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Self-Funding Harberger Taxes

Copyright mechanism proposal to solve the orphan works problem: self-assessed Harberger taxes on any inherited copyright are then invested, and dedicated to eventually buying out the owners. Works are either immediately public-domained, or the owners voluntarily ‘sell’ them if their value underperforms a baseline investment.

We would like a copyright mechanism which: moves most works (which have minimal direct value) into the public domain as quickly as possible, while not overly harming heirs of valuable copyrights; improved record keeping and exploitation of the rest; enabled price discovery and transactions, particularly buyouts; encouraged efficient use of capital and minimizing opportunity costs, while punishing lazy rentiers or management enjoying “a quiet life”; is not too much more complicated administratively or adding expensive overhead. You would figure it out after the deal was executed, of course, when you found out exactly what copyright you owned (left to you by a distant great-uncle’s niece you had no idea had become world-famous for her comic books set in 1800s Russia about dancing circus bears), but that would be too late. “bounty hunters” are incentivized to hunt for quasi-orphan works, which are either underused or should be cashed in (removing their orphan status and reducing the deadweight loss), as a sub-market enabled by objective third-party valuation

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