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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?"
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!
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.
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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
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.