<story><title>Munich court tells Netflix to stop using H.265 video coding to stream UHD</title><url>https://www.nexttv.com/news/achtung-baby-netflix-loses-patent-dispute-to-broadcom-in-germany-told-to-stop-using-hevc-to-stream-4k</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ralferoo</author><text>&amp;gt; The catch is that you are required to sell to anyone who offers your declared value.&lt;p&gt;This sounds terrible for owners and perfect for governments and rich investors.&lt;p&gt;Governments would love it because it forces people to over-value their property to avoid the risk of their property being snatched from them against their wishes. If you can effectively be evicted from your home just because someone else wants to buy it, there&amp;#x27;s absolutely no security and you might as well rent, rather than own property.&lt;p&gt;Rich investors would love it, because they can go around snapping up more properties that happen to be &amp;quot;undervalued&amp;quot; and make quick money of it, in a way that&amp;#x27;s simply not possible for normal people. Say someone bought a house for $100k, declare its value as such, and then demand increases in the area and 6 months later the market rate is $110k. A property investor could then rock up and demand to buy it for $100k and immediately flip it for 10% profit and then move on to the next target.&lt;p&gt;This inevitable consequence is that people would be forced to &amp;quot;value&amp;quot; their house at the maximum they think it might be worth in 12 months time or risk losing their home, or even higher to signal that they really don&amp;#x27;t want to leave their home, all the while paying more tax than they need to because the actual market price for houses would be lower.&lt;p&gt;Of course, this might also force the purchase prices for housing to be forced higher, so stopping people getting on the property market.&lt;p&gt;All in all, it sounds like a terrible system for most people.</text></item><item><author>thinkharderdev</author><text>Years ago I read the book &amp;quot;Radical Markets&amp;quot; by Glenn Weyl and Richard Posner. One of the ideas was a system of property tax system in which you pay property tax based on a property value which you get to declare (rather than some assessment by a third-party or government agency). The catch is that you are required to sell to anyone who offers your declared value. So a bit like a land value tax but fully general (can be applied to anything) and also sidestepping the issue of how to actually determine the the &amp;quot;value&amp;quot; in land value.&lt;p&gt;While this would pose obvious practical problems as a system for property taxes, it seems like it might actually be a good system for patent taxes. Basically, you should have a to pay a patent tax to hold a patent. You can declare whatever value you want on the patent but have to also be willing to sell the patent at that declared value (or maybe just license it). I haven&amp;#x27;t thought it through really (just an idle thought) it certainly seems like it would basically destroy the business model of &amp;quot;patent trolls&amp;quot; and curb the practice of major tech players accumulating a huge portfolio of dubious patents as a cudgel they can threaten smaller competitors with.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>thinkharderdev</author><text>&amp;gt; This inevitable consequence is that people would be forced to &amp;quot;value&amp;quot; their house at the maximum they think it might be worth in 12 months time or risk losing their home, or even higher to signal that they really don&amp;#x27;t want to leave their home, all the while paying more tax than they need to because the actual market price for houses would be lower.&lt;p&gt;This is mostly a thought experiment so there is not an actual detailed implementation plan by the authors. But my sense was that it&amp;#x27;s not that you actually have to sell immediately but more like someone can offer to buy at $X and then you either have to sell or $X becomes the new declared value for future tax payments.</text></comment>
<story><title>Munich court tells Netflix to stop using H.265 video coding to stream UHD</title><url>https://www.nexttv.com/news/achtung-baby-netflix-loses-patent-dispute-to-broadcom-in-germany-told-to-stop-using-hevc-to-stream-4k</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ralferoo</author><text>&amp;gt; The catch is that you are required to sell to anyone who offers your declared value.&lt;p&gt;This sounds terrible for owners and perfect for governments and rich investors.&lt;p&gt;Governments would love it because it forces people to over-value their property to avoid the risk of their property being snatched from them against their wishes. If you can effectively be evicted from your home just because someone else wants to buy it, there&amp;#x27;s absolutely no security and you might as well rent, rather than own property.&lt;p&gt;Rich investors would love it, because they can go around snapping up more properties that happen to be &amp;quot;undervalued&amp;quot; and make quick money of it, in a way that&amp;#x27;s simply not possible for normal people. Say someone bought a house for $100k, declare its value as such, and then demand increases in the area and 6 months later the market rate is $110k. A property investor could then rock up and demand to buy it for $100k and immediately flip it for 10% profit and then move on to the next target.&lt;p&gt;This inevitable consequence is that people would be forced to &amp;quot;value&amp;quot; their house at the maximum they think it might be worth in 12 months time or risk losing their home, or even higher to signal that they really don&amp;#x27;t want to leave their home, all the while paying more tax than they need to because the actual market price for houses would be lower.&lt;p&gt;Of course, this might also force the purchase prices for housing to be forced higher, so stopping people getting on the property market.&lt;p&gt;All in all, it sounds like a terrible system for most people.</text></item><item><author>thinkharderdev</author><text>Years ago I read the book &amp;quot;Radical Markets&amp;quot; by Glenn Weyl and Richard Posner. One of the ideas was a system of property tax system in which you pay property tax based on a property value which you get to declare (rather than some assessment by a third-party or government agency). The catch is that you are required to sell to anyone who offers your declared value. So a bit like a land value tax but fully general (can be applied to anything) and also sidestepping the issue of how to actually determine the the &amp;quot;value&amp;quot; in land value.&lt;p&gt;While this would pose obvious practical problems as a system for property taxes, it seems like it might actually be a good system for patent taxes. Basically, you should have a to pay a patent tax to hold a patent. You can declare whatever value you want on the patent but have to also be willing to sell the patent at that declared value (or maybe just license it). I haven&amp;#x27;t thought it through really (just an idle thought) it certainly seems like it would basically destroy the business model of &amp;quot;patent trolls&amp;quot; and curb the practice of major tech players accumulating a huge portfolio of dubious patents as a cudgel they can threaten smaller competitors with.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>oatmeal1</author><text>The issues you describe could all be nullified by making a simple change - The price the person can purchase your property for must be X% greater than the fair value you declare.  If you set X at 10% then there is no chance for property investors in your example to flip if the price increases by 10% during the year.  You could even make X dependent on market conditions - If all the housing market moves up in your area, X is increased for everyone by that amount.&lt;p&gt;I could see X being quite high.  What we really want to avoid is just those situations where someone will not take any price to move, and therefore an entire railroad has to be diverted miles around because the path in one spot is blocked.</text></comment>