-corp, I'd just over bid one of my competitors lesser patents. They still can't make a complete product now and they've spent all their money researching and defending the more important patents. If we can bid on a multitude of IP, then we can increase costs for the little guy tremendously just to keep his portfolio intact.
Re:IP tax assesment burden (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wow... (Score:3, Insightful)
While to idea of an IP tax on the surface may sound appealing to some people, in some situations, its however got wider repercussions and its going to be gamed by people with money.
Re:Wow... (Score:4, Insightful)
There are already patent maintenance fees of a few thousand dollars (and the numbers increase with the age of the patent) that do clean out some of the underbrush when it comes to patents.
For copyrights I like the idea of a similar idea. Once the original author is dead (or some time period, say 10 years has passed it takes a maintenance fee to keep the copyright alive.
Land is double taxed. Why isn't copyright? (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't understand what property is (Score:3, Insightful)
Your premise that property means that "it is yours, and no one can take it from you" is patently false. The government can take away your land for public use so long as they provide you with just compensation. A private party can take your property by adverse possession if they meet certain requirements for a long period of time. Property can be taken away as a punishment for a crime or as compensation in a civil lawsuit or as a matter of contract law.
Furthermore, your wrong that property taxes aren't made on the items you list. The power to tax property has always been retained by the States. Your use of property can also be taxed. Some States actually tax industrial equipment. States will tax bank accounts as property under certain circumstances. Some kinds of debt can be taxed.
These rights are part of a social contract enshrined in our constitution and the law, which is made by our elected representatives. You can't just proclaim a new libertarian theory of property and expect people to abide by your twisted logic.
I really have a problem with this... (Score:1, Insightful)
On one hand you're all screaming that it's not really property and that it has no real hard value but when someone proposes that, yes it is property and that it does have value you all do a 360 and start screaming for taxes to be due.
So which is it? Are the copyright holders holding real property with a hard value, like land, or are they in possession of an idea that has no recognizable value? If it's the former than fine, tax them but don't cry about warrants and people going to jail for theft if it's the later than there should be no tax and this idea should be shrugged off as ridiculous.
It's more and more apparent around here that what the average slashdotter really wants is for companies to be beaten down so the individual can make some short term benefit. But in the long run this is an awful plan. The very technology that sits in front of you today was built up by the same companies that you want to destroy for no other reason than to think you're the David to modern societies Golliath. It's petty and disturbing that people don't look beyond their noses before they scream for blood.