I used to think this too, until I thought about it more. The biggest issue with taxing copyright is eventually only the biggest companies can afford it. Imagine if Disney could simply wait until Lucas couldn't afford the Star Wars copyright anymore, and then just acquire the copyright. So now Lucas gets nothing and the government gets billions. Everyone loses in that situation.
I think copyrights should be taxed like income. File a special return showing the income that copyright got you, and pay a percent. Audit it like the IRS audits taxes. Make it a tax on top of income tax. So for example Disney would pay their normal taxes, and then additional tax for income earned from Mickey, Donald, Darth Vader, etc. Maybe allow them to group copyrights for simplicity.
Then do patents the same way. Pay a tax based on how much you make from a patent.
And then once you do that you can get fancy. Allow anyone to use a patent and pay the tax, but have their tax get split with the original patent holder, or increase the tax and have to extra go to the original holder. Then invocation isn't stifled anymore. If you can make an e-ink reader and make it profitable enough to cover the tax, then great, everyone wins!
Expiration of copyright would have to mean instant and irreversible transition to public ___domain. In that case, Disney would have to pay reasonable money to Lucas, so that he does not let his copyright expire out of spite.
Also, 20-30 years of automatic or very cheap copyright mean that the original creator has a lot of time to make some money off it. Although there are works that only became "hits" after decades, this is a fairly rare situation.
For copyrights, why is this a problem? Consider the early copyright lengths of like 20 years + 20 years after the author's death. We're now at far, far, faaar beyond that.
What if we did 20 + 20 and then every year after it, we charge $X and then geometrically or exponentially increase the price.
Yes, it would be a tax to Disney; but, if Disney is willing to spend $2B in 2010 to keep Steam Boat Willie and then $2.5B in 2011, I think that's a fine tax for them to get to keep it.
I don't think most people had _any_ problem with the 20 + 20 or similar patterns. They have issues with the, what is it now, 120 years?
I think copyrights should be taxed like income. File a special return showing the income that copyright got you, and pay a percent. Audit it like the IRS audits taxes. Make it a tax on top of income tax. So for example Disney would pay their normal taxes, and then additional tax for income earned from Mickey, Donald, Darth Vader, etc. Maybe allow them to group copyrights for simplicity.
Then do patents the same way. Pay a tax based on how much you make from a patent.
And then once you do that you can get fancy. Allow anyone to use a patent and pay the tax, but have their tax get split with the original patent holder, or increase the tax and have to extra go to the original holder. Then invocation isn't stifled anymore. If you can make an e-ink reader and make it profitable enough to cover the tax, then great, everyone wins!