Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Taxpayer Support
Author: Seth Gordon Posted: 8/28/2000; 8:26:27 AM Topic: Creative Works And Human Nature Msg #: 20387 (In response to 20300) Prev/Next: 20386 / 20388
- Taxpayer Support - Richard Stallman wrote an essay in 1992, "The Right Way to Tax DAT", in which he proposed that musical artists (musicians and composers) be compensated from taxes on blank digital audio tapes, and that the distribution of that money be proportional to the number of copies of each artists' work that were floating around (as determined by periodic polls). This idea could easily be extended to cover all digital recording media (does anybody know how much is spent in the US on hard drives, CD-Rs, etc., in a year?
Advantages: It's easier to monitor every blank-media producer for tax compliance than to monitor every computer owner for copyright compliance; consumers have no financial incentive to lie on the polls, since they've already paid the tax.
Disadvantages: The people and institutions that buy digital recording media and don't store music (or other art) on it are subsidizing those who do, which raises some fairness issues; an artist's per-copy revenue is proportional to the size (in bytes) of the work, which (especially for software) doesn't reflect its use-value very well.
There are responses to this message:
- Re: Taxpayer Support, Brett Glass, 8/28/2000; 11:11:59 AM
- Taxpayer Support: I rather hope not, Patrick Connors, 8/28/2000; 8:01:58 PM
- Taxpayer Support: I rather hope not, Patrick Connors, 8/28/2000; 8:03:41 PM
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