To help the creation of today, La France insoumise wishes to tax the works of yesterday. An amendment has been tabled to tax profits on the commercial exploitation of works in the public domain. But the proposal is controversial.
Works in the public domain, a new source of funding for today’s creation? This is the idea of an amendment tabled by the deputies of La France Insoumise as part of the finance bill for 2023. It would be a question of levying a 1% tax on any profit made from the commercial use of a work in the public domain.
The amendment, spotted by Alexis Kauffmannfree software specialist and founder of Framasoft, a platform dedicated to the free software movement, would serve to “ increase support for artistic creation », in addition to the systems that already exist. The amendment was tabled on September 30 and has yet to be examined by the Finance Committee.
Only the lucrative use of works in the public domain would be taxed: ” the free and unrestricted use of works not subject to copyright would in no way be affected, specifies the explanatory memorandum – how, in any case, to apply a tax of this type on free and unrestricted use of works, for lack of an amount on which to rely?
A 1% levy on any profit from the public domain
In this context, one can imagine that a person interpreting on guitar or piano a score by a composer like Beethoven, and who would seek to make a little money from it by monetizing his take with a video on YouTube, would have to donate 1% of his earnings. The amendment does not specify who collects the tax or who redistributes it, and how.
Another possibility: the sale of postcards on which would be printed famous paintings dating back several centuries. Or simply a reproduction of some large paintings. The tax aimed at lucrative commercial use could cast a wide net. It could apply equally well in the physical world as in the digital one.
The operation of the amendment would potentially encounter application difficulties in certain cases, which will doubtless not be the most common: what about, for example, a work created recently and for which the artist decides on his heritage, placing it under a permissive Creative Commons license? Does it also become taxable?
This is not the first time that La France insoumise defends this track. In 2019, LFI deputies tabled a similar bill, reported in Copyright Madness. Already at the time, there was talk of a puncture of 1%. The idea is old at LFI: in 2017, Jean-Luc Mélenchon was already in favor of it. She returned to her 2022 schedule.
The bill defended at the time could not be adopted, for lack of a sufficient majority in Parliament for LFI and its allies. In fact, the current configuration of the hemicycle makes it unlikely that the amendment will survive in the medium term. If it survives the commission, the measure will then have to go through several legislative stages, which are all pitfalls.
Among book publishers, this suggestion is difficult to pass: Alexis Kauffmann warns that this rate of 1% could very well increase in the future, drawing a parallel with remuneration for private copying. With Lionel Maurel, jurist and co-author of Copyright Madness, this idea is also judged harshly : it is an attack on the integrity of the public domain.
” The public domain is inseparable from freedom of use, whether for profit or not. This is what the expiry of economic rights intrinsically means », does he develop on Twitter. Already in his 2019 column, he denounced this “paid public domain system”, which is a bad solution to a real problem: the precariousness of authors.