Copyright Tax?

In our current state of affairs, everything written gets copyright protection from the moment it is created, and for the next 99 years. This blanket protection now outlives the creator of any new work, and provides a major hurdle for new creators to derive or build upon previous work.

Sure, the answer is easy: They just have to get permission of the copyright holder to use his or her work. However, as outlined in 'Free Culture' by Dr L. Lessig, identifying the copyright holder can be more than just difficult, and in the case of music remixing, require so many holders to be identified and tracked down to post inquires to that making the derivative work is no longer viable.

I question society's benefit from such stringent and long-lived copyright laws. Not only do they restrict creativity, but they lower the possibility of competition (remember, the golden tenet of a free market society?), and pump up salaries in several fields beyond what a non-monopolized market would produce (think sports, movies, performers).

Initial copyright protection was granted for just 7 years, with a one-time renewal of an additional 7 years if the creator so wished. I would think this would be quite sufficient for the majority of cases: Either the creation is no longer worth much (if anything!) after 14 years, and could freely enter the public domain, or so much income has been received by the creator (think JKRowling) that allowing the creation to enter the public domain will not have any real affect upon their well-being.

But there are those who feel that having control of their creation is important, regardless of whether they are earning income. Perhaps Ms Rowling wouldn't want to have others writing stories featuring Harry Potter (and doing a much worse / the same / better job).

So, in the interests of getting the bulk of human creativity into the public domain quickly where it can be used as a springboard for more creativity, but allowing those few instances where there is a compelling interest in keeping it out, (and recognizing that giving copyright protection is to create a form of property), perhaps we should just allow those who want to extend their exclusive rights to their creation the option of doing so by paying a tax.

The tax would be proportional to the property's value (like all property taxes), but have a high enough minimum to prevent speculative holding of copyrights. Granted, this would still give large corporations an advantage of maintaining long-lived copyrights, but at least they would have to continually evaluate (and pay!) to do so, rather than periodically extending copyright (via legislative lobbying) in a blanket manner that prevents all works from entering the public domain.

It doesn't solve all problems surrounding copyright, but if we were to return to a seven year copyright, and then force those who want to extend their rights to at least pay a tax, perhaps it would solve many.

A reasonable proposition? Or seriously flawed? I submit this idea to a jury of my peers...