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HP To Pay German Antipiracy Fee For CD Burners
RiotXIX writes points to this USA Today story which reads in part: "Hewlett-Packard has become the first company to be snagged by a German law requiring firms to pay fees for making CD burners that are being used to illegally lift the latest hits off the World Wide Web.
The case sets the stage for other European countries to possibly adopt similar rules to stem an epidemic that cost the music industry an estimated $5 billion last year." He adds, "DeCSS was attacked partly because the courts felt the creation of LiViD was not it's primary intention. Is this therefore insinuating that computer CD-writers were initially created to ruin the music industry?"
Excuse me, as far as I know, cd sales have gone up since Napster went into business. MP3's have cost the music industry nothing, it just represents a piece of the pie they aren't getting. Unrealized profits from a technology you had nothing to do with are not losses, just missed opportunities.
If you do, you have a very optomistic view of human nature.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
Where do you get this figure from? It sounds implausible to me.
It's pretty obvious that without so much will to pirate HP would've sold much less media and CD burners, but I don't think that's any argument to convict them.
HP wasn't peddling illegal MP3's or inducing people to pirate music on the internet. They have profited on that, true, but they haven't done anything wrong.
Put yourself in HP's place. I'd be pissed, that's for sure.
Flavio
There is one giant loophole in this law, though, which is that these fees don't apply to computer based systems, only to standalone ones. This was put in, IIRC, specifically because legislators recognized that there were so many legitimate, non-copyright related uses for computer based equipment- specifically backing up data. That's part of the reason that computer CD-RW drives, and all of the reason that computer CD-RW disks, are so much cheaper than their standalone counterparts. What people apparently didn't anticipate was that A) computers would be quite so ubiquitous so rapidly, to the point that anybody technically sophisticated enough to want to copy CDs would have a computer to which a CD-RW drive could be added and B) that it would be possible to engage in massive on-line trading instead of casual, friendly trading. Those two factors have triggered the explosion in copyright violation that's making the RIAA and friends so upset.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
I'd like to learn more, why this came through and which parties did what in the process (in two years it's election time ;-)). The major German parties have become so similar in their behaviour that minor topics like this may make a difference...
The couple of DM they charge for a burner do not matter much, but once they put taxes on the media...
I don't like the idea of paying for the ability to store copyrighted material when in fact I just burn some videos from the last family reunion.
But them's my lyrics and I'm a gonna represent!
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Frankly I would have stopped reading or even responding after the words "so calm down."
He oughta know it ain't polite to tell people their concerns are insigfignicant (ok enough GWB puns).
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
MUCH more than 123 full cds actually a 128Kb/sec MP3 file is roughly 1MB/min.... so we assume a cd has a full 74 minutes on it, do the math and you get 1081 full length CD's
What is your point exactly? There are several perfectly legal ways to shoot people with guns.
I love going down to the elementary school, watching all the kids jump and shout, but they dont know I'm using blanks.
People here are discussing this as if this was a new law and some outragious thing.
It isn't. Here in Germany, every recordable media and recording equipment is affected by this pseudo-tax, since decades. The money is collected by royalty agencies such as GEMA.
This, btw, includes audio equipment such as audio tape, mini discs as well as paper copiers, e.g. copying machines, telefax machines, scanners etc. For paper copiers, the often used example is the copier in the local library. Everyone is allowed to make a copy for private use and since every copy is indirectly pseudo-taxed, the authors of printed books get their share.
The money is then distributed to companies and the authors of copyable works (books, music, film, tv and radio broadcasts).
I see this system from two perspectives.
On the one hand, yes, it is a strange, bureaucratic conglomerate of royalty collecting agencies taking money from consumers.
On the other hand, I am a semi-professional singer who has done some small studio jobs with my band. We have written a song that aired in a children's show on National German TV and - boom - we got an extra check from the GEMA royalty agency (that very same agency that is responsible for the HP story above). Our album was played on some small radio stations and again, the GEMA got notified and we got a little extra income.
There is another royalty agency collecting money from those using my band's vocal work (e.g. for jingles or dubbing work), so if we did the vocals for an advertisement song and that advertisement would be broadcast a gazillion times, we'd benefit from that (we're not that professional, though).
And a friend of mine, a freelance radio journalist, gets extra money through an agency that is exclusively collects money for spoken radio broadcasts, so that whenever a radio stations airs some of his work as a repeat, het gets a little share from that.
So yes, the system works. It is a strange and scary system, but the authors, composers, singers, speakers and actors who create the content for recordable media benefit from it.
With analog media, all this kind of (*) made of sense. But with digital media, things start to become strange. In fact, there are now two different versions of CD-Rs on the market, one for computer data (no GEMA-pseudo-tax) at around 2 DM/disc and one for audio data (GEMA included) for around 5-6 DM/disc. Techically, these discs are identical. This shows that the system does not work as intended anymore.
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You may like my a cappella music
Yeah, what are 99% of CD-RW's used for anyway? I doubt 99% of CDRs are used for burning illegal music. There are a lot of people who use a CD's decent-sized capacity to backup data or send 1.4+MB files to people. Or burning their own music CDs from several of their own legitimate CDs.
Yes, piracy is wrong, but this seems kind of like taxing pens and copy machines because they could be used to copy copyrighted books, or taxing VCRs because they could be used to copy movies, or taxing cassette tape recorders because they could be used to copy music, or removable disk drives because they could be used to copy software (Maybe those things are taxed already. If they are, maybe this isn't such an outrageous tax. Anybody know?).
"Guns don't kill people... I do!" - Sledge Hammer
This is correct. The great majority of this data is either illegally copied music or software.
That is the real world, deal with it.
I know you probably want to assuage your guilty conscience by portraying music executives/copyright laws etc as 'evil', but the simple fact is that these things are there to protect the artist.
My primary data type is the music I make, Mr ME, and I am very annoyed when I find people pirating it. This is why I welcome these laws.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
Yes, and companies should stop selling blank cd-r, cd-rw, audiocasettes, and videocasettes in the U.S.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
The U.S. version is called the Audio Home Recording Act. It specifically exempts hard drives and computers, but there is a fee of several dollars for Minidisc, Audio-only CDR, and DAT devices. There is a fee of several cents on the media for these devices. This is why there's those "Music" CD-R discs that cost more. I think HP had to pay such a fee a year or so ago for one of their CD-R drives that only had audio software bundled with it.
AC comments get piped to
Next thing you know there will be a 10% tax on your electric bill that goes directly to the RIAA. After all, it would be impossible to operate a computer with attached CD-Writer without electricity.
I love going down to the elementary school, watching all the kids jump and shout, but they dont know I'm using blanks.
oops. tk-427 was in the original script, but was later changed to tk-421 after several disappointing pre-screenings.
Someone you trust is one of us.
i know what the better protection scheme will be:
...
german cd burners won't wrtie tocs with audio tracks in non GEMA disks
:-(
well i won't buy such a device
:-)
Why not make military tech companies liable for war crimes ?
__
L.
Didn't you notice there are two kinds of blanks. A data CD and a Music CD. The music CD is for Music. If you pay for it, go for it with a clear consience. Notice the music CD blanks do cost more. Just don't use a data CD for music. That would be wrong.
The truth shall set you free!
References? URL?
It is for German consumers and business users to seek to advocate more liberal policies to their government. Of course, if the german business users do succeed then (cf another post on this strand) they could be construed to have replaced one plutocracy with another.
Just about every aspect of technology and science can be used for good and evil. How is it that the provider can be punished? The manufacturers have absolutely no way of knowing let alone controlling what their coustomers do with their prouducts. In all fairness, it is the abusive users who should be taking the bullet for this.
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Perversely greped and groped by PowerPenguin
Of course. You're a freeloader. I wouldn't expect anything else.
"Consumers vs. Industry = Industry wins
Consumers and a seperate Industry vs. Industry = Consumers and seperate Industry wins.
Pissing off HP might not be a good idea for the music industry to do."
Unfortunately, corporations (and HP is a huge one) don't behave morally or ethically, but financially. If HP can make a profit selling these things in Gernmany with this "RIAA Tax", then they will do so.
You are correct, "comsumer" vs corporation always ends up on the corpers side. However, laws are supposed to protect CITIZENS equally. Laws that favor corporations over CITIZENS must be fought at every turn.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
Blame Canada! They charge a piracy possibility obvious tax on CDs.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
When the stuff you ordered comes over the border it gets taxed.
Only if they look inside the package. And I have yet to have that happen to me (thank smurgnarf, I could never afford paying import taxes...)
Mikael Jacobson
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
I go out and buy a CD-burner in Germany to back up my computer (ie, no infringing activity intended).
A portion of my purchase price goes to the "copyright holders".
Does that mean I am legaly entitled to copy their works now? After all I just paid them something - what do I get in return?
I'm sure this argument doesn't hold any legal water, but I think it stands on moral grounds.
No. You are being sued in advance.
Why do newspapers just reprint biased estimates from institutions with an axe to grind? This is where journalists should get busy and do a bit of background research. In particular when the numbers are so out of whack.
This is particularly common with AP stories, where no journalist ever signs responsible for it. The AP seems to have turned into a glorified PR newswire.
Just keep telling the ladies size doesn't matter, I am sure they will eventually believe you.
Aehm...actually this is already on their TODO list, they want the equivalent of about $20 for each sold computer.
So? You miss the point, which is that the gun manufacturers are in the best position to estimate what these damages will be and pay for them. Trying to make the people who are to blame pay for their damages doesn't work when people can easily cause damage beyond their net worth. Instead, insurance is necessary. The only question is, who buys the insurance. There are several possibilities: 1. The victims. This is very inefficient...we'd have to all buy gunshot insurance, and disentegrating tire insurance, and exploding Pinto insurance, etc. 2. The government. This is how damages from natural disasters are handled, and works. We could treat gunshots (and tires and Pintos, etc) as natural disasters, I suppose. 3. The product manufacturers. They know exactly how many products are manufactured, and they should know the risks, so they are in the best position to figure out how much insurance is needed. Blame is irrelevant.
But, of course, collecting these fees wasn't enough for the US industry--they keep merrily complaining about piracy and implementing various technical means to deny consumers fair use rights. And the same will probably be happening in Germany.
Heh, I don't remember where, but some state here in the U.S. has a Marijuana Stamp Tax. Essentially, if you don't buy the stamps and get busted (since marijuana is illegal) you also get busted for the Stamp Tax. If you buy the stamps, bammo, you're under investigation and will probably get busted...you'll just not get busted for evading the stamp tax. =)
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Really? Man, I got to get a copyright on something that can be burned on to a CD. Then maybe I can get a check from GEMA.
--
Bitter and jealous? You really shouldn't believe all that US propaganda. I live in the US, and I can hardly wait 'til the day I take all those hard-earned dollars out of your filthy country and move back to the old world, where life is good.
As for being able to do anything you want: you aren't even capable of electing a goddamn president! You may have a lot of weapons, but your economic power is waning, and anything that requires a basic level of intelligence (e.g. voting) is beyond your abilities. The fact that you haven't even figured out how to post as something else than "Anonymous Coward" is proof enough of that.
If I'm paying the fine, I might as well do the crime, right? I mean if I'm pre-penalized, why should I not pirate? It's become my fscking duty.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
The only way such a law could even have been passed is by corporate lobbying. It is just fucking stupid that a corporate entity could get away with establishing a policy that assumes guilt before innocence. I guess our nations are nothing more than hundreds of plutocracies disguised in hundres of myriad ways.
Pax Digitalia
Huh, no because he still lacks the 270 electoral votes the law says he needs. The race would then go to the House of Representatives.
human eyes are better
I hope you are never faced with eye-witness testimony in a court of law as the only evidence against you. The human eye is open to human interruptation, the machines are impartial.
The Florida Supreme Court are all liberals, and the Federal Courts in Florida were all Clinton appointees. Fuck the courst, have a re-vote = with the sudden urgency in the my vote matters the other 90 million Americans that didn't bother would decide the election.
h4x0r-3l337 sez and if anything, the guy that gets the least number of votes will become president. Great job indeed Thank God for the Electoral College... ....otherwise, we'd be doing a manual recount of every state!
This is not a dream, not a dream...we are transmitting from the year 1-9-9-9.
Maybe HP should just stop selling burners in Germany. Let the German tech firms who have come to rely on this technology tell their lawmakers what they think of their stupid law that says in effect everyone is guilty of piracy irrespective of their stated intentions.
You're using her as bait, Master!
Germany suing a company that goes by the advertising campaign, "Invent".
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Go after the people who make the cd burners, what about the people who are using these 100% legal peices of hardware for their illegal use?
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Check out my blackbox styles
Check out on the CD-Recording FAQ, its under section 7-13.
http://www.fadden.com/cdrfaq/faq07.html
I don't think, that they charge a tax on the CD Recorders yet tho.
------ 24.5% slashdot pure
The Register is also reporting this here
Now if they'd only apply the same logic to weapons. Tag all ammunition. Then when a civillian gets shot / blown up - sue the weapons / ammo manufacturer.
But there's far too much money in weapons for the govt to do that. Better just pick on nasty CD copiers.
FNORD!
between being business friendly and having corporate America pull out of Europe in disgust over obnoxious bullshit like this. Harry Browne was correct when he said that the software industry has done a fine job at creating its own protection schemes, so let's now force the music/movie industries to do the same (ie no major government help in protecting content). It is obvious that without copyright laws we'd be screwed, even free software depends on copyright afterall, do we want Microsoft claiming credit for Linux (which they could legally do without copyright laws)? I just think that the music industry would be better off if it stopped this idiocy. Seemingly magnanimous acts like helping get better sound technologies availible for free (as in speech) and being very liberal about cd duplication would jack up the respectability of the music industry. In the end I do believe it would make people feel a bit guilty for not buying the real McCoy's.
Actually we do have something similar. A tax on CD-R media. Of course we also have the untaxed variety. The only difference between the two types is that one is sold in the computer department for $1/CD and the other is sold in the audio department for $7/CD. (Oh, and sometimes it says "For Music" on the label).
Of course this relies on the honour system, so it probably doesn't achieve much, but an interesting thing to note is that it is now 100% legal for me to burn a song (that I have not paid for) to one of these expensive CD's.
. --- If you're looking for free e-mail you won't find it here! http://www.noemailhere.com
Never trust what you read in the newspapers... The fee is actually not for illegally copied music, but for legally copied music. Any music privately copied and given to friends is legal. So this is a general fee that is required for all manufacturers of equipment capable of making copies of copyrighted works (audio, video, photocopiers). I think the law is from 1965 or so. It assumed that there was no practical way to control private copies of media works, so it was allowed and this general reimbursement was introduced (fee on copying equipment and media).
The problem is obviously with computer equipment that is not just used for media, but also for data storage.
HPs defense strategie is to say that with CD roms the manufacturer is able to prevent making private copies or at least control the copying, so the fees for their equipment should be less. I am not shure if I like the thoughts behind that more than the general fee.
To put in into perspective: After all HP pays about $6 per CD burner to the GEMA. They announced starting work on better copy-protection schemes now.
--
as to how the German copying laws work
As if anyone would actually pick up their weapons to "protect" themselves if such a tax were to be enforced in the US. You're all talk and no action...
Currently such pseudo-taxes are meant to pay the copyright owners of music (and perhaps movies?). ...) should apply for a share as well?
Since blank CDs are used to copy free software as well, perhaps free software organizations (FSF, Debian
ANY government that would pass laws to benefit corporate cartels (RIAA/MPAA) by taxing consumer products, assuming GUILT upon the citizens is a tyranny.
I forgot who said it, but an "Unjust law is no law".
Yes, the right to keep and bear arms is very important. Governments need to FEAR the citizens in order to be kept honest.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
Clone some Hawaiian shamans?
It's a little weird, but it might work.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I think one of the third party candidates is closer to being "the guy that the least number of people want to see become president."
--jon
But them's my lyrics and I'm a gonna represent!
IANAL but I don't think that's possible. Not saying that I don't think it should be possible though.
Monkey sense
Actually, I believe it is because they have plants there, that they are being suid. Germany site does lots of devel. work for unix systems and what not. Mmmm... OmniSlut.. I am back.
You cannot expect them to pull out of Germany simply for a little lawsuit.
I think the morality of the theft of intellectual property is not the issue. It is the enforcement which is dangerous. You cannot stop people from doing what they will with the technology. I do not have to justify theft, rather you have to justify enforcing the laws against it upon the expotentially growing number of thieves. If you are an artist who is technologically inclined and no instance of copyright infringment is present on your drive, I pity you and question your love and devotion to the arts. I give my music away for free because I'm not in it for the money. Its the new model for the ideas which become popular. No marketing. Get used to it.
If copyright laws are strictly enforced, we could see nearly every computer user criminalized and subject to arrest, let alone discouraging the manufacturers which provide us with exciting and useful products to further explore the world with.
I am more worried of copyright law being used to justify digital fascism and arrest warrants than the silly intellectual property issues. This HP decision further justifies the obsolete notion that someone has to pay.
Information, everything digital, will soon get much cheaper if not free. Scarcity is the most serious and longstanding obstacle to human equality and sustainance, now that we have a situation which could allievate scarcity, at least in the digital realm, comapnies and even individual people are being punished.
The economy will certainly undergo drastic and painful changes and these lame legal decisions only prolong the inevitable and create more mayrters to piss off the new world order.
Accept this now and prepare, and you will be much happier when the dust settles. Please forgive my spelling.
Our government in America might not be able to count votes, and it might work best when it's grid locked, but at least we'll never see crap like this.
In the end, silly "fire bad" policies like this all fail. They presume that the citizens of a state aren't capable of participating intelligently in an economy. If they want to limit the adoption of technology, and the attendant benefits, who are we to say they're wrong? Maybe, along with personal greatest hit cds, the Germans also don't need convienent file archiving and data backup. I can't wait till the German government starts taxing cd blanks, that'll really hurt. (In the US you can walk into most retail chains and get a spindle of 50 700MB for $15)
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
Who is ultimately responsible for my well being?
Will police take the rap for murder if they fail to protect me? Will you? Fuck no. And even a 3 minute wait for cops to arrive and defend an unarmed citizenry is long enough for the bad guy to blow you away, rape your kids and slit your wife's throat.
Fuck you, sir, for attempting to jeopardize me and my family by taking away my gun.
So what if it's primary purpose is to kill? Nothing wrong with killing, so long as the right people get killed. I have the right to denend myself with deadly force.
Just get over it, m'kay?
In Germany when one can legally duplicate a work they own thru some piece of equipment, the mfg has to reimburse a general fund. In Germany, one is in essense taxed for exercising their so called "fair use" rights, while in America, we have now chosen thru the DMCA and UCITA to criminilize fair use entirely...which is the freer society??! Maybe I should brush up on my German....
Isn't that point of view a little bit jaded? Come on, we're talking about paying a few extra dollars for a CD-BURNER for crying out loud. We're aren't talking persecution, or torture, or a severe violation of rights. It's a tax on an expensive luxury item!! I really think taking arms against that is a LITTLE extreme, don't you? Perhaps a few letters to your congressperson, or a little lobbying would be adequate, but guns? Seriously, look at the big picture.
This is a very good point and this hopefully will lead to the explict permission for DVD copying also. If anyone can suggest an alternative revenue model, I am sure it would be considered as interesting.
Of course, if all I'm doing is buring my own disks tyhen this is another issue. However, I don't believe we are paying tax on blank media yet.
See my journal, I write things there
hmmm.... slashdot doesn't market themselves, and see what we are all looking at???
If you rely on record labels and gaudy marketing techniques to decide which records to buy, you either aren't looking hard enough or have extremely bad taste. IMHO the best music isn't marketed at all anyway, people who need it know where to find it. Similar to slashdot and other sticky, un-marketed sites.
Don't worry about the lemming masses or the bands hoping for money. Things will change soon enough.
I disagree strongly with your statement about bands depending on the music industry. As a musician who has worked in the belly of the beast, I would NEVER sign with any major label, and with only a precious few indies. Their time is over, and their evil, exploititave, corrupt ways are clearly obsolete. We are just thinking about it a little too early for it to be plain and obvious.
No, we have a president, and his name is Bill Clinton. We just don't have a president-elect. There is a lag time of 75 days between the election and the inaguration, and we're only a couple of weeks into that. There is still plenty of time to settle the election before the winner has to take office.
And as a side note, all these jokes about the "Banana Republic of America" are missing something. There haven't been any riots. If this situation had existed in just about any other country in the world, there would have been riots by now. That is what separates America from a banana republic.
Free Hans!
It's about time for companies to grow some "cahunas" and stop dealing with places like this.
Yeah, like the US with there stuipid encryption and software patent laws. Why do they keep selling software there?
Monkey sense
Even if there is a mass protest of CD prices and 50% (a very optimistic percentage) of buyers boycott the RIAA, it still wouldn't work. They'll just blame/sue their lost profits on Napster, Scour, Rio, internet radio stations, etc. (basically their new compettition in the music distribution business). Then, since all those lawsuits will cost money, they'll have a (flimsy) excuse to raise CD prices and/or keep them high. Apparently the RIAA seems to think they deserve a virtual monopoly on whatever they want.
Somebody had better tell the RIAA that they're not God.
THIS POST IS OFF TOPIC, FASCIST. Please remember that the klan, the christian right, and every gay basher in the country votes republican. FASCIST! LOL!
It makes economic sense to hold gun manufacturers responsible for damages for illegal gun use because they are in the best position to estimate how much those damages will be and take steps to deal with it. It's a lot more efficient for a few gun manufacturers to buy insurance to cover those damages than it is to have everyone who may be harmed by illegal gun use to try to assess their risks and buy their own insurance.
by suggesting that cd-burners were made to ruin the music industry, you'd have to assume that the music industry was out to ruin itself. How else would you explain the fact that companies like Sony are manufacturing CD burners, whilst having a huge stake in the music industry?
Intercarve Networks, LLC
Is road usage illegal? (if you are comparing it to illegal copying of copyrighted data).
I would gladly pay an extra $6 on a CD burner if it meant more freedom to use the information I buy how I want.Those extra $6 wont make illegal copying of copyrighted data legal again. Yes, you did not mean that but then, those extra $6 just MAYBE makes some RIA, MPPA or other guys less restrictive when regulating music, movies, ... prices. (MAYBE because if they receive $6 now, it makes them content for say 1 year. But then they will want MORE!. Do you want to pay doble tax every new year?)
I still consider such tax strongly breaking rule "you are innocent until you are proved guilty". Thus I consider such tax beaking constitution of most countries (Germany too).
hany
MORON.
People - please stop trying to justify this theft.
As a classical musician I find it amazing to keep seeing people say things like "they make most of their money from concerts".
Yeah right.
If only that really were the case.
sedawkgrep
Is that a salami in my pants or am I just happy to be me?
Oh yeah, and great job you're doing. You're the laughing stock of the entire world! Still no president after all this time, and if anything, the guy that gets the least number of votes will become president. Great job indeed...
But to my point, what kind of prices do you guys pay in europe to rent and buy originals anyway? I've bought movies because it was only a buck more than renting them (retal for most stuff $3, buy video tape $4 to $15, DVD $10 to $20). Some of the sweetest cds I have I've gotten retail for $3. (I couldn't make a copy for that if you include the art, let alone the time, typical price is $10/cd). But since the companies are essentially in an enviroment where pirating is subsidised do they do anything to make up the lost money?
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
HP will have to pay DM12 ($5.40) for every machine it ships with a device that can store music - in other words, all of them.
Xerox Corporation Sued For Production Of Printer Paper
Newsline 2000
Today, Xerox Corporation recieved notification by several German organizations that it is requried to pay fees for printer paper that it produced. According to German officials, the paper fell under the catagory of 'piracy tool', as it could be used to store pirated music.
According to a representative of the antipiracy movement: "We believe that the elimination of this paper product will be a step forward for antipiracy movements worldwide. Not only is paper used to pirate music, but also to produce illegal copies of books and magazines. Eliminating paper will set a precendent that we can follow through with, to deal with magnetic tape, punch cards, and clay tablets."
Various producers of writing instruments were also required to pay fees, relating to their assistance of the trends to illegally copy information on 'paper'. These 'pens' and 'pencils' that they produce are capable of transcribing illegally copied data at a rate of up to a hundred words a minute on the paper. Said a representative of the movement, "These writing instruments are a big part of the problem. If we can just prevent pens and pencils from being produced, the illegal paper copying trend will end quickly."
I want to pay a Murder Tax for my baseball bat and a Cholesterol Tax for my Burritos!
I would gladly pay an extra $6 on a CD burner if it meant more freedom to use the information I buy how I want.
You should already *have* that freedom...you shouldn't have to pay extra for it. You shouldn't have to pay for constitutional rights. Should I pay a "knife" tax to compensate for those people who might buy knives and stab others?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
You are a moron for titling your post Imagine This. I'll tell you why. It sounds like an advertisement for this sort of crap not an argument.
I am an artist. I use CDRs to store my stuff for sale. I do not need to pay the German gov't a tax (through increased prices on equipment) which never comes back to me, the artist.
I also use pen and paper. I've heard there's artists out there who use pen and paper to copy other artists' lyrics.
Pay me for your ink and paper.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Actually we DO have the right to bear arms in Canada, under British Common Law. You have unfortunately been brainwashed out of your rights dude.
Incidentally, you are most likely going to be paying tax on your Internet useage too, since the damn Liberals won yesterday. They tax anything that moves, the Net will be next.
The Phantom
Brought to you by the Invincible Chordate Pikaia Commemorative Society.
personally I ENCOURAGE people to read my code (it needs improvement :). You can still sell programs -- this allows people to make changes to something they have bought and own -- which I see as great and necessary. if you buy a stereo do they put padlocks on the screws..? no. we can wire it to our hearts content (as long as we realize that they don't have to help us if we screw it up)
read the GPL.
-- Windows: the most complex virus ever written
This is not a bad thing if you think about it a little. A system such as this allows all of us to do what we want. I remember using cassette tapes. The cost of media was not too high, and I recorded lots of music from my friends. At the same time, I used the same media for computer storage. (I know that was a while back, but hey the analogy is still valid) The net result of this was that I bought the equipment, and it did what I wanted without hassle. If everyone is paying a little, then isn't the peace of mind worth it? Today, I use CDR media the same way. If there is a little tax per disc, then I consider the unfettered equipment worth it. If I get unfairly taxed a little, big deal. The gains I made with copies of media, are worth more than the unfair tax that I get hit with once in a while. The legal hassle required to right this small wrong will open up the wrong can of worms. All this given that the tax is small. Easier to live with that, then all of the paranoid rules that would result from sorting out the other issues. What is this tax anyway on a CD-R? 3-6 percent? Pretty small given the time, and number of copies that the machine is capable of. Not an issue.
Blogging because I can...
But how do we *know* exactly how much the tax is? It's not as if (at least I would guess not) there's a little bit of fine print at the bottom of the CD-Burner box that says "$0.05% of the purchase price of this machine has been used to pay the Bertlesmann tax" I would also guess that Bertlesmann (sp) would not be particularly eager to give out such information. This is what worries me. As well as the idea that I'm "paying" for a transgression that I may never commit.
The other thing that bothers me about this is the question of how Bertlesmann is going to use the money this "tax" generates? It's not going to combat piracy (as in stop it). It's just going to be an alternate revenue stream for Bertlesmann Inc.
Wait a second, you can store songs on your hard drive. They should tax all the hard drive makers also. Right?
Ask Slashdot - google for stupid people.
Why should evil corporations be allowed to tax? I think it's you that is missing the point. If this money was being taxed by the government for the government and going to things that aid the people, so be it... that's one think. However, this money seems to be wisked away straight to these evil cartels who sit back and drink their fine wine, smoke their cigars, and laugh at how much "better" they are than the rest of us... a completely different issue altogether.
Think about it. Really.
Maybee you have to campaign in 10-20 major sities, but it can be pretty much the way you said it isn't.
Some historians seem to think that the original reason for the Electoral College was that you can't trust the 'stupid' electorate with something as important as choosing the president. The college originally was chosen by the governors or the senates/houses of the various states --- people you could trust(!). Now they're chosen by wierd laws in each state that give an entire state's seats to the winner in that state.
Big improvement, I guess. It's too bad that voters can't actually vote for president, though. (It's not much better here in Canada, where the equivalent of the House leader becomes the effective head of state, and can be re-picked if the politics dictates it (in a couple of cases, we've even had Prime Ministers who weren't even elected to Parliament, just because they became the leader of the dominant party).
--
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
This is an ongoing trend in Europe (and also in Canada I think), levies on equipment and media which CAN be used to copy copyrighted works.
Paper can be used to copy copyrighted works. Why not put a surcharge on paper?
FLASH-RAM can be used to copy copyrighted works. Why not charge that as well?
I know the proceedings are supposed to go to the artists (they do, in fact, go to institutions like BIEM, GEMA, BUMA/STEMRA et al, which are supposed to share the spoils with the artists) for 'legal copying of protected works for personal use'. But why do they have to be paid for that? The law in many countries says it is legal to reproduce a copyrighted work for personal use, as long as you have paid the copyright fees (by buying the CD, video, etc). After you've paid, you may copy the work as many times as you wish, as long as you do not violate the copyright by giving those copies to others who have not paid. So I see no reason why there has to be an extra payment so you can do what is already legal.
Of course, part of the reason for these fees is that people DO in fact give copies to others who have not paid. But by putting a fee on 'suspected' devices and media, buyers are automatically 'fined' for 'crimes' they have not comitted (yet).
All European laws uphold the principle that a person is innocent until proven guilty. By making people pay a fine before they commit a crime, they (state governments) are breaking their own laws. They are violating their own constitution. If the laws can not be upheld, they should either change the law or find ways to make people abide by them. They should NOT make people pay for crimes they have not commited. By doing this, they create the illusion that it is OK to break the law, since the fines have already been paid.
[I also posted this comment on linuxtoday btw.]
--frank[at]unternet.org
Because the money doesn't belong to them. The first sign of de-evolution is a gov't making laws about property rights with no consideration for others' property rights.
Hope that answers question... asshole!
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
>I mean, what are 99% of CD-RW's used for anyway?
Copying video games.
Everyone I know with burners, and that's about two dozen people, doesn't bother making music CDs, except for friends without computers. They all simply rip MP3s like people without burners and store it on their HDs. They sometimes make backups of their entire HDs, but that's not making a music CD.
As for working as a programmer, I don't give a rats ass about my employer's crappy CBTs being copied. If they go under, I'll find a job with someone else, or work as a consultant. Company loyalty is a concept as old and as useless as "duck and cover".
Man, that's a crock of shit. Whey don't they sue the makers of the software?
It isn't HP's fault. They have a disclaimer on it saying not to use it illegally. So does the software that they probably used. They should be suing the person, not the Company!
I suppose you've never produced a record before this?
Or a compilation?
Or simply a backup?
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Since when is the "will of the people" mean to disregard laws? The electoral collage was put in place so a canidate can't campaign in 5 major cities and promise welfare for life to everyone and win, neglecting the other 99% of the country.
1 13143.html
After the official count and two recounts bush is still ahead, meaning al gore has lost 3 times so far. Voter intent? Thats a laugh. It would have been done and over with had Catherine Harris been allowed ro certify the results, but the liberal judges changed the law and extended the deadline.
Now lets take a look at this long forgotten federal law
http://www.latimes.com/news/front/20001125/t000
Looks like thing are going to get quite interesting.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I'll tell you what makes me annoyed. The fact that everytime I buy a blank CD, and use it to do my debian cd, I'm giving money to a political organization. (If you live in the US, you already pay the MPAA for every blank cd you buy.) Everytime one of my musician friends burns a CD of their work, they're required to give back money to the MPAA. Everytime I use a digital camera with a built in CD burner. Everytime I backup the contents of my hard drive.
CDs are used for a hellova lot more than copying audio. In fact, audio copying is probably one of the LOWEST used functions of blank CDrs. The #1 thing they are used for is software piracy.
And yes, I do work as a programmer. So the use of blank cd's does affect me. And yes, I make money for the code I write. But, I realize, as do most programmers, that piracy is something that must be lived with, and that it is not a reason to damage the innocent consumer who has a meaningful use, and payed for my software.
------ 24.5% slashdot pure
I stopped buying CDs for USD$19..$21 when I decided I'd had enough of companies ripping me off. We're talking about 1,000% markup on merchandise and these imbecilic law suits by RIAA & MPAA & others who can't carry a fucking tune and certainly don't want to pay the musicians a fucking cent.
Don't call me a fucking crook. I buy from MP3.COM and direct from the artist and not from the multi-mega-buck churn mills who make sure that this week's hits are tomorrow's has-been to make space on the shelf more important than what you want to hear.
I loathe the slime that musicians have to deal with to get their music out. Been there, done that and the industry toadies can find a splintery telephone pole and impale themselves 'til their guts squirm out of their throats.
I've seen talentless scum who were willing to play the game get deals while better musicians than I got fuck-all and even the talent-challenged are now working as office temps because the mill guarantees that you make it against the industry not with it
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I agree with you Mr. the Blade. That's why I think that we should start taxing blank audio cassettes. And minidiscs. And video cassettes. And harddrives. And network cards, and modems. And hubs. And um, radio stations... and uh, libraries. Yeah. because they all make it possible to access and copy stuff that isn't free. And as long as they make that possible, then the parties who make that stuff available are um... responsible?
No.
There are certain people to blame for internet piracy. I am one of them. But swinging your big blade at anyone with any connection to piracy isn't an appropriate solution to the problem. If I'm a pirate, hit me. Don't attack companies that make legitimate products that get misused by bad people. If a product exists for nothing but misuse... or "99.9%" maybe it should be illegal. But this isn't one of those things. Instead, figure out a way to hold the abusers responsible, or figure out another way to get your money back from the people who took it from you.
That's why I'm an advocate of advertizing. I don't like it, but I tolerate it. In doing so, I pay for what I want, albiet in a different way. Bottom line: Intellectual property can be stolen. There's no way of getting around it. Businesses need to find another way to get their money back from the people who are stealing their product. These blunt, unfocused taxes aren't going to do anything but discourage the kind of innovation you are talking about preserving with the same taxes! Who is going to put all that money into R & D for a faster burner? If you believe that money drives innovation, you should see that the plan you advocate is counter-productive. It's a case where economic incentive is getting reduced, not created.
"HP wasn't peddling illegal MP3's or inducing people to pirate music on the internet. They have profited on that, true, but they haven't done anything wrong."
Exactly. If I legally sell someone a shovel, or a baseball bat, or a car, I'm not liable for what they do with it. But then, when you unleash the lawyers, everyone's liable except the actual perpetrator.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
So now I'm financing two industries (music, software) for compensation for something illegal I might possibly do since I have the equipment to do it, even though what I use it for has nothing to do with any of that.
Makes you wonder why you should'nt do it, given that you're already being charged for doing it regardless.
AC comments get piped to
.. but it's a fee which makes it legal to use the device to make copies of copyrighted material for personal use. We (germans) have the same fee on copiers, fast scanners, etc.
The conflict is about if devices like cd burners are used primarily to copy such material, or if
they are only used marginally for that purpose and if that fee can be collected anyhow.
It was even discussed to take such a fee for an
entire multimedia pc.
In effect, this is sort of a tax payed to the entertainment industrie.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/11/25/1392
On the contrary. I think the slashdot authors have an affirmative duty to do whatever they can to keep up the signal-to-noise ratio on the site. That's my interpretation of my role here and if you don't like it, well, tough. Noise generators can and should be suppressed. You generate much noise and little, if any, signal.
So I forgot to insert "new" into that sentence. Sue me, it's the American way...
They know it'll increase / not decrease demand; that's why they're doing it!
You think the taxmakers give a fuck about who lives and who dies because of shmokes and guns? They're in this game for one reason: to make money for the government. When they run across an item which has a demand curve unresponsive (or less responsive) to price increase through taxation, they tax it.
--
All men are great
before declaring war
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
The words "chilling effect" come to mind. There's no doubt that CD-R's are often used for piracy, of course, but this could easily go a long way towards stopping hardware companies from making the things, for fear of being held accountable...
Any figures on how much HP has to pay, or whether they'll be appealing this?
I disagree with any kind of media tax since the reasoning and functionality behind it is inherently flawed. Their argument for media tax is that it compensates the poor artist whose music I might pirate.
If I don't pirate anything, I am paying the tax, for nothing. Paying media tax for using a CD-R for legitimate purposes is just plain ridiculous.
If I pirate something, I am paying the tax that is supposed to compensate the poor artist, but doesn't this in essence justify the piracy, since their point for the tax is that the poor artist gets compensated? Oh, you mean I am still paying the tax for nothing since I can't legally pirate anything on the CD-R.
These two points leave no arguments for the media tax advocates. Either way I'm paying the tax for something that I didn't do, or I'm not allowed to do. On the other hand, all the revenue from this media tax goes to RIAA's members or whatever is your country's copyright royalty collecting organization. Joining RIAA or any other similar organization is practically impossible for any poor artist who would REALLY be affected by piracy. Naturally the organization will have no idea whose music I might pirate and will keep channeling the media tax income to its biggest artists.
burners don't pirate, people pirate
You realize that you're ripping off the wrong people, right? Your local store already paid the distributor for all the merchandise in that store. The "horrible industry" got paid for that CD long before you walked in the door.
Basically, you're stealing from the store owner, who has bills to pay just like everyone else. Said owner is getting screwed by the same "horrible industry" as you are. Oh yeah, he also gets the added bonus of getting screwed by you as well when you walk out of the store without paying for that CD.
Free the music, d00d!
>Just buy the music if you don't you are a thief.
Alright. just so we're clear on that. Idiot.
It seems this is an old law based on the notion that piracy can not be prevented. So it is infact legal to do so.
A very good recomendation was for HP to pick up and leave. I wish to extend this notion.
No.. EVERYONE should pack up and leave. Microsoft due to lack of effective piracy laws and IoMega for the potental for piracy using the Zip and Jaz drives.
Both sides are hurt by this addatude...
Hardware makers for being tagged negitively and content sources for lack of protection against theft.
Hay let's hit Intel.. they make ROMs that can store data.. and CPUs that can convert that data into music or other such information sources.
Napster, Sony, HP, Intel, Linux, Microsoft it's all one great big conspericy to steal music we can not posably contend with it so we'll just pass some dumpy laws instead.
[Incase anyone was wondering.. Sony sells tape recorders.. My reel to reel tape is a Sony]
I don't actually exist.
I haven't really read into this particular case, but on the whole, does there exist any site which lists current public petitions on the web? Such a site could be useful, as one could check it a few times a month to see if there are any important petitions that one hasn't noticed yet. It's always so frustrating to head about these petitions afterwards.
And to put it a bit further still, a site to host petitions? Of course, the requests should be scanned very closely and only a few per month granted. Otherwise it's value in the sight of politicians might drop dramatically.
I doubt, therefore I may be.
Humm it was a joke.
People should get paid for what they create, distribute, etc... Unless they want it to be "free".
Will
So if the music industry didn't exist, all of the artists would just vanish?
Tell me, what was Mozart's record label?
What I have a problem with is this idea.I have a problem with the government making a law that basically taxes consumers, and gives the money over to some capitalist company? Since when have laws been made to protect the rights of multi-billion dollar industries? Since those companies started paying the politicians I suppose. But we have to keep our eyes open. I don't want to fall down this slippery slope where we are pretty much forced to pay companies for their services, whether we use their services or not. Before we know it, there will be several big companies that just raking in cash the government gets from the general population. Okay, I might be exaggerating a bit, but I'm sure you'll see more of this in the US. Companies whining because they're losing money (and it's their "RIGHT" to ask the government to do something about it...) and trying to get laws passed with propaganda that the laws are "Moral" and "For the sake of the artists". Bull. Companies should be making money by offering useful items and services that people want. Not by getting the government to tax items because they've fallen behind the technology curve.
Peace out,
-Kefabi
Seems to me that if you _pay_ to be allowed to do a thing, that thing is tacitly accepted by the people you're paying. I don't see much grounds for 'you aren't ever allowed to do this! But gimme a buck in case you do anyway'.
Do you mean to say that your band name/stage name is taken directly from a They Might Be Giants song on the 'Lincoln' album, 1988? Or was this just your unusual way of saying that you feel protective over 'Kiss The Blade' music?
It seems strange to on the one hand be totally anchored in the musical tradition of ripping off artists you like, and on the other hand not giving your potential fans this liberty. It's rather like Led Zeppelin ripping off old blues artists (but their art is not free! Oh no!) except that almost anyone will recognize 'Mr. Me' as a TMBG song if they have any familiarity with that album.
Sheesh...
From CNN:
Electoral votes: Gore 255, Bush 246
Popular votes: Gore 49,921,267, Bush 49,658,276
How you read election results is the guy with the MOST votes WINS. That would be GORE, by 262,991 votes. See, in this case MORE is better, and MORE is what Gore has.
So, Gore DID win the popular vote by a margin 200 times higher than what they're contesting in Florida, and is in fact 9 ahead ahead in the electoral vote. So if we just wrote off Florida entirely (not a bad idea in the best of times) he would be President.
There was ONE machine recount which ignored a LOT of ballots - human eyes are better than 40 yr old misaligned optical sensors. The other recounts HAVE NOT BEEN DONE MORE THAN ONCE, they're in different PLACES. If the GOP were really interested in making sure about the count they would just recount the whole state, both Democrat and Republican counties in order to not give an advantage to either side.
In fact, the only reason the recounts haven't been finished is due to the efforts of the Bush campaign to stop them. The recounts are conducted under strict conditions with multiple observers from BOTH parties. Not one vote for Gore has been counted that didn't get past a Republican observer.
Katherine Harris clearly should have recused herself, although she gets my vote the next time they cast the Wicked Witch of the West - she looks pretty rough for 43 yrs old. We can at least be thankful that Jeb Bush did the right thing.
Oh, and by the way, next time you may want to pick a VP that hasn't already had 3 heart attacks and a triple bypass.
The article you point to is interesting. And before you go off about "liberal" judges, note that "The balance is reversed at the U.S. Supreme Court. Seven of its nine justices are Republican appointees. Two of them--Justices David H. Souter and Clarence Thomas--were appointed by the candidate's father, President Bush."
Now there's a fair venue, eh?
The revolution will NOT be televised.
This is the sort of thing that is bound to happen when countries give the big ok on the a priori assumption of guilt.
While the US does have many many flaws in its governmental and legal system (gee..just look at the mess we're in now), the law is bound with the presumption of innocence. Even though I realize that this doesn't always lead to fair and equal treatment for all, it is a principle we must lean on heavily if this sort of fee is pushed in the US.
Then we'd have someone hack a CD burner so that it will burn its current location onto a CDR while it's within German borders. Or something like that.
You said it right: "your CD". It's the artists work, and therefor the artist (or the record company he has sold the rights to) gets to determine the price. If you don't like the price, don't buy it, it's really that simple.
What you want to do on the other hand, and the whole napster-crowd with you, is to determine the price for yourself, i.e. you refuse to let the artist name his own price, and instead force your own price (which usually amounts to "zero").
It's pretty amazing how some people in this discussion get all upset about those socialist/communist europeans who pass laws like this, yet on the other hand everybody here wants to completely abandon the free capitalist market mechanism when it comes to music, movies and software. And yes, this really is a free market. While you may not like the $12 or so you have to pay for CDs (and trust me, it's much more in Europe), you can be damn sure that that is the optimum price for this market. Draw your basic supply/demand/price graph as they tought you in ecomics class, and see for yourself.
So I gotta pay $X extra when I buy a CDRW, and the money somehow goes to the music industry. So I'm paying them now for the POSSIBILITY that I might use it to burn a copywrited song. OK. I'm paying for it. Does that mean that it's LEGAL now for me to do so?
Is that the sound of lawyers drooling on the table that I hear?
Damn. I am sick of people saying that there is no American president. IF you knew anything about politics, or had even a modicum of common sense, you would know that we do, in fact, have a president. His name is William Jefferson Clinton. He will be our president until the president elect is sworn in. This is not that difficult to understand. Anyone who would laugh at childish antics of the Dems and Reps is right to do so, but to believe that the US has no president is the height of stupidity.
Pax Digitalia
Yeah, that "Anonymous Coward" guy posts here all the time.
Dude, don't give them ideas!
In Canada, we have a similar situation: there's a tax on all CD-R media that is designated as "CD audio" material (you know the little logo on it), and the tax doesn't go to the government, or the artists. It goes directly to the Canadian equivalent of the RIAA.
With the cost of GPS chips dropping so rapidly, maybe it would be cheaper for manufacturers to equip each drive with a GPS receiver that disables the burner if the user is within German national boundaries. (No, I'm not serious. But some of the weirdest things seem to come true, so don't discount this completely.)
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
The case sets the stage for other European countries to possibly adopt similar rules to stem an epidemic that cost the music industry an estimated $5 billion last year."
Get real. When have you ever known a company to not pass expenses like this on to the consumer rather than take the bill themselves? If someone tries to retaliate or say something about it, all the companies have to do is turn to their shareholders and say, "But we're just protecting our profit margin!" And then everything in businessland is dandy again while the Germans shell out extra bucks for their hardware. And no, it won't always just be the Germans.
I'm not siding with the RIAA or the MPAA, I think they are both overly greedy, but how do we usually become familliar with a band? Radio, MTV, etc. Do you really think that studio time, advertising, music videos, and touring are cheap? One hand does wash the other, record companies spend big $$$ promoting bands, bands get big $$$ from promotions, (concerts, tshirts, hats, etc.), and the record companies make their money back, and profit, from CD sales. Too much profit, I agree, but that is how it works.
Ask any band who is trying to make it "big". They're all begging for a record contract. It would be nice to say that we could do away with greedy record companies, but the investment required to make a return is too great. Any artist can make music free, but music, as an industry, will always need some type of investor assistance.
So, in response to the previous posters comment "Burning their music hurts the /industry/ more than the artists themselves.", he/she is probably right, for the most part. But don't overlook all aspects of the record companies involvement. It does, in the end, hurt the artist as well.
Freeing ourselves from record companies will have to begin with the artists themselves, taking huge leaps of faith, and huge chances, promoting themselves on the internet. Huge, because the amount of propaganda and mass media control (radio, TV) will always belong to the deep pockets of large corporations.
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.
... A shadowy (and scary) look to a man's music... that does not exist.... (exist anywhere but germany that is..) Come to think of it, maybe the government does know what there doing... 15 million copies burned to disk and downloaded for napster... AND THE ONLY PART OF THE MUSIC INDUSRTY THAT HURTS IS DAVID!!!! I know I'm "fired up"...
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
This is obvious but everyone is reading it as if they are the same.
In Germany you are _allowed_ to rent a movie and copy it for personal use (use with familly or having close friends over). People pay a special "copying" tax for this. In Germany macrovision is illegal because it stops you from using your right to copy video tapes which you paid a tax for.
This is why it's not unusual for them to tax CDROM burners because those are used for copying also.
Did you know that the LiViD web site is hosted in Germany for legal reasons?
It's not as bad as Slashdot is making it seem. It's just different.
I have copyrighted material which is capable of being copied on CDR. How do I go about collecting my part of the fee?
That's why they're collecting the fee right? To distribute it to artists no? Wait. Where's the money going??
---
Musicians, although making very little from cds, make most of their money from concerts, t-shirts, and other trademarked stuff. Burning their music hurts the /industry/ more than the artists themselves. ;P (And t-shirts of course)
So I say, screw the industry, free the music, and pay for the awesome concerts
You _didn't_ actually know that if I an independent musician buy consumer blank cassettes to record my music on, I'm forced to pay off my own deeply entrenched competition? That I PAY THEM to obliterate me? This isn't a free market, what made you think it was? We're talking about the MUSIC BUSINESS for crying out loud ;P
An interesting sidenote is that if you wiped out government it'd be all the easier to exert this type of force on a purely economic basis- in other words if there's no government taxes are even HIGHER as long as there's an RIAA capable of extorting the taxes out of small store owners and putting them out of business by withholding product if they won't play ball.
Personally I'd like to see _more_ government involvement, just not this corporate-welfare sort, speaking as someone who has literally paid RIAA taxes on his own musical endeavors for years.
Consumers and a seperate Industry vs. Industry = Consumers and seperate Industry wins.
Pissing off HP might not be a good idea for the music industry to do.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Hmm, sounds just like the gun industry here in the USA. People use your product in an illegal way? Well then, obviously its your fault somehow, so let's tax you, the source of a perfectly legal product, instead of going after the people who use it in illegal ways. Right. When will the governments figure out that, from an economics standpoint, trying to cut the supply of an item in demand only increases demand? If a government decides that a certain product is eeeevil, why not work on cutting demand, and supply will go away on its own? Some people just have no business in the government. Oh well.
-w00p
The people who work for the corporations are victims just the same as the consumers who have to put up with the corporations.
It's the people who own the corporations... and the upper few percent of the shareholders. Those are the evil people. They see one thing and one thing only. Greed. Money. Power.
Apparently somebody needs to explain to that German court that people also use CD writers to perform backups and store software they've bought electronically over the net.
... I listen to mp3 streams or the radio these days. Or case in point: I have easily about 100 CDR cds lying around my home office and NOT one of them has a single F@$@$#@ music tract on it.
I don't own a single (CDR or CDRW) cd with songs on it.. all my cds are store bought and used to backup the imaging I do and store critical data.
I don't know who the recording industry bribbed/stupified in order to get that ruling.
For the record: I'm not intrested in your crappy albums anymore
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
of course most of HP's burners are "personal" burners, this would mostly affect individuals, not tech firms...
oh well...
This reminds me of the way poluters are treated in the States. "Pay this "fee" and we will let you violate this law."
Of course, the money will never go to the people supposedly harmed by the action they are collecting the money for. It will just go into the government's coffers and never be seen again.
What bothers me the most is that they seem to think that the general polulace is too stupid to figure this out. (Then again, they may be right...)
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
Guys, while this sucks and I agree with some of the arguments here, it's common practice in Germany. If you create a copier, and sell it, you have to pay a fee to GEMA. If you run a copy shop, you pay a fee to GEMA etc etc. So, lets just keep this in perspective, even though the argument itself is fundamentally flawed IMHO.
Now it's payback time.
Or so you thought. It turns out that everyone has the capacity to ruin your work & livelyhood at a whim. Wouldn't you want to license this technology?
Imagine you work as a programmer (as you probably do) and furthermore that you make your money from the code you write.
Now imagine that somehow someone has invented a way of getting the source from your binaries and copying at will. Wouldn't you be annoyed? The boot would be on the other foot then, wouldn't it?
I purport that these measure are perfectly reasonable. I mean, what are 99% of CD-RW's used for anyway? It is right and good that the artists should be compensated.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
In Denmark we are getting a tax on blank CD's, that will be introduced in steps over the next half year, that will double the price on blank cd's(unless you buy the fancy cds, then it's about 50% increase in the price).
The tax is not a percentage but a fixed amount about 0.4$ pr cd.
The first step, about 0.1$ starts Dec. 1.
--------
So, when people buy these European burners, they'd already paid the Music "Industry" tax, which mean it becomes legitimate to burn your MP3s. Go full speed ahead my friends.
LOL!
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
>The question that comes to my mind though is
>that if I pay the extra 11 Marks (5 bucks), does
>that alow me to copy illegal music? If not,
>what's the fee for?
It doesn't allow you to copy illegal music, but it is completly legal in germany to borrow an cd from a friend and copy it for private use, to compensate this you pay some money to the GEMA with every recording media you buy.
Jan
It seems quite obvious to me that the members of the RIAA are not interested in "playing by the rules." In fact, if they could end my life (without anyone ever knowing) - someone who buys blank CDs, plays DVDs with tstdvd and css-cat, and someone who records MP3s of his own band - I'm sure they would.
So, fuck it. If they get to cheat, so do I. RIAA folks, you have lost my respect for your intellectual property. You will never receive money from me, for your work again.
--
All men are great
before declaring war
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Shame. Why is it that the Europeans take every oportunity to stifle inovation and maintain the status quo? For the same reasons the pilgrims packed up the kids and moved to the Americas, capital is fleeing Europe today.
Engineering brings us the internet, brings us RWCD drives, and a hope for a better future. What do RWCD drives have to do with copyrite law? Absolutely nothing. I say, screw 'em. Let the stupid Germans (the one's who haven't left Germany yet) use clay tablets to record their data. Let them pollute their land with pesticides instead of using geneticly enginered crops. Let the French shut themselves off from the internet. If I were HP, I'd say tough, and pull out of the market. No RWCD drives for Europe.
Someone you trust is one of us.
I'm being fined because I COULD use a piece of equipment to commit a crime?
So does that mean that by paying this fine, I can then commit the crime without any fear of further punitive damages?
Does this make sense people? So much for pro-active action.
What's next? "Well sir, there's a $5000 tax on this car, because statistically, drunk driving costs $5000 per car out there, so they'll just get ya now."
Gimme a break.
ps. I wish they would have put "Where as we is founded on the concepts of common sense and logic.." was in the constitution.
-In the event that you disagree with the previous comment, be advised that you are most likely right anyway.
In Germany macrovision is illegal because it stops you from using your right to copy video tapes which you paid a tax for.
Nevertheless, many tapes in the video libraries (regardless whether for rent or for sale) are still copy protected (probably not to disrupt the business of the poor macrovision decoder manufacturers ;-).
I haven't yet tried to get a refund from one of the media companies for disregarding my "copyright"...
Cthulhu fhtagn!
I know... It's about time for companies to grow some "cahunas" and stop dealing with places like this. If industry cabals like the RIAA are legal, why not an industry cabal of CD and DVD recorder ad MP3 player makers who boycott countries/states that presume guilt on devices (not lawbreakers) and "tax" them.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
All the other companies paid the fee. HP went into an argument and now has to pay *less* than the GEMA (who collect fees from device and writable media manufacturers and importers and give it to registered artists after keeping their share) first wanted. This entire system is not new, the same is in Canada and Austria, for example.
The real problem is that the GEMA (together with forces from the Ministry for Economy) wants the same fee for *all* multimedia devices (=PCs) and storage media (=hard disks) because they make copying possible.
Computers. You can't live with them, you can't live without them.
Gotta love those socialist european laws. Too bad you live in a democracy and not a representative republic like us.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Will that wad of paper, then, keep the cops at bay when they bust down my door? Will this keep the Record Industry from bending me over in front of a Court of Law? The logic is there (except for mabey a couple of holes I have ironed out yet), but Industry and Government don't always follow logical concepts.
This is primarily hypotheticle, not only would I not bother with dealing with all of the paperwork involved, but I would hate to have to defend myself in court because of a legal loophole. It is really just a wilder pondering to keep the record execs on their toes.
Guess you haven't been watching the news latetely ;)
Or any other media that can contain ASCII, bits or data. Anf our brain for remembering the songs ? Just like the napster-case... they are CLEARLY not made for burning mp3's. They are made for copying games !
Some time ago in the UK, the government planned to introduce a levy on the price of blank audio tapes, on the grounds that it would help make good the shortfall on revenues caused by people taping music. As far as I am aware, there is no similar tax on blank CD media, even though it is obviously used for pirating music, and not for making software distributions, perfectly legal linux CD's, or exchanging the fruits of your labors with others.
There was an article in 1992 in Wired magazine, as annotated by Richard Stallman here which looks at a similar tax on digital media.
I think you are looking at it in the wrong perspective. The tax does not assume guilt, it compensates for a privaledge, and that privaledge is the personal freedom of information. As Americans, (and just about everyone else too) we pay taxes for the creation of roads. Should this be abolished because it is wrong to say that everyone old enough to pay taxes is a driver? What if you live in a high density city like New York and can walk everywhere you need to. What if you are a recluse and have everything delivered to you. The same goes for any job payed for with taxes. What if you don't want mail? Too bad, it is assumed that you will use that resource so you pay for it. I would gladly pay an extra $6 on a CD burner if it meant more freedom to use the information I buy how I want.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
How could the money get to the artist? How can they discern who or what is being copied? I am a blues/jazz fan, you like Grgorian chant and Fred down the road is into rap. Who decides where our fees go and how do they distribute it fairly?
Why is anyone (rather alomst everyone) whining that it isn't fair to HP, and HP shoul dbe p'oed. They only people who will suffer are German consumers who will have to pay more for their CD-R/W now. HP merely raises the prices to make up the difference.
If you do buy CD and don't use them to copy copyright materials.. you should just request the money back. I mean it's CD-R, you can't re-use them.. just show that there's no copyright stuff on the disk..
Of course this s still a guilty unti prooven inocent approach..
I don't recall anything like this happening to CD burners in Canada. We don't have the right (or the need) to bear arms. As for the right to bear arms... The United States had no army other than Militia when their country was created. That's why the right to bear arms exists at all.
--
Todd's Law: All things being equal, you lose!
It seems that companies know that their demise is imminent so they are trying to lobby in the laws that will officially make the part of the goverment, so to say "Because we are the largest distributors of the entertainment information, we will let you copy all the stuff we make but on every purchase you make that is in any way may cotribute to you copying our stuff we will levy a tax for it". I think it is pretty evident, they try to do such things in any contry it is possible so they still have a flow of cash once Internet is superbroadband and everyone has 256K mp3s for anything they want.
Or maybe it is just an organized heist, in highest levels of the governments they try to increase their revenue, because it is not enough. Don't forget someone perhaps is working on making music taxes and if it is fairly successful, they will get insanely huge bonus, shares chunk and promotion!
The driving force behind this idiocy is not necessary, just consequences are!
...already have such a tax on them. For just the reasons previously cited: that they could be used to make comparatively flawless reproductions of recorded music.
---
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
I have a number of friends in the music industry. The artists NEVER see a cent of that money.
"The strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is as a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny in government"
-Thomas Jefferson
-w00p
Someone moderated this post's parent as a troll. Whether it is or not, in my opinion this person has a valid point although I do have a few nitpicks.
Writable CDs are a HUGE market and I too have my doubts on how much of it is for "legitimate" use. Also, most people use CD-Rs and not CD-RWs as even now the cost of CD-RWs aren't worth it, although I don't know what the situation is like in Europe.
In either case, copying CDs isn't "getting the source from your binaries", it is a lot more like copying the binary software itself, as few people have software that turns an audio stream into sheet music and/or lyrics, which is closer to "the source code" of music, the PCM stream on a CD is not "the source code" as it is "compiled" using instruments, vocals and mixers.
BTW: Artists usually don't get compensated when recording media and devices get taxed and probably never have been. The taxes typically fatten up the "label", the company that signed them, but this might vary by country as well.
I guess to be fair, we should have a "tax" put on Video Cassette Recorders, Tape Recorders, DAT tapes or other forms of storage media.
Perhaps we should also tax Hard Drives. After all, a modern 80 gig hard drive could potentially pirate as many as 123 FULL CDs. That's not even to mention how many partially full CD's could be pirated with compression.
Give me a break!
Partly, at least, because there's a lot of overlap between the hardware manufacturers and the content providers. Companies like Sony and Phillips are heavily involved in both sides of the market. It appears that they currently make more money from milking copyrights than they do from manufacturing consumer electronics, so the music and movie people get to call the shots. One more reason why massive conglomerates are bad for the consumer.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Just remember, $6 at the manufacturer side equals about $100 at the consumer end.
I'd like to know how it is distributed. It says it is collected and distributed to the copyright owners. Now do they give it out according to some formula. What if your a small time artist, making your own cds, can you claim exemption. Im sure some artists dont see a cent. Also, do the makers of coprighted cds have to pay a fee to themselves cause they use equipment that can be used to pirate material on an even larger scale than burners
-- Cheer, Cheer, The Red and the White.
Okay give me back my negative money and pay me for my troubles collecting it. Yeah... ok. Australia Village Idiot #1, Germany wants to join the list? I'm sick and tired of the idea that the consumer cannot be an artist and has no rights to the proper equipment. Fuck off assholes.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.