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Have You Paid Your Bertelsmann Tax Today?
Mwongozi writes "Germany is planning to slap new taxes on computer, telecommunications and Internet products to ensure that authors are properly rewarded for the use of their work, a newspaper said Wednesday. The Berliner Zeitung said proposals had been drafted requiring manufacturers of goods from computers to printers, modems, compact disc "burners" and other devices to pay royalty fees that would then be forwarded to music and film companies." My guess is that Bertelsmann, the world's third largest media company, has a little something to do with this. In the U.S., any devices intended for digital audio are already taxed similarly to the above proposal but general-purpose computing devices are not. (Though the RIAA sought to include them too.) Has anyone considered what an extraordinary situation it is where government tax collectors are collecting taxes which are funneled straight to corporations?
Look at the historical precident in this country for laissez-faire capitalism. We gave rise to the Captains of Industry, Aka the "Robber Barons". Do we really want to repeat those dark days when deregulation was big?
Given a choice between being abused a large, inefficient government that I have the hope of participating in, versus being abused by the efficiency of corporation where votes are bought by dollars, I'll take government any day.
Deregulating an industry does not limit govt payouts, nor does it reconcile the fact that the average American living at the poverty line pays a higher percentage in taxes than your average corporation (average corporations pay between 2%-6%. How much do you pay?).
The corporate welfare structure in the United States is primarily the result of a mush-headed reverse-progressive (regressive?) tax scale that favors large corporation over the small businesses that are the real support for communities.
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
Well, if I'm going to be paying for the right to copy music, then morally there is nothing wrong with hitting Napster and leeching away, since I've already paid for the right to do it. This completely removes any moral imperative to respect copyright laws or to ever go buy the CD of an artist that you actually like.
The US gov't does not, and never has, collected any "taxes" that are distributed to artists as royalties. Period, end of story.
Makers of Music Minidisc, DAT Music Tapes, and Music CD-R discs for sale in the US do throw money into the music industry, but it's the same corporate channels that already existed for music royalties.
Sorry, but your information is eight years out of date. Read Title 17 Chapter 10 if you don't believe me.
Since 1992, the U.S. Government has collected a royalty on all blank digital audio recorders and blank digital audio media manufactured in or imported into the United States, and handed the money directly over to the RIAA companies.
The money collected is, as mandated by federal law, divided as follows:
(1.75%) of the royalties are paid to the American Federation of Musicians, to be paid to "non-featured" musicians (studio musicians)
(0.92%) of the royalties are paid to the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, to be paid to "non-featured" vocalists (backup vocalists)
(25.60%) of the royalties are paid to "featured recording artists", including such bands as Metallica.
(38.40%) of the royalties are paid to "copyright owners" (the RIAA companies)
(16.67%) of the royalties are paid to "music publishers"
(16.67%) of the royalties are paid to music writers, including such bands as Metallica who write their own songs.
This is completely above and beyond the other systems of royalty payments, such as ASCAP, BMI, where the copyright owners go after businesses to get them to sign licensing agreements. In this case, the royalty fee collection system is part of Federal Law.
Incidently, if you're curious as to why downloading from Napster is not illegal, or immoral, read paragraph 1008. This is what you, the consumer got in exchange for a federal law mandating direct payments from your wallet to the RIAA whenever you buy a blank audio CDR.
IMO, Bertelsmann is a monopolist trying to grab as much of the media market as they can, especially in the book arena. They own the largest publishing company and the largest chain bookstore, Random House and Barnes & Noble. They attempted to purchase Ingram Book Company(big distributor-something like 60% of Amazon's books come from Ingram), luckily that was stopped by the antitrust folks in our govt. If they had pulled that off they would have had a complete vertical hold on the book industry - from publishing to distributing to bookselling. They would have profitted from the majority of internet book sales.
They are definitely a company /.ers should know about and be wary of.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
No you don't. You might owe it to them. More likely, you owe it to someone else, or no one at all. If an unsigned garage band burns from CDR demos to send out to reviewers and fans, please explain how and why they owe money to some arbitrary record label who will use the money to promote some pop star. If I copy a CD published by media company A so that I can listen to it in my car, why does media company B get a cut of the CDR sales revenue?
If you're so against things being free, then why do you defend the media companies getting this unearned money for free?
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
This would be similar to saying that it's OK to steal towles from a hotel room, since part of the rates you pay are to cover stolen towles.