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European Record Industry Goes After Personal Computers
yfarren sent us this: "According to this(free reg required, or try here)new york times article European copyright holders are trying to force consumers to pay them whenever they buy any equipment that might be used to copy music. What I want to know is, if I do pay somone when I buy equipment that enables me to copy copyrighted Items, do I gain rights to do so? If not, what am I paying for?" That's a good question - wish there was an answer. CNN has a very bland article about changes in European copyright law which seem to parallel the DMCA, but I haven't been able to find a good write-up in English - please post below if you have one.
I you're paying extra for materials/hardware/equipment because of something you MIGHT do with them, you're essentially being given tacit permission to perform said acts -- instead of paying at the point of purchase, you're paying in advance. It's well in keeping with their current policy of curing a headache by chopping of the head.
The current Pulpit has an interesting related analysis.
OpenSourcerers
The import levy is in effect, and it's 5c per cd-r.
It is to be paid by any a) media manufactured for sale in the country, and b) media imported for sale. Canadians are free to import media from the US without paying the levy.. it only applies to import for sale.
That's why it makes no perceptible difference in the consumer price, like everyone thought it would.
Does the tax, apparently it is already in place in the US on blank media, go to all copyrite holders? If so I need to get me one of those. Do you have any idea how much blank media is sold in the US alone? If it only goes to the major labels, what gives? If it only goes to the RIAA, why are they the "speakers" for all copyrite holders? I think I see a new occupation for me. Copyrite inane stuff and start collecting on blank media sales.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
Quick! Everybody release a copyrighted CD of themselves singing in the shower and ship it off to Europe!
I smell EASY MONEY!!
Are print publishers going to go after scanners next?
Taking the logic behind this concept to the absurd extreme, we will soon be taxing paper as "blank media" and pens as a "component that can be used in copying". Makes perfect sense to me...
(Meanwhile, order all your stuff from contries that don't do this.)
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Music recording companies the world over are operating under the false premise that they have a right to remain in business using the same business models for no better reason than they were in business today. Companies are a convenient vehicle employed by people to produce goods and services. As such, they have no inherent right to remain in existence if there is no longer a market for their goods and services. Smart companies like IBM adapt to change and remain in business. Music companies are feeling the squeeze now, and must eventually embrace new technology to remain in business in the future. Oil companies will face a similar shift in the future when the oil runs out.
Of course, in the meantime, I feel strongly tempted to head over to the US and start an oil lamp company - and then campaign to restrict the trade of the power utilities there on the grounds that they're putting me out of business. Or possibly start a buggy factory (as in, horse-drawn buggy) and then sue the Ford motor company. Times change. Business models have to change with them. Sadly, at the moment, the RIAA in the US, and other such institutions around the world are under the impression that with sufficient funds, they can stop tomorrow from arriving. Sadly, enough judicial and legislative types in the US appear to agree with them to make the attempt worthwhile.
In the meantime, time moves on around them, and their customers take note. I doubt I'd be able to find a buyer for oil lamps, or horse-drawn buggies. Sooner or later (probably sooner) enough musicians are going to start dealing direct with their customers over the internet, selling MP3s directly from websites, and the need for big, centralised clearinghouses for music will be much less.
Perkin's Postulate: Online tech support is designed to provide everything short of actual help.
It wouldn't be a problem for them to think this, as long as the politicians didn't buy it. But they do. Almost any politician thinks: jobs == good, loss of jobs == bad. Keeping people busy even if they aren't producing anything is for some reason interpreted as being "good for the economy" (even though it actually hurts the economy). And since only socialists (e.g. Bush, Gore, Nader) can get a significant number votes, then doing things "for the good of the economy" has become government's purpose. :(
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
You have this backward. The natural situation is that everyone has the right to copy anything they damn well feel like. Restrictions on the right to copy are the artificial creation of the government. The people who have been irresponsible are the ones who have abused their government granted monopoly on the right to copy music to charge 500%+ markup on CDs, ignoring the nominal purpose of the copying restriction- to reward the creators of the music. Now that the real cost of music duplication has gone through the floor thanks to the elimination of the need for a permanent physical medium, they're engaged in pointless and idiodic whining about alleged lost profits. Those who would prevent others from copying music need to start being responsible.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Sorry.
I'm not interested in 95% of the 'music' that's published these days. I do have 600+ blank CDR disks in storage and a 10x CDRW drive, but it's not to burn the kind of crap that's 'pop musick' these days. Count me out on your music tax, guys.
This is completely flawed. A cerebrally handicapped person cannot be held responsible for anything, but she does have rights, you know.
A human being has rights, exactly like animals do. As civilized beings, it is our duty to grant them those rights.
This is a typically European and socialist approach to the "problem" of piracy, whereby everyone pays for the negative actions of a few rather than directly forcing these people to pay.
What, you don't think the same sort of thing happens in the good ole' US of A? Hell we charge more for audio CDRs even though there is no difference between them and 'plain ole' CDRs. Stop screaming that it is a socialist activity, this has nothing to do with socialism. The way you use socialism seems to imply negativity; even though you seem to have little knowledge of its meaning.
And I agree with the other response: paying a bit more for blank media is definitely preferable (and far less regulation) to the DMCA shit you have in the USA.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
I find it hard to believe that the UK produces 25% of the world's music. They represent a tiny margin of the world's people, and nearly every human being alive produces music of one sort or another. Now, if someone wants to claim the the UK produces 25% of the 'commercial recordings of a few people making music' that would be a different thing. The distinction is very important. The way to 'liberate' music isn't to make yet more (albeit unauthorized) copies of recordings of musical performances. That really represents filling the soundspace with yet more sound-spam. Turn off the equipment driving your loudspeakers and make some real music once in awhile. We're all capable of it, though we're all passivated by the buzz of canned sound we surround ourselves with.
Frankly, I'd want to see very clear and convincing numbers the prove specific amounts of lost sales directly related to sales of CR-R media et al. Until I see those, it may not be socialism per se but you can call a corporate handout whatever you want.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
Right on. I am starting my boycott of listening to musicians whose music is 30 years old and is sold by "companies" who give nothing to the musician. I am so excited by this that I will even boycott my own cd collection.
A while ago i had a great idea about how to fix copyright. Instead of having copyright law have copywrong law. Everytime someone copies and distributes somerthing that is utter trash they will be forced to pay a fine to RIAA. I feel this is a much better way for RIAA to make money.
The muscians are irrelevant to all this since they are supposed to be poor bastards anyway.
Take this personaility test.
When I originally heard of this plan, it was also supposed to start some fund for those poor starving artists that aren't making any money because "evil computer geeks" are copying their material. First, when has a government program, in the US or elsewhere, ever really given money to the people it was supposed to? And second, don't you have to wait to prosecute someone AFTER they commit a crime, not just because they might be THINKING about it??
"Reality is a crutch for people who can't handle drugs."
Whatever happened to the presumption of innocence? Policies like these presume the guilt of the consumer. I don't believe they will ever fly as they are illogical and hopefully illegal. Just another attempt by those charging too much for too little (under the guise of protecting "artists") to impede progress to protect their own interests.
"The problem isn't the individuals who get one of our CD's, copy it on a CD-burner and give it to a friend," he said. "The problem is the professionals, who are organized and do it in a huge way and have factories."
Ecuse me as I buy a foam bat and head for Germany. This guy desperately needs to be beaten about the head and shoulders with something. "The problem is the professionals"? Then why are you punishing everybody? Why are you levying unfair taxes on people for using everyday items when you know any criminal smart enough to set up a massive pirating operation is going to be smart enough to get around paying them?
All you're doing is bleeding everyday people for what a select group of criminals is doing to you! How the fuck is that fair? What the fuck is wrong with German people?!
AARRRRGH!
Where's the closest foam bat store?!
--Brogdon
This tagline is umop apisdn.
Here in Canada, remember that temporary War time tax introduced during WW1? Hey guess what, we still pay income tax!! (sometimes as high as 50+%)
--- I used to moderate, then I read the -1 articles and decided having to filter through them was not worth it.
Böhse Onkelz (a wacky German spelling, but meaning Evil Uncles), operates its own record label and sells about 500,000 albums a year. Its most recent release, "Evil Fairy Tales," was the top-selling album in Germany last spring. But Mr. Weidner said bootleggers produce between 30 and 60 unauthorized albums a year, each of which can result in thousands of unapproved compact disks.
"The problem isn't the individuals who get one of our CD's, copy it on a CD-burner and give it to a friend," he said. "The problem is the professionals, who are organized and do it in a huge way and have factories."
This comment seems to shoot more holes in their argument than anything else. If the fee/royalty is because of proffesional bootleggers then who does this apply to a burner here and a home computer there? I would think pro bootleggers would be using more than just a presario w/an ide burner otherwise it would seem they aren't to professional. If this is the problem perhaps they should focus more on cd pressing equiptment and leave consumers the hell alone.
Of course I don't believe him at all and it really comes down to "how to maximise profits" and control the media market. The worst thing is 90% of these poor artist that have been suckered into supporting this fee will never see a dime of what is collected.
You're both wrong. You lose some rights, not nearly all. You still have the right to a jury trial for any future infractions. You still have the right to remain silent, and cannot be forced into self-incrimination or subjected to double jeapordy. But you don't have the right to vote, obviously your right to travel may be limited (hard to see the sights while in jail), and sometimes you may lose the right to life.
"Prejudice is wrong; you should hate everyone the same."
if I do pay somone when I buy equipment that enables me to copy copyrighted Items, do I gain rights to do so?
The answer (in Canada, at least) is yes - you do gain the rights.
The catch is that you can make a recording, but someone else can't make it for you.
It's legal to borrow an audio CD (from a friend, for example) and make a copy of it, but it would be illegal for your friend to make a copy and give it to you. (I know, the end result is the same, but that's the way the law is worded, and that's the way the copyright board interpreted it.)
Excellent signature. I've just finished reading the trilogy and have found the analagy to be pretty good.
Nazgul's == Lawyers ?
Cheers.
I voted with my feet. I stopped buying music cd's a few years ago. If enough people stopped buying or reduced their buying so that copy protection increases resulted in reduced sales, it might become less of an issue.
I really don't have a problem with copyright holders wanting to protect their data. And as long as their actions have no adverse effects on people obeying the law, I don't mind if they put restrictions on our abilities to copy things. However, if I buy a tape recorder so I can record lecture notes in school, for example, I should not be penalized because the technology can be used in an illegal manner. Technology is neither good nor evil -- it's how it's used that makes the difference. Limiting technology so it can't be used in illegal ways generally also means limiting how it can be used in legal ways as well. It also complicates the devices and limits their flexibility, which means they become less useful to people who want the most out of their electronics. I see us spiraling into a dark age of technology where companies become all-powerful through the ignorance of government and the average person. The question remains as to how long it will take before we reach our next renaissance.
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For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
I hate to be a troll, but I gotta reply to this...
Thank God that our country has rejected such centralist madness.
Huh?
"I've seen plays that were more exciting than this.
Honest to god... Plays!" Homer Simpson
In order to have rights, a creature must also be responsible (this is why talk of animal rights is so much crap.
/bitter sarcasm >
Likewise, children are clearly not responsible, so human rights do not apply to them. The U.S. Already recognizes this to some extent (children cannot vote), but we must take further steps to further this fundamental principle. First, we must repeal the child-labor statutes. Second, we must explicitly legalize the beating of children. How can children expect to avoid punishment for all of the myriad inconveniences they cause because of some liberal concept like "children's rights". No, it is clear that until children can get a job and support themselves, they do not have the right to protection from beatings and the like. Free Tony Lamont Bragg Sr.!
<
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
CD's here are cheap. we buy them in bulk (80) for under $1 CANADIAN a piece.
Yeah! They're really great, you buy them on the big spike in a Markham computer store, and they come pre-scratched!
If Canada didn't have the blank media tax, the $1 blank CDs might have recognizable brand names and might not be pre-scratched.
You americans are dumb sometimes. What's next? we all have Uber-Overclocked cpu's because we live in igloos and have no need for external cooling?If I lived in Baffin Island, that would probably work. As it is, I have some novel CPU cooling systems of my own. My many American friends love to hop across the border and come up to Toronto to see my latest creation.
As soon as I get the Quickcam to work under FreeBSD, I'll invite Slashdot to the party, too.
Re: dumb Americans. No, Americans are not, as a whole, stupid. The United States wouldn't be the world's one remaining superpower if Americans were. Though, it's nice to know that I've got friends who, in Niagara Falls, NY, paid at Denny's using Canadian Tire Money.
(Canadian Tire is a big and very poor quality department store that uses very official-looking paper "money" as an incentive to come back. The "currency" bears the name "Canadian" and has lots of cool pictures of snowtires and a stereotype Canadian dressed up against the winter.)
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Go for that straw man.
Actually, a lot of the early CD-ROM drives weren't capable of reading, in a digital format, the CD-Audio content on a music CD. There used to be lists compiled of the few CD-ROM drives that would read the disks. The music industry had put a lot of pressure on the drive manufactuerers to tweak the drive firmware to 'copy protect' the CD audio. These days, modern CD-ROM drives that won't rip audio are rare, probably due to market pressure from consumers who won't buy a drive incapable of ripping. But it's wrong to say that 'any computer with a CD-ROM drive can be used for copying digital music', and it's also likely that we may again start seeing more drives that won't rip. It's the kind of thing that will quietly return in the market if people don't watch.
Just like Tobacco companies, these giant conglomorates keep piles of money and rabid lawyers to sic on a problem for these reasons. Do not think that for a half-second that this will make their lifespan any longer. Let them spend their money, don't buy music ever again, Napster and Gnutella them in to the gound if they are going to be that way. Unite.. and not in the proletariat troll way, just get back at them quitely... speed up their last breath. And please write your congressman. There is a pile of legislation that makes it to the floor and then gets tabled because they say, "Oh, its Sundquist's cronies again trying to pass that mandatory corporate welfare bill, again." MOST CONGRESSMEN PROBABLY HAVE NO IDEA THIS DEAL IS BEING BUILT. Remeber that their secretary runs the computers for them. The DMCA definitely passed out of ignorance. Let your congressman know that you'll be the steel toe of justice if they pass this. The music industry is going to tax my CD-ROMS? PUUUHHHHLLEEEASSE. The day I start worrying about them is the day they come to my house with a warrant for me and my three million friends who listen to MP3s. It'll never happen. Can you imagine the Britney Spears people coming ot get you? Not likely. Fear the real problems, my friends.
When I was at highschool the local shop complained that the majority of theft was being done by school-age children. They told the school and at the next assembly it was announced that if any boy from my school was seen in a local shop they would be considered to be stealing and delt with accordingly. My mother was one of the many parents totally outraged by this decision and by the next week's assembly the decision had been reversed.
How is this levy any different from my old school's stunt? And why isn't everyone similarly outraged?
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This is typical. When I burn bootlegs, the people in Canada generally will trade bland CD's for them because prices are twice as much there due to fees levied for copyright holders. Same with the CD for Consumer Media (propritary CD burners - like Phillips - that used this type of media that was 2-3 times as expensive as the old stuff) - that went over here about as well as DIVX
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ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee
Floppy disks have been around for piracy for _years_. I was copying games on floppies using my disk drive on my Apple 2 in the early- to mid-80s. Same goes for audio tapes. What's new that suddently requires a tax? Not copyrights. Not digital media.
A tax on blank audio tapes is not new. Most european countries have a tax like that.
On a related note, the music industry tried to make 'double decker' cassette players illegal.
However, I can't see where this is going to end, and I don't like where it looks like it's heading.
It is a slippery slope. Once recordable digital media is taxed, what is going to stop them adding an xDSL and Cable tax? Or taxes on general network equipment.
The main argument against a copyright tax on digital recordable media is that a CD-R or a hard drive can be used for many different purposes, not just storage of music and movies. Which is very different from blank VHS and audio tapes.
I would, however, be willing to accept a tax like that if the alternative was a draconian TPM-law like the DMCA. The problem is that the media monopolies want it both ways.
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
Where do I sign up to be a Swiss citizen?
Click here for a link that doesn't require registration, and gives the entire article in one go.
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"Larynxes can be used to replicate many kinds of copyrighted information; not just music, but books and source code are vulnerable. We must stop this piracy tool now," a German exec was quoted as saying, as he pushed for a tax on larynxes.
Who cares? If they don't want it to be used by the public maybe they should put a password on it.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Why so hostile towards us Americans? That being said, why are you posting on Slashdot?
Please, no AC's, you'll be ignored
Why do I keep typing pythong?
Imposing such taxes (the article said $80 a machine) would incur a huge increase in IT spending all across the board for all companies that use computers (are there any that don't use computers anymore?).
The music industry will not be fighting the little man in the street anymore - Mercedes Benz, BASF, BMW, Bayer AG, Deutsche Bank and many other behemoths will not look too kindly on such an expense and wield a considerable lobbying power that the music industry can't even dream of.
Or yfarren knows about it and included the link with his submission.
How the hell does the money go to the artists??
If I am a small-time guy selling CD's out of my trunk, do I get a nice check every month from the government to recoup my losses from fair-use copying??
To answer your question, the US does it just like Germany, except the tax on "music" CDR's, Minidiscs, "music" DAT tapes, etc. goes to the big labels/distributors like Sony. Thus the rich guys keep getting richer....
For your information, most bands sign their rights over to the labels as part of their contract, and the label owns the copyright, *not* the band. Look at any CD you own, it says "(c)2000 Big Music Label", not "(c)2000 Your Favorite Band". This is one reason why bands start their own labels, so the label owns the copyright and they own the label. Then the label can approach the big guys (who are both label and distributor) for distribution power (i.e. getting the CD into Best Buy).
So the writer (which is usually the artist, except for no-talent shits like Britney and N-Sync) gets "songwriting credits" instead, not actual copyright ownership. They then get royalties for songwriting. The actual performers get whatever their contract says, whether it is an up-front total ($1 million per album for 5 albums, for example) or a percentage of record sales or both. Only a handful of bands have the clout to actually get a percentage. If they are also the writer, then they get songwriting royalties as well. This is one reason that artists usually make the lions share of their money touring, even if they are number one on the charts for months at a time.
It is all worked out to give the record industry the power and the money....
If only "common" sense was actually that common...
These kinds of ridiculous overzealous regulations are why Europe's economy sucks compared to the US. You'd think that Europe, with it's high population densities, "universal education" (at least in some countries), mass transit that actually works, and "progressive" social programs, would be a socio-economic dynamo. Sadly, it's not. Why? Over-regulation.
Now, we could blame the French for this--the British have been doing that for years. Truthfully, though, I don't think they deserve all the blame. Lots of it, yes, but...
I'm well aware Canada does many of the things I'm criticizing about Europe. Don't get me wrong--stuff sucks here, too.
Just because you gave them money, doesn't mean they're going to give anything back.
Woo hoo!! Soon they'll be charging you at the moment of your new child's birth. This is just in case your child should ever grow up to pirate anything. That way they're covered.
I'm getting real tired of everything cropping up because of copyright... it is apparent to me that the copyright system does not work well in the "digital age". But how does one go about changing an old system like that, and what do they change it to???
--- I used to moderate, then I read the -1 articles and decided having to filter through them was not worth it.
This is a very grey issue. I have a CD burner attached to my computer but it is currently only used to do backups or act as an extra drive. Now in the future I may copy some of my software, I am allowed to do this in virtually all EULAs (the one copy for backup purposes part), and as far as I know there is no equivalent bit in music CD usage (please correct me if I am wrong). Personally I have no interest in commercially copying my CDs, I only buy what I like. It would be a lot more sensible to place some sort of charge (put it in a trust for artists, bugger the record companies) on the media, along the lines of what a number of countries already do. I am sure that some sort of music/software ratio could be worked out for distribution. I know that this has been said sooo many times before here.
Imagine putting an insurance charge on a gun, incase it was used to kill someone? Same with cars and whatever (insert anything that could kill someone - right down the line to kitchen knives).
For this logic to work, then this tax must be applied to all things that are capable of reproducing or duping copywritten material.
This can include computers, VCR's, tape recorders, hell, answering machines. There is no way to tell what will be done with the product.
If i ever had to pay that tax you'd be damn sure I'd get my moneys worth. I'd burn things for everybody. What a crock this is.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
There's just no way to draw a line. Media is reproducable people, get over it!
If someone is using a technology to create their own cottage industry to make large profits off of unlicensed media, then fine. Bust 'em. But this buisness of cracking down on people that copy and trade media is just crap.
We're not scaremongering... This is really happening, happening
Jewel cases are meant to be thrown away. They take up far too much space in storage, and big clattery piles of them are always falling over. The best alternative I have come up with are tyvek sleeves with a window.
I buy them bulk right at BestBuy for $29.00 per hundred. A bit before Christmas there was a $10 rebate on those spindles of 100.
"European Parliament Approves Rules Granting Greater Copyright Protection." (from Quicken.com)
"EU Parliament approves draft copyright law to fight high-tech piracy" (Silicon Valley News)
Also, y'all might want to check out Prof. James Boyle's editorial ("Whigs and hackers in cyberspace") in London's Financial Times the other day dealing with the foolishness of re-creating a European version of the American DMCA.
Also, I went to the European Parliament's web site and poked around for some primary documents. Here's a fairly thorough summary of what transpired inside the hallowed halls of the EU Parliament. However, I noticed that the embedded link (supposed to wisk one away to the actual text of the report) seemed to re-direct me to an unrelated discussion about energy in Indonesia and Malaysia.
Has anyone actually found the text the the EU Parliament's Copyright decision?
Sincerely,
Vergil
Vergil Bushnell
Insects and Grafitti Photos
First off, the Europeans are probably doing this due the huge number of CD copying devices available for you average Hi-Fi.
Next, does this mean it is legal to sell region free DVD players in Europe? If so I am interested in making a trip over there.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Bill Gates != Sauron
Bill Gates == Morgoth
Not quite accurate.
I choose to pay insurance premiums because I don't want to have to pay for the damages if/when *I* am in an accident. The insurance company pools the premiums, and pays *me* out of the pool to cover actual damages. Claims agents are used to ensure that the payout never exceeds the actual damage.
I am forced to pay a tax on recordable media or equipment because the recording industries have convinced the legislature to pass this law to compensate them because *someone other than me* infringes their copyright. The taxes go directly to the recording industry, and are paid based on virtual (and perhaps imagined) damages, rather than claims of actual damage. No mechanism is in place to ensure any relationship whatsoever between said virtual damages and the taxes I pay.
Hmmm...maybe someone should offer "copyright infringement insurance" to this industry... ;-P
I prefer the term "protection." What if I'm a musician and I want to burn demos of my stuff to send to radio stations and the like? You mean I have to pay record companies for the right to produce my own music instead of giving them all my rights?
Having all these lawyers and private mega-corporations trudging all over my rights is getting pretty depressing. Let's engineer some entertainment!
I say we try to mastermind a way to get the MPAA and the RIAA to step on each others toes and we can watch THEM duke it out for a while.
Hell, we could even say that all these new-fangled-mp3-thingys and DVD players are being used most often in automobiles powered by gasoline. Then we can get the auto industry AND the oil companies involved then too. What a match up!
We'll set up a special court house in the Philippines and stream it live over the internet and allow easy "1-Click" access to it.
It will be the lawyer battle to end all lawyer battles. A new "Thrilla in Manila"
DAMN I hate corporate America...
Conventional wisdom says Betamax failed because there was no porn. It was also not the superior technology at that time. Beta picture quality in early generations was only marginally better than VHS, but VHS allowed for two hour tapes (versus betamax's 1 hour tapes, not enough for a movie). Beta picture quality became superior in later, more expenxive versions of the technology.
>Where do I sign up to be a Swiss citizen?
HA!
Do you really think the Swiss want all the people that have figured out they are being fucked by their respective governments to move there? No way. They are pretty restrictive about allowing people to become citizens.
TROLL? I GET TROLLED? A LEGITIMATE FIRST POST AND I GET TROLLED!!! BASTARDS!!! THIS IS A TROLL POST !! YOU'RE JUST LUCKY I GET TO HAVE VALENTINE'S DAY SEX, OR YOU'D ALL BE GETTING A BEATING...(ok, so I'm not getting Valentine's Day sex. I lied)
Seriously, though...I thought at one time Canadian disks were more expensive... (granted, I haven't burned a boot for a Canadian in about two years) - and I know that CD for Consumer Media - like those used in early Phillips CD burners was a rip. (3-4 Dollars for one disk) They were used to pay off music copyright holders.
I was 50% right. Better record then any politician, lawyer, or weather forcaster.
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ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee
As I see it, (IAMAL), either I should be able to sue the record companies to recoup my loss, however pitiful, on the tax they impose on blank media storage devices, or else I should be able to use the fact that I paid a small fee on the blank media that is used to cover the loss of piracy, therefore, I should have a legal right to do whatever I want with the CDs.
Now I strongly suspect that the law isn't interpretated this way (at least in most countries, Canada being the only exception I know of), but would it be possible to have a smart lawyer to argue this viewpoint?
"Too bad, you opened the standard. I can by a two hundred dollar burner from HP, and then copy whatever I want."
Does this encourage companies to open standards? Did ever occur to you that this phenomenon is why companies are combining manfacturing and distribtution systems? Sony and Philips make substantial R+D investments, and then we punish them by destroying the value of their back catalogs. I can see that you're probably the 'copyleft' type, so you'll probably dispute the entire concept of owning a catalog of music. But consider this... how much music would you even know about if it wasn't for the major labels? What about entire genres of music that have these companies to thank for creating the technology that makes their music? The music industry made a lot of contributions to 20th century music, some good... some not so good.
Quit making it simple when its complicated.
It's pretty hard to install onto a hard drive when the motherboard won't let you write to the drive without a Magic Decoder ring present....
Then I reverse-engineer their Magic Decoder ring, go down to Radio Shack, pick up a breadboard and some assorted components, build my own Magic Decoder ring and do whatever the hell I want with the hardware. I've done it before with stupid vendors who "secure" their stuff with "dongles" or some other nonsense. Then I post a HOWTO about the Magic Decoder ring and others can do it as well.
That having been said, I've never done it without a ligitimate reason. In college I worked for a radio station which was an AP affiliate. One day we were moving our workstations around and someone bashed the dongle attached to the back of a machine and broke it. Since we needed this to be able to broadcast our news, I ran across campus to the lab(where I was a lab assistant) and built a replacement dongle on an experiment board which we kept in place until the replacement arrived from AP customer service. I also replicated dongles for a digital design tool we had purchased for the lab but the vendor had sent fewer dongles than we had liscences. My makeshift dongles were removed once we had the permanent ones in place.
If the courts become so enamored of Big Business that they actually _do_ begin to crack down on individuals who do this, then I'll leave the country. I won't use my tax dollars to support a country which won't support my rights to use my own property as I wish. Anyone who views me as a thief by default and taxes me based upon the hardware I own which "might" be used to violate other people's intellectual property will not get any support from me, fiscal or otherwise.
A copy of this post and the relevant sections of the article and earlier postings will be CC'ed to both my Senators, Congressman, and state representatives.
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
Re: "the reason companies and governments are being forced into these drastic actions"
Don't forget that corporations also have a responsibility not to devise draconian methods of content protection. It is such behavior that "forces" us to copy every possible piece of media. It is the same type of behavior that spurs boycotts.
Your post makes the possibly erroneous assumption that companies and governments would not take this action except that they are "losing" money. Instead, consider that they are doing it out of greed, self interest, and increasing shareholder value. In other words, they have a responsibility to someone not to lose control of they content they control, but they do need a lesson in not alienating a large portion of their constituency.
Similarly because we have the right to challenge this type of control that we also have the responsibility to fight it.
end of line
I've decided that /. is an activist forum among its many other hats; that being the case I welcome any articles that go along the lines of what the open source intelligentsia thinks "matters", even if it is posted again and again as new information or even similar news stories come up.
:/
Think of it: if you stop posting these articles just because most people already spoke their mind once or twice on the subject, then you are silencing the voice that is (IMHO) most important, the voice of the 'loyal' opposition. Can you imagine if abortion foes (pro-lifers except for doctors' lives) ever shut-up for even a day? One would assume that they were accepting the status quo. Same for gun advocates. Same for libertarians. Even though sometimes it feels like we are becoming a broken record, it is still important to maintain pulic discourse on these issues.
The one thing I would add is that We (yes, that's Us) find some way to bring this discourse to the forefront of public opinion more forcefully, more immediately. But in the meantime we would do well to sharpen our tongues on the whetstone that is this forum.
Sorry if this is ot, I will accept down mods, but my opinion is vitally important, ya know?
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
If you are not responsible, you do not have any rights, and any whining is pointless and idiotic.
Those who would copy music need to start being responsible.
What about those of us who are responsible? Why should we be punished because of the actions of others? Responsibility is a tricky subject. It can't be forced, but it often may be possible to punish irresponsibility. In the end, you have to punish the criminals and leave everyone else alone. The consequences of unjust punishment usually involve fun things like rebellion, war, etc. Unfortunately, companies and governments tend to be rather short-sighted, which explains why they tend to be rather unpopular.
I put it to you that the reason companies and governments are being forced into these drastic actions is because people, the geeks and high school students who use napster for one, are not responsible with the ability to copy music tell me, then, why the record companies sales just keep going up? napster's use is doing anything but receding...kinda hurts your Fundamental Philosophical Principal Reasoning, huh?
what hump?
Perhaps you can clarify how CDs not being used for their original purpose constitutes a loss for Sony and Philips? It's not as if there were such a limited supply of blank CD media that whenever one is used for data that's one less that could have been used to sell music. CDs are still doing everything they were designed to do - other applications are just gravy.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
To be essentially fined for committing a crime you haven't commited yet appears to go against that. Anyone who understands the law better have any thoughts on how long the concept'd stand up under that challenge?
As for the comments about the European stupidity of '...charging you without them having to do anything.' Can we say RAMBUS?
It's more than pedantic. I meant to raise the issue of what 'music' is. Music most assuredly is NOT just reproductions of recorded sound. It originates with Musicians. And people who just shuffle around recorded instances of somebody else's musical performances are sad, stunted human beings.
We are all capable of producing music. A part of the 'revolution of distribution' that people herald with the new technology is the ability for many more of us to create music that reaches distribution.
So yes, the UK has the world's second largest 'music industry' if by 'music industry' you mean: 'collection of cartels who distribute the musical output of a very small number of musicians widely to an audience of passive listeners.'
I choose instead to include in the 'music industry' such entities as musical instrument makers, sheet music publishers, travelling folk musicians, piano tuners, etc.
You know, kind of an 'open source' approach as opposed to a 'the music all comes from a big Microsoft-like conglomerate' approach.
Shuffling around waveform data originating from a sound studio at Sony isn't a lot different from shuffling around warez from Redmond.
I don't view trying to drive that point home as being 'pedantic.' It's a pity if you do.
This assumes that ALL people who own HDD's etc. are guilty of piracy, i.e. GUILTY till proven INNOCENT. There is no just way of implementing these proposals because not all users are interested in mp3s, copied software etc.
It's about time record companies get off the crack and get back to what the music industry is all about: music. Or perhaps it's not.
The new european law isn't just about paying a tax on CDs. The Belgian police announced today that they had the details of 12000 Napster users and some of then would be recieving a visit from the police very soon. According to the police, since these users have broken the law, they have no right to privacy on the internet. Given the incompetance of the Belgian police and legal system there's a good chance there won't be any convictions. Still, it's pretty crazy to live a country where smoking a joint is legal, but listening to music isn't.
What you pay for is redistributed to the producers under the assumption that a certain number will violate the copyright. So there's some lump sum given to producers (whether artists ever see this money I doubt...)
Right now the EC courts have published a decision which states that copies for personal use are ok. So you are allowed to rip the CD and put the songs on your computer, or on cassette for the car stereo and so on. No commercial use is allowed with copies
I write poems, I demand royalties in Germany for all sales of: pens, pencils, paper, notebooks, photo-copiers, scanners, charcoal, white boards, hard drives, and black boards as they all are capable of being used to violate my intelectual property.
-Compenguin
One our our ministers, I'm afraid her name has fallen out of my mind, publicly said she had downloaded mp3s from napster, burned them on a CD, and burned a copy to a friend. They investigated a possible indictment on her, but the case was dropped, since Swedens' fair use laws covers quite alot. So if you want your CDs burned, I charge 2$ a piece ;).
Some of the stuff we're talking about isn't very high-tech. What's going to stop Jurgen Q Publik from buying blank CDRs by the hundred from a mail order company in Hong Kong? I mean, we're talking about blank media here. If you tax it enough people will circumvent the taxes. I'll invest in pricewatch2.co.hk as soon as it's in business.
Proof? Canada taxes the shit of cigarettes, more than the US. 90% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the US border, so smokers come south every now and then and take quite a few cartons of cigarettes back. There's a small yet lucrative undergound industry of smuggling cigarettes across the border around here. Just think globalization...
Even though this idea is a transparent attempt to recoup losses from goods being pirated and not paid for (remind anyone of the VAT?), the logic that paying extra should allow one to pirate is seems to follow. Now, for them to do so would be truly enlightened. Wouldn't bet on it, though.
*Give a man a match, and he'll be warm for a minute. Light a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life*
Just a minor clarification. Switzerland is not a voting member of the UN. They enjoy status as an observer nation. This is the same as the Holy See and Palestine, if my memory serves correct.
--Be human.
$80? This would be fine if they'd actually let me copy the music - but since they bitch and moan and lobby and bribe to take away that right, AND they want to slap an $80 tax on every machine?
I say FUCK that. How 'bout NO tax, AND free copying?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
for making pencils so I can copy books....
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
I put it to you that the reason companies and governments are being forced into these drastic actions is because people, the geeks and high school students who use napster for one, are not responsible with the ability to copy music.
I put it to you that the reason geeks and high school students are being forced into piracy is because people, the RIAA and associated corporate cartel, are not responsible with the ability to market music, rip off artists, and lobby the US govt.
If you are not responsible, you do not have any rights, and any whining is pointless and idiotic.
If a corporation is not responsible, it does not have any rights, and any whining is pointless and idiotic.
Those who would copy music need to start being responsible.
Those who would control the music industry need to start being responsible.
YEah I've got thousands of mp3's.
Yes I've got a hard drive to store them on.
Yes I have a CD Burner.
I even have blank CD's to burn onto aswell.
But I also have 200+ purchased audio CD's which is what I've ripped. I believe that this does not count as pirating music.
So why then do I have to pay much more for all the components in my computer just because I "might" do something whereas there is no proof nor intention of having done so.
Oh hey guess what, my computer can also be used to bring down a million websites and do cyberterrorism. Will you put me in prison too just because the computer I am using can do these things? Or will you just tax me?
If/when all this crazy mess with digital rights and music industry gets sorted out, will anyone remember to take off the tax on those products or will it be an income source for some greedy bastards for the rest of their lives....
Why is it a carpenter's right to use a screwdriver that someone else invented? I'm not talking about pirating music here, I'm talking about recording your *OWN* music.
Pro audio gear seems to be exempt from many normal laws and I can't quite figure out what makes something qualify as "pro". Example: The law says that all digital music devices must obey SCSM, that's why your Minidisc won't make a copy of a copy. Well, as it happens pro devices are one class of device exempt from this treatment. My pro sound card (M-audio Delta 1010) ignores SCMS bits on it's incomming channel (so it will copy music even if the bits are set for no copy) and allows me to set them to whatever I wish on the outgoing channel. Now it's pretty obvious that this is a pro card, it costs $700USD and has a whole schwag of features. However, if you take M-audio's little $100 DiO 2448, it is the same way. Ignores SCMS because it's a pro device too. I really for the life of me can't figure out what qualifies something as pro, thereby allowing it to ignore these restrictions.
Regarding your 'carpenter' analogy:
That's inane. The two situations aren't really comparable.
I'll end this post as I did my last one, try to keep this next sentence in mind before you start spewing near-meaningless responses.
Stop making things simple when they're complicated.
So are saying is that we should be grateful to companies like Rambus that encourage standards that become widely and freely adopted and then insist that suddenly everybody owes them royalties? Sony and Phillips may have invented the CD format but if they push it for free and only later decide they should be compensated, well, at that point they are no better than heroine dealers passing out "free" samples.
Now all this is really beside the point because no one is suggesting that Sony and Phillips be compensated for providing a standard. What has been proposed is a tax on recordable media to cover what might be lost to piracy. The revenue from this tax wouldn't go to the creators of CDs, it would go to music publishers who claim to be losing sales.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
You're absolutely right. And the free, publicly funded healthcare isn't necessary bad and slow either.
I just had an eye operation last week after a routine check revealed that my retina was slowly becoming detached. After being diagnosed by my doctor, he despatched me to the local university hospital on that very same day and after a few days at the ward my eye was operated successfully. The cost? To me, about $100 for the week's upkeep and some change for the medication (which are government subsidized here too, BTW). To the society, I'd estimate something between $5000-$10000 based on the price of private, medically unnecessary eye operations like fixing a slight myopia with a laser surgery.
Translation: "It's going to make me money, so, sure, do it. I know it's wrong and unfair, but hey, money is money."
He admits to it's uselessness, yet still backs it. He should be a government official.
"Anyone who makes money out of my content ought to contribute something to my well-being," Mr. Wallis said.
That sounds reasonable. But if I'm NOT making money off his content, I should be able to tell him to sod off.
"It is pretty clear when people buy blank CD-ROM's that they want to do some copying, and it is fairly easy to argue that a certain levy should be imposed."
I strongly disagree. Out of the past40 CDRs I bought, only ONE has been to make a copy of a music disc, and that was only because I found that the plastic around the inner hole was starting to chip, letting it slip while spinning up in my portable CD player. So even there I am not violating copyright. Why should I pay a copyright tax on those other 39 discs that contain computer DATA, not music or copyrighted works?
But when you come to the actual machine, that will be harder for people to understand."
For those of us blessed with working minds, and who value fredoms more than money, it's already hard to grasp.
--
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
I can understand why media compaies would want to control their entire consumption chain. They want as much leverage over their marketplace as possible in order to maximize their profits, minimize their costs, and eliminate their risks.
What I don't understand is why this would be good for consumers or why I should support it. Convince me.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
I'm personally hoping that governments become lazy enough that they refuse to continue prosecuting and upholding these antiquated and outdated copyright laws because violation of them is so ubiquitous and the costs and time are clogging up the courts and de-focussing the executive branches of government with what amounts to frivolous and harrassing actions on the part of the RIAA, et al.
Imagine if, for example, the RIAA went around to every juke joint and honky-tonk and subpoenaed every musician they found for playing Willie Nelson / Rolling Stones / Oasis songs without permission? I think they are within their rights to do so. Why don't they? They know they'd get thrown out on their asses if they tried, if not by the patrons of the bar, then by the judge who had to hear their stupid claim.
We need to nip this in the bud by continuing to ignore the law in this case. It is clearly bad law because it is ultimately unenforceable. Kind of like 55 mph speed limits...
...it leads to loss of public morale and disrespect for authority.
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
At least in the case of Sony, free copying of audio is a loss to them because Sony also owns a record company. This could explain why Sony has often let viable large capacity lossless media formats, especially rewritable ones, wither and effectively die.
However, you are making it a reality by refusing to acknowledge that content creators may still have rights once they've converted their product to digital form. In this type of environment, the only way for these companies to maintain the value of their assets is to market them in a closed loop.
The entire mp3/burner phenomenon exists because users have so far escaped responsibility for their actions. Admittedly, this is a humorous twist on the lack of corporate (collective) responsibility we find in modern capitalism. At some point, users will have to admit that technologies as open as the CD format often result in unforseen costs for their creators. Although you may only use your blank CDs to backup your HD, you must also realize that your ability to do so hurts the industry that made it possible.
Make no mistake, it hurts the music industry both financially and creatively. Although, CD sales are up this year, the increase is less than in previous years (slowing sales growth). The Nsync/Britney type stuff is doing well because it's marketed to people outside of the mp3 demographic. Same thing with rap/R&B, but thats an economics issue, with minorities having less access to the net and computers in general. When was the last time an album that appealed to 18-30 yr. old people was an eagerly anticipated hot seller?
With the Internet (especially broadband), consumers' awareness of music that they would enjoy increases exponentially, but the music industry does not benefit in the form of exponentially increasing sales. That's OK. But there does need to be a way to compensate the industry, without it resulting in unjust enrichment. A fee paid to ASCAP/BMI is on blank media is one of the more reasonable alternatives I've heard.
Get comfortable with paying a little extra for the results of the technology you use. If you don't want to do that, there are some alternatives:
Well, making a parable, at least where I live all car users must pay a yearly traffic insurance that is used to cover the damages people cause by reckless driving. So, I'm paying for other people's crimes and it still doesn't give me the right to play real life carmageddon. Kind of sucks but it's still understandable.
Existence usually comes as a surprise (Idem)
If I use my CD-R drive to backup my files on my computer, I have cost the music industry nothing. It is no different from me backing up to floppies, DAT/DDS tape, or stone tablets. I don't mind the music industry recouping losses from people who have illeagaly copied the property of the RIAA, but they have no right to recoup it from me. Any solution wherein I subsidize the piracy of others is unjust.
Also what the hell is it supposed to mean when you say the RIAA is suffering from slowing in their sales growth? How long can you expect sales to grow in any market? Am I supposed to spend more on music every year untill my entire income is spent on music? Any steady growth in any market is a temporary phenomenon or is limited by population growth (which has noticably slowed in western countries latley).
P.S. in case you haven't noticed the recording industry has been proposing simlar taxes on DAT tapes, copact flash, smart media, hard drives, and audio related computer peripherals prettty regularly lately. It looks to me like an attempt to shake down consumers more than recovering unproveable losses.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
Yes, I was thinking the other day how much I really need to double my income. It's just such a hassle that I have to work all day long. If I made twice as much, I could work half as long. And hey that's pretty cool. Now where's that congressional telephone book? If those wacky Europeans can do it, so can I. I've been saving up, and I think I have enough to get a new law passed. Those things are expensive!
It's more significant than that. It is already possible, under the current Danish Copyright Act, for the copyright holders' organisation (Copydan A/S) to impose fees on digital media. This bill will also extend these fees to equipment that can record on digital media. But the bill will also allow individuals to copy anything, to give these copies to their friends, and to make copies of copies.
Why does the extra tax go to music? A lot of illegal programs and games are going around.
-- Make software not war
Damn straight.
The record companies will get the money and the artist will get bupkis, as they say in my home town of Hollywood, CA.
Yeah, I know Steve Albini wrote the original article that this is based on, but Courtney Love delivers the facts of life in a much more...well, colorful way. Read this and read it well:
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/ index.html
Nobody makes money in the record industry except for those "above the line" (executives) and a select, 31337 few who are in the "millionaires' club." Like Metallica, Elton John, Puff Daddy and all the others who have wept openly that Napster is spoiling their plans to buy yet another summer home.
This is how it has been since back in the days of 78RPM Swing "sides." The white-owned record companies made fat $$$ off of lots of musicians, most of them Black. What started in the 1930s and '40s continued like a runaway freight train into the '50s, when "Race Musicians" signed away 100% of their rights to predatory record companies.
It continued through the '60s, '70s, '80s, and '90s to present day/present time, and it's Black, White, Latino, Asian and any number of other ethnicities of musicians who are taking it up the ass and winding up with an anus resembling that poor goat sex guy.
And if you sign with a small, indie record label, you will not be immune from these games. A friend I know was in a band which got signed to a famous punk rock band's private label. All went well for a couple of years, they got to put out a few albums and did lots of live gigs.
Then a major record distributor (Jem) went out of business, and this famous punk rock band's private label's balance sheets suddenly didn't look so good. Enter a whole lot of big record company creative accounting practices and all the sudden a band that was making bucks for the company suddenly found themselves owing the company large green.
This band's masters are now tied up with the famous punk rock band's private label, and they have no hope of legally re-releasing this music independently and making some money for themselves off of it. The famous punk rock band's private label doesn't even release this band's music anymore and have not pressed a copy of the band's CDs in years. The only way to hear this band's music now (unless you go cruising used CD stores for it) is if some kind soul ripped their tunes and posted them on Napster, Gnutella, Freenet or whatever.
I have zero sympathy for the record industry pigs and the supermegastar musicians who have the good fortune to have a piece of the action. Hoist the Jolly Roger and to hell with them all.
----
http://www.msgeek.org/ -- All your estrogen are belong to us!
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Go Ahead dumb ass, I am at the karma cap!
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
Very true. The European approach to most social policy tends to spread responsibility around a bit more liberally than we Americans like. Imagine if Silicon Valley had been regulated in the '80s and '90s the way most European business regions are still regulated... .
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Check out these aricles on heise (german), which prove that the exact opposite is true!0 2.01-00 4/. 01-0 00/
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-14.
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/tig-06.02
The European Parliament decided that
COPYING FOR PRIVATE USE REMAINS LEGAL
and even better:
NATIONAL GOVERNEMENTS HAE TO TAKE ACTION AGAINS COPY PROTECTION MECHANISM
(bye bye DeCSS)
The tax (compensation) is not payed to the record-labels but to organisations (Verwertungsgesellschaften). Their job is to distribute the money to musicians.
Unfortunately most europeans don't know about their rights, because mainstream media spreadsso much FUD.
The worst part is, things are going to keep on like this. Sure, it'd be nice if we could make the governments, record companies and general idiots out there see some sense. It's not going to happen.
At least not anytime soon. There's a post somewhere here that talks about banning/taxing ties, paper, letters etc and as much as we like to chuckle at things like this it's probably not too far off the truth. The fact is that governments don't want to spend money, businesses don't want to spend money, combatting piracy costs money. So rather than attempt to find a reasonable solution to the problem the simply think up a new tax or charge and justify it by saying "Ohh well, you know, we have to do this to cover the costs of piracy!"
This excuse is complete crap, I mean the current cost of a CD (generally much higher than it should be, wherever you are) is justified by the 'covering the cost of piracy' claim. Do you really think that, if this charge were applied all over the world, the cost of a CD would drop? Of course not.
Big business, the government and the church (any church) are the entities that run the planet. They're all packed with liars, cheats and charlatans. It's not going to change, just the way they screw us over will.
Yes. I'm in a bad mood today. And hungover, apologies for any lack of coherence or clarity
Gev
So damn witty, they only let me use half.
"It is pretty clear when people buy blank CD-ROM's that they want to do some copying..."
I believe that is the most ignorant statement I have ever heard. Lots of people use blank CDs for things that have nothing to do with copying music CDs. Most of mine are used in conversion of old home videos on VHS tapes to VCDs, which in no way affects the music industry. So I have to pay the music industry to make a living? Since when do they have the right to tax me, which negatively effects my income, but not some carpenter who uses 'old fashioned' tools doesn't have to pay this tax?
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
Actually, such schemes have not been rejected here. In fact, such a "tax" already exists on audio cassettes, DAT's, MD's, and Audio CD-R blanks (which are legally different from data CD-R blanks.) True, the tax doesn't apply to "data" media. But, if you think you are living in some capitalist heaven which doesn't have huge amounts of centralist regulation whose sole purpose is to tilt the market in favor of certain large and powerful organizations, you need to get out more.
Any computer with a sound card could be used for copying digital music. For that matter, any computer with a CD-ROM drive could be used for copying digital music. There would be tariffs on almost everything in an electronics store. And all to fuel Bertelsmann's jihad.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
On the other hand, one can hardly hold computer manufacturers and consumers accountable for the choice of file format that the recording industry made.
What this does show is that these execs are greedy bastards. Sure, blame the person who uses CD-R media for daily system backups or other many legitamite uses (including making custom mixes and cd backups) and make us pay for what is "supposedly" happening illegally. I'm not trying to promote piracy, but taxing legitamite users isn't either. I'd like to know why I have to pay Metallica a small fee so that I may burn my Natile Portman porn to a CD-R. If _anything_, I should have to pay Natile Portman a tax... umm.. you get what I'm saying?
; 2b=b;2=1
The only thing this tax proves is that these people are greedy.
---
a=b;a^2=ab;a^2-b^2=ab-b^2;(a-b)(a+b)=b(a-b);a+b=b
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
IMHO the fundamental error in this argumentation is that each and every customer is regarded an enemy per se, and if he/she is not smart enough to steal, let him/her pay for those who were. I am not sure whether or not I like that attitude.
If the price on pre-recorded media (eg books or CDs) went down to the price of raw media (say 1000 sheets of plain paper or 1 burner plus 100 CD-Rs), then there wouldn't be that many copyright violations. Instead, they're trying to lift the price of raw media to the level of pre-recorded, which in turn makes stealing interesting.
The music/book/software industry had better go after the hardware manufacturers (ie Mitac, HP, LG et al); after all the latter make copyright violations possible. (Hmmm, Philips on one side publishes Music CDs, on the other side manufactures Burners and raw media - see the contradiction?)
Use The Source, Luke!
Wait a minute... government collecting revenues for businesses is "socialism"? Plutocracy or corporate welfare, maybe. But these are capitalist firms that are attempting to subvert the famous free market to get their snouts deep into a new subsidy trough. Oppressive, centralist, unfair and corrupt, yes. Socialist, no. Incidentally, IANAS myself. But I also have seen a number of instances when Schumpeter has been proven right. Firms will suck up to the government to duck competition whenever they can, and if that is not resisted, free markets disappear.
Incidentally, this should prove advantageous to the US if the Europeans go further down this road and we have the sense not to.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
Music recording companies the world over are operating under the false premise that they have a right to remain in business using the same business models for no better reason than they were in business today. Companies are a convenient vehicle employed by people to produce goods and services. As such, they have no inherent right to remain in existence if there is no longer a market for their goods and services. Smart companies like IBM adapt to change and remain in business. Music companies are feeling the squeeze now, and must eventually embrace new technology to remain in business in the future. Oil companies will face a similar shift in the future when the oil runs out.
A smart music company will adapt by starting its own fee-based MP3 web site, and providing fee-based access to low-cost recording facilities similar to what a dedicated home user can now have with a PC, good recording equipment and mixing software. This would also give garage bands a low-cost method of producing and distributing their music.
What's that falling out of the sky? -- Generic dinosaur, 65 million B.C.
--
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
The Germans have a law about printers getting taxed. America charges you an addl. fee on VCR tapes.
Where to *I* register that all my works are copywrited, and saving my words-o-wisdom is worth $10,000,000.00 every time it is stored.
Because *SOME* of the computers might see or store my words, therefore everyone should pay me something. What ya think? $250,000 a year from the EU body extorting the money from all computer owners?
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
...some government scheme to slow down the evil computer industry. How can we stop this crazy technology? Tax it till people stop buying it of course. We'll say its to stop piracy, give some of the proceeds to the copyright holders, skim off enough to get me another house and the public will think its for a good cause. Theres no down side!
A favorite band of mine, The Offspring, once said "You're squeezed a little tighter everyday, punished before you can commit a crime." And what really gets me is they're collecting the tax to supplement the (supposed) loss that results in piracy. Using this logic then, if the music industry suddenly starts making record breaking profits (which they are) do I get money given back to me, or at least at reduction in the cost of buying a CD? Well, we all know what the answer to that question is...
You're paying for the record companies' lost revenues due to your failure to purchase the album. Sony and Bertelsmann both wanted to get revenues from the mp3 industry. Bertelsmann bought out Napster, while Sony made ultra-proprietary music players (they didn't even take mp3 natively; you had to convert every song to OpenMG, which took longer than encoding the mp3 in the first place). Both companies received scant revenues from these ventures, so now they're going for the jugular: the devices responsible for the mp3 craze.
Have you paid your Napster tax today?
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
I don't think you're getting it. It is true that you personally haven't cost the industry anything. But most users of CD-R drives do cost the music industry money. What I am saying is that it's better to accept some responsibility for the actions of your neighbor than to insist that you've done nothing wrong and you're being taxed for an activity that you don't participate in. Why?
Because the alternative is what I call "big brother technology". If you're unwilling to settle for a low degree of specificity in taxation, what you'll get is a system with knowledge of highly specific personal information. Do you recognize that there is a need for balance between the two? American companies know so much about us because our culture is too petty about taxation. Taxes on blank media are just targeted sales taxes. No big deal. You know, some countries give artists money straight from income taxes. The horror!
-
There is a company/organization (it's not a state organization) called GEMA which basically administrates all the copyrights
- On each and every recordable medium intended for audio recordings and each and every machine intended for audio recordings and each and every machine intended for duplicating written articles is a so called 'GEMA fee', which is (that's the theory) used to compensate the artists for legally permitted private copies
- Note: so far, this is limited for devices intended for audio/literature copies. So there are two kinds of CD-Rs available in
.de: ordinary CD-Rs and audio CD-Rs. The latter are much more expensive (although the GEMA fee is only a very small part of that price difference) and stand-alona audio CD burners will often require that you use thes CD-Rs. Although recently, GEMA has managed to force the mfgrs of CD-Burners (notably HP) to pay a GEMA fee for each burner sold in .de, and is labouring to impose a similar fee on scanners, computers and hard disks
- With the recent EU proposal (so far, AFAIK, it's not made it into a law), this practice is bound to continue, despite heavy efforts of the recording/media industry to ban/criminalize private copies completely
- Another note: 'Private Copies' means exactly that: I can make a (or a small number of) copy of any piece of music or literary work for my private use and that of close friends/relatives. I may not transmit/show these copies publically. According to a recent commentary, that means that it's perfectly legal for me to d/l MP3s from Napster, but perfectly illegal to provide MP3s for upload.
- A third note: the above does NOT apply to software.
- IANAL
Bye MarkusNo, I already have that right. If I buy some copyrighted material, I can make a copy for my own personal use with no problem.
The tax is not to allow me to copy, for my own personal use, copyrighted works.
I am specifically prohibited from making copies for distribution.
But the tax is not going to make it perfectly legal for me to make copies and distribute them. If I pay a tax on each of 100 blank CDs, and I copy the latest Britney Spears album and sell them on a street corner, I will be caught and prosecuted.
It will do me no good whatsoever to say "But I paid the copyright tax on the blank CDs, so I'm within my rights".
The tax will not make it legal to copy and distribute copyrighted works.
I am also prohibited, by contract, from repackaging the original medium and reselling it.
I am also prohibited (though I'm not sure if this is by statute or contract) from
- hiring,
- lending,
- public performance,
- broadcasting,
unless I get authorisation from the copyright holder, which is usually delegated to some body representing the artists.Now, that last bit, I just read from a Decca CD that I've got sitting on my desk.
Given that it's printed directly on the disc and is not repeated on the packaging, I could say that I was not informed of this clause at the moment of purchase, so it does not enter into the contract between me and the retailer...
But I seriously doubt that such an argument would hold up in court.
The prosecution would say something like
No, this tax on blank CDs is an attempt by governments to squeeze a few more Euros out of the public (some of us, believe it or not, work for a living) in order to give it to some other people who don't, in my mind, do anything worthwhile.
I think these laws are totally indefensible. It's simply not right to charge me for something which I may never use. If I buy CD's then I shouldn't be paying more for my computers because someone else downloads MP3s. It's being judged guilty and fined before any crime is committed. AAAARRRRRGHHHHH.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
First find a job here, and then your grandchildren may be elegible to become a citizen. In many towns, for each particular individual that wants to become a citizen a referendum is held.
The point is that they made their technology available for a wide range of uses, assuming that CDs would only be made in pressing plants. The advent of affordable CD-R technology means that you can copy commercially produced discs for next to nothing. Both of these companies have (had) music divisions. They invented this technology to capitalise on their own back catalogs.
If you're buying products that have the capability to manufacture CD-DA discs, then maybe you should pay a royalty.
Of course, we still have a duty to look after the welfare of beings considered irresponsible, as we decide it. This is why it's not okay to torture prisoners and so forth.
You have a very screwed up idea of what rights are.
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
I think of little else but you.
Basically the Vatican, the home of Catholicism, I believe it has it's own status as a principality within Rome. They even have their own domain name, .va
I'm not catholic if you're wondering, but I just know these things.
Perhaps the reason the CD was created in an open format is because technology rarely succeeds if it is not created for the masses. For example, the MiniDisk, also by Sony, is technically superior to the CD, but it is not an open format, it's proprietary to Sony. And it has failed. If the CD was not created in an open format, it would have faced the same difficulties. The CD wasn't GUARANTEED to succeed, just like BETA wasn't guaranteed to succeed, just like the MiniDisk isn't succeeding.
The proposal of article 6/3 from 05/19/1999 reads like this:
...
Technological measures shall be deemed effective where the access to or use of a protected work or other subject matter is controlled through application of an access code or any other type of protection process which achieves the protection objective in an operational and reliable manner with the authority of the rightholders. Such measures may include decryption, descrambling or other transformation of the work or other subject matter.
Interesting how they changed it, now that CSS proved to be not reliable
Just like the DMCA, the 'EU-DMCA' is a new copyright law that is required to comply with the WIPO Copyright Treaty and Performances and Phonograms Treaty
The latest available draft of the law (which has the short and wonderful name "Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society"), from 14 September 2000, is available here.
There have been a few changes to the draft, but I unfortunately don't have a complete list available. Official news about the law should be available here and here.
The draft is in many respects very similar to the DMCA, and has many of the same problems. Legal protection of TPMs that deny fair use, is computer code protected speech or illegal tool, legality of encryption research, etc.
Article 5
Exceptions and limitations
1. Temporary acts of reproduction referred to in Article 2, which are transient or incidental, which are an integral and essential part of a technological process whose sole purpose is to enable:
(a) a transmission in a network between third parties by an intermediary or
(b) a lawful use of a work or other subject-matter to be made, and which have no independent economic significance, shall be exempted from the reproduction right provided for in Article 2.
2. Member States may provide for exceptions or limitations to the reproduction right provided for in Article 2 in the following cases:
(a) in respect of reproductions on paper or any similar medium, effected by the use of any kind of photographic technique or by some other process having similar effects, with the exception of sheet music, provided that the rightholders receive fair compensation;
(b) in respect of reproductions on any medium made for the private use of a natural person and for non-commercial ends, on condition that the rightholders receive fair compensation which takes account of the application or non-application of technological measures referred to in Article 6 to the work or subject-matter concerned;
(c) in respect of specific acts of reproduction made by publicly accessible libraries, educational establishments or museums, or by archives, which are not for direct or indirect economic or commercial advantage;
(d) in respect of ephemeral recordings of works made by broadcasting organisations by means of their own facilities and for their own broadcasts; the preservation of these recordings in official archives may, on the ground of their exceptional documentary character, be permitted;
(e) in respect of reproductions of broadcasts made by social institutions pursuing non-commercial purposes, such as hospitals or prisons, on condition that the rightholders receive fair compensation.
3. Member States may provide for exceptions or limitations to the rights provided for in Articles 2
and 3 in the following cases:
(a) use for the sole purpose of illustration for teaching or scientific research, as long as, whenever possible, the source, including the author's name, is indicated and to the extent justified by the non-commercial purpose to be achieved;
(b) uses, for the benefit of people with a disability, which are directly related to the disability and of a non-commercial nature, to the extent required by the specific disability;
(c) reproduction by the press, communication to the public or making available of published articles on current economic, political or religious topics or of broadcast works or other subject-matter of the same character, in cases where such use is not expressly reserved, and as long as the source, including the author's name, is indicated, or use of works or other subject-matter in connection with the reporting of current events, to the extent justified by the informatory purpose and as long as, whenever possible the source, including the author's name, is indicated;
(d) quotations for purposes such as criticism or review, provided that they relate to a work or other subject-matter which has already been lawfully made available to the public, that, whenever possible, the source, including the author's name, is indicated, and that their use is in accordance with fair practice, and to the extent required by the specific purpose;
(e) use for the purposes of public security or to ensure the proper performance or reporting of administrative, parliamentary or judicial proceedings;
(f) use of political speeches as well as extracts of public lectures or similar works or subject-matter to the extent justified by the informatory purpose and provided that, whenever possible, the source, including the author's name, is indicated;
(g) use during religious celebrations or official celebrations organised by a public authority;
(h) use of works, such as works of architecture or sculpture, made to be located permanently in public places;
(i) incidental inclusion of a work or other subject-matter in other material;
(j) use for the purpose of advertising the public exhibition or sale of artistic works, to the extent necessary to promote the event;
(k) use for the purpose of caricature, parody or pastiche;
(l) use in connection with the demonstration or repair of equipment;
(m) use of an artistic work in the form of a building or a drawing or plan of a building for the purposes of reconstructing the building;
(n) use by communication or making available, for the purpose of research or private study, to individual members of the public by dedicated terminals on the premises of establishments referred to in paragraph 2(c) of works and other subject-matter not subject to purchase or licensing terms which are contained in their collections;
(o) use in certain other cases of minor importance where exceptions or limitations already exist under national law, provided that they only concern analogue uses and do not affect the free circulation of goods and services within the Community, without prejudice to the other exceptions and limitations contained in this Article.
4. Where the Member States may provide for an exception or limitation to the right of reproduction pursuant to paragraphs 2 and 3, they may provide similarly for an exception or limitation to the right of distribution as referred to in Article 4 to the extent justified by the purpose of the authorised act of reproduction.
5. The exceptions and limitations provided for in paragraphs 1, 2, 3 and 4 shall only be applied in certain special cases which do not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work or other subject-matter and do not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the rightholder.
Article 6
Obligations as to technological measures
1. Member States shall provide adequate legal protection against the circumvention of any effective technological measures, which the person concerned carries out in the knowledge, or with reasonable grounds to know, that he or she is pursuing that objective.
2. Member States shall provide adequate legal protection against the manufacture, import, distribution, sale, rental, advertisement for sale or rental, or possession for commercial purposes of devices, products or components or the provision of services which:
(a) are promoted, advertised or marketed for the purpose of circumvention of, or
(b) have only a limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent, or
(c) are primarily designed, produced, adapted or performed for the purpose of enabling or facilitating the circumvention of, any effective technological measures.
3. For the purposes of this Directive, the expression "technological measures" means any technology, device or component that, in the normal course of its operation, is designed to prevent or restrict acts, in respect of works or other subject-matter, which are not authorised by the rightholder of any copyright or any right related to copyright as provided for by law or the sui generis right provided for in Chapter III of Directive 96/9/EC. Technological measures shall be deemed "effective" where the use of a protected work or other subject-matter is controlled by the rightholders through application of an access control or protection process, such as encryption, scrambling or other transformation of the work or other subject-matter or a copy control mechanism, which achieves the protection objective.
4. Notwithstanding the legal protection provided for in paragraph 1, in the absence of voluntary measures taken by rightholders, including agreements between rightholders and other parties concerned, Member States shall take appropriate measures to ensure that rightholders make available to the beneficiary of an exception or limitation provided for in national law in accordance with Article 5(2)(a), (2)(c), (2)(d), (2)(e), (3)(a), (3)(b) or (3)(e) the means of benefiting from that exception or limitation, to the extent necessary to benefit from that exception or limitation and where that beneficiary has legal access to the protected work or subject-matter concerned.
A Member State may also take such measures in respect of a beneficiary of an exception or limitation provided for in accordance with Article 5(2)(b), unless reproduction for private use has already been made possible by rightholders to the extent necessary to benefit from the exception or limitation concerned and in accordance with the provisions of Article 5(2)(b) and (5), without preventing rightholders from adopting adequate measures regarding the number of reproductions in accordance with these provisions.
The technological measures applied voluntarily by rightholders, including those applied in implementation of voluntary agreements, and technological measures applied in implementation of the measures taken by Member States, shall enjoy the legal protection provided for in paragraph 1.
The provisions of the first and second subparagraphs shall not apply to works or other subject-matter made available to the public on agreed contractual terms in such a way that members of the public may access them from a place and at a time individually chosen by them.
When this Article is applied in the context of Directives 92/100/EEC and 96/9/EC, this paragraph shall apply mutatis mutandis.
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
That's a bunch of crap - there's absolutely no truth in that. I deal in media in both Canada and the US, and while it happens in Canada, it doesn't in the US. Check your facts before you spout off....
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
This was debunked decades ago. Search for "moral agents and moral patients".
Female Prison Rape in NY
"// this is the most hacked, evil, bastardized thing I've ever seen. kjb"
honestly, can you belive this?
should i pay movie comapnies when i buy a VCr in case I copy a tape from blockbuster, or record something off of HBO?
I've really had enouch with the record companies whining like wusses, their saales are higher than ever, and yet they still bitch and moan...jesus..
___ alwaysBETA.com - Hey, you've got nothing better to do.
Here in the US this already exists
This tax goes into a fund that is then distrbuted to copyright holders under the assumption that your purpose in buying blank media is to record and pirate copyrighted material.
In addition, there are now music CDR discs and "normal" CDR discs. The music discs carry an additional tax specifically for the RIAA. There is no functional difference, however between the two media (other than an identifier so consumer CDR decks can reject non-music media) ...
There IS a way around this though : find in your area where the pro audio people buy their media -- there is an exception made for the audio industry where a pro audio supply house is exhempt from this tax!
- Jonathan
Just as a comparison
In the global arms trade, there are various classifications made according to whether a certain piece of weaponry is "dual-use" i.e. whether it can be used for something other than killing. It in no way requires that the said piece of weaponry ever __is__ used for another purpose.
This affects bans, import restrictions etc.
mick
Agreed, just because you own the hardware doesn't mean you'll abuse it. Try to prove intent, that would be a nightmare.
Or we just distribute Linux over Freenet. An open distribution model should keep it out of the hands of taxmen entirely.
Even if your future comes about, how many of us buy our systems from Dell or Gateway now and tweak/upgrade them as we see fit? Did those systems come with Windows? Probably. Did that stop us from downloading Slackware and mothballing that Windows Licsence?
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
I am going to answer this despite it being a bit of a troll. Please think about what you said. Yes, Europe (Western?) could be described as somewhat socialist area (note small 's'), but what is wrong with that? I can think of any number of European companies that are very successful from a capitalist (note the small 'c') point of view. BP, Philips, Renault, Mercedes Benz, BMW, Credit Suisse, need I go on? The European idea (by this I mean Western European) of socialism is not the same as pre CIS Soviet Socialism (note capital 'S'). While capitalism is embraced, the idea of helping society as a whole is not lost (the word socialism is based on the word society). I do not personally have a problem with paying contributions to a national health service I currently have no need for. I may need it in the future and then someone else will be paying for it (but they may need it later and so on). While we are all individuals, we pay the state for oversight and some level of protection. By this I mean terrorism - we had our fair share of this in the UK - and paedophilia (fsckwits) etc. I would love to start a thread on this subject , it would be fun to see all the opposing points of view on offer. ta
The people must pay two-fold to have the features of their hardware reduced. They pay the R&D for the rights management and they pay taxes for "possible infringement" on a product that can't be used for infringement.
tis probably why I paid so much for that candle the other day. They must have figured I could also use it for... you know..
>The US won't be subject to this sort of lobbyist >terrorism, as the Supreme Court would eventually >strike this sort of thing down as taxation >without representation. ROFL! You don't actually believe that, do you? The government ends up with 47% of what you earn -- subtract the amount that comes out of your paycheck and think about where the rest of that money comes from. >...the real war to undermine the constitution >will take place over this taxation issue. Once >they've curcumvented that part of the >constitution, the damage to the dynamic on >capitol hill will be the foothold they need to >bring about whatever changes they desire. The *sole purpose* of taxation is to allow the politically-connected to bribe their friends (more handouts, lower taxes) and punish their enemies (higher taxes, inconvenient audits). This kind of thing will go away when we start respecting the ninth and tenth amendments again. Until then, exercise your first and second amendment rights and teach your children to do the same. jafager
Why all this stuff to force consumers to pay them for any equipment that might be used to copy music that's worth $20 a CD? Consumers have been using the same equipment to copy SOFTWARE worth hundreds to thousands of dollars! And for MUCH longer. If that didn't warrant taxes, why should stupid CDs?
---
keepin' it fresh!
.
Someone you trust is one of us.
We have a word for this, it is called pedantic. It was damn obvious what the guy meant. The UK has the world's second largest music industry (behind the US).
Yes, this is logical. if the authorities are saying "we know you're copying copywrited works - you have a computer so you MUST be guilty of this. so lets dispense with trials and such and just slap a fine on you. you know you're guilty - just pay the fine" then I guess since we've already been judged and are paying the fine, we at least owe it to ourselves to enjoy the fruits of our 'crimes'.
don't they see that this promotes breaking the laws?
its like a cop that stops you before you enter a very fast highway and says "we're collecting in advance for any speeding you're likely to do". who in their right mind would NOT speed after being charged for it? especially if your car is up to it.
...and the fight escalates further.
-snellac
The law operates with "copies for personal use", and that's what the fee is about. It doesn't allow you to make any number of copies.
I still think it's stupid.
Lars.
Best was acquired by Verio a few years ago. Thus, going to Best's home page now teleports you to Verio's home page. However, there are still a ton of subscribers' pages hosted on Best's servers, all logged in search engines as residing at http://www.best.com/. So they couldn't just kill the name.
The result is that Best subscribers up to the point they got acquired still exist on the net as coming from best.com, but it's really Verio now.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
...that I had to use glasses in order to read the small font of my Napster client.
Antti S. Brax - Old school - http://www.iki.fi/asb/
What I want to know is, if I do pay somone when I buy equipment that enables me to copy copyrighted Items, do I gain rights to do so?
Here in Switzerland, yes. Fair Use means that if your copying is among relatives ("friends & family") AND in very limited number, the copyright holder can't sue. This is according to legal usage, but is nowhere written in law (however, IANAL etc., please correct me if you know better). As such the swiss equivalent of the RIAA, the SUISA, uses every occasion it gets to dispute it.
This does not apply to commercial software, which is generally bound by an EULA (which have never really been tested in court however).
Sidenote: Switzerland is not part of the EU (nor the UN for that matter) so there may very well be drastic differences, I hear that the german situation is pretty similar.
I strongly believe that trying to be clever is detrimental to your health. -- Linus Torvalds
Since when did the opinions of this little twerp matter?
Have you heard the verbal diarrhoea that "Famous Seamus" (as he is known in the poetic community) spouts?
Great poet he might be but some of his ramblings of various important political subjects of the day are barely coherent
And this man wants to set the agenda in the feild of intellectual property?
Be afraid, be very afraid...
Ian
If a person could be held accountable for the potential they have of doing wrong, all babies would be thrown into the jail the second they were born.
You can't let this injustice prevail.
Put a sin tax on ties; they can be used to strangle poeple.
Put one on paper; you can use it to burn down buildings.
Outlaw letters; you can use them to make death threats to the President.
Like all of these things, computers are a tool; they have many uses. There's no way to determine *how* someone is going to use it, and therefore there's no way you can turn this approach into a fair piece of legislation; it assumes many things that it can't know.
Do we need a damn Digital Bill of Rights? Was the first one just not enough for them?
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
What's next, are they going to start demanding they be paid compensation for every medium sold which *can* copy their copyrighted music? This is absurd bullshit. What they want to do is stifle the selling of inventions that make their industry obsolete. More and more technologies to make data-copying easier are coming out, and they will either have to deal with it and develop new plans, or go broke. They get no pity from me.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
When you go to a shop and buy a pair of socks, then the price of these stinkers includes a part of the damage shoplifters have done to the store.
Except that shoplifting damages are actually measurable, and a store that doesn't take reasonable measures to prevent shoplifting will soon find itself out of business. These taxes are based on farcical "estimates" of what copying costs, based on guesses of how much copying there is and what seem to be extreme overestimates of how often the person would have bought a legal copy if they couldn't have gotten the illegal one.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Sounds to me like the European governments are trying to support clapped out and basically crap music, if you have decent bands then they should be capable of earning money through their own talent, not through arbitrary taxes.
I notice Britain doesn't support this notion, and ~ 25% of the worlds music comes from the UK, Ireland also don't support this tax and obviously they have their fare share of cultural/musical successes. The reason? The bands from these countries are popular and generate huge revenue for themselves along with sales, income taxes for the government.
This isn't the case in most of mainland Europe, hence the government feel the need to prop up 'less then successful' artists with punitive tax regimes on anything that is remotely capable of recording music, the percentage of PC's that do actually rip a CD off some obscure neo-nazi band that benefits from these royalties are probably 0.01% or lower.
To be blunt, Germany, France has crap music, how many German bands can you name off the top of your head for instance? Incidentally, 'Air' is about the only French I like and they wont market themselves in the US because market research indicated their 'Sexy Boy' tune as being 'gay', anyway they're not hugely popular... but their music rose up above the normal 'noise' (crap?) in France and made it across to the UK.
The British Phonographic Group (UK's version of RIAA) don't support taxes on recording devices or blank media because they feel it condones coping to a large degree, i.e. people would be more willing to copy a disc because they feel they don't owe the record companies anything because they've paid royalties on the CDR and disc.
Basically if I like some band, I'll choose to buy their album and support them by my own free will... however why should I pay a indiscriminate tax that goes to paying royalties to a bunch of bands I may never of heard of, let alone like. This assumes the cash even gets the bands after the record companies have taken their expenses out the pot.
It seems in the future you will have the choice of either living in U-FRE (United Federal Republic of Europe) or U-ASS (United American Socialist States), shoot me! (if only I could find a gun).
The real problem is professionals using CD pressing machinery to turn out thousands or millions of CD's. So if we must have a tax, place it on all CD pressing equipment, and the CD blanks (not to be confused here with blank CD/RW disks).
You assume that the professional pirates actually buy their own pressing equiptment. Far easier to simply hire the plant. In the "legitimates" use plants in places where labour is cheap then it just means that the people are cheaper to bribe.
Fair enough, but a responsible person should not be punished for the actions of an irresponsible person. You should only be taking away the rights of the irresponsible people. If I rob the local bank should my neighbors be put in jail? No, I should. This proposal is like adding a tax to ski masks because some people use them when robbing a bank. Or banning gloves because people like to use them when commiting crimes. If you want to say that it is just to punish or take away the rights of irresponsible people, you must also say that it is unjust to punish responsible people for things they dont do. Otherwise you are saying that everyone needs to be punished regardless of their actions, which is what the copyright societies are trying to do in this case.
That's the beauty of it. They're not recouping losses, they're taking in income.
It goes something like this:
1. You buy a hard drive, and pay a tax to the recording industry.
2. You burn a CD onto it.
3. They nail you for it and fine you.
Ahh, that's justice for you. It's probably inevitable that in the US, we'll soon be paying a similar tax to the RIAA (And hell, probably one to the MPAA too) for every storage media concievable.
So the question is, is anybody actually going to stand up to this nonsense?
No doubt my posts to /. will be read in Europe. Sooner or later I'll post something sufficiently pithy that some European will forward a copy.
Hence, I'm entitled to a share of these tax revenues. Where do I apply?
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
I wrote a fake news story about this some months ago, except I set it in the US. Seems like it's getting closer to reality every day.
Talk to your friends and relatives about this issue. Raise awareness. And make sure you vote, both at the polling place and the cash register.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Rock groups like Böhse Onkelz are skeptical about the value of computer fees, but they want them anyway.
Fuckers.
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
If we must have a tax on equipment, taxing blank CD-ROMS has flaws. If the CD did not burn properly and becomes a coaster, is the user guaranteed to receive a refund of the tax in some manner?
The real problems are not home users copying a CD for their own use. It's not someone copying a CD for a few friends. The real problem is professionals using CD pressing machinery to turn out thousands or millions of CD's. So if we must have a tax, place it on all CD pressing equipment, and the CD blanks (not to be confused here with blank CD/RW disks).
--
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
With all due respect, if someone can write a driver for a piece of hardware, any operating system would be viable. Give it a few weeks, someone will come up with a workaround. It may take some sort of undernet but stuff is around now, it would be so hard to put the cat back in the bag.
ta
If human beings have 'rights' then surely we are all to be incarcerated for the murder of countless billions of animals.
The cat only kills to keep itself alive.
We kill because we're so bored with our shitty lives we can't think of anything better to do.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
The US won't be subject to this sort of lobbyist terrorism, as the Supreme Court would eventually strike this sort of thing down as taxation without representation.
The scary thing is, the corporations have such a burning desire to overcome this 'problem' in the marketplace... their best interest (which a public company is legally obliged to pursue at every turn) is diametrically opposed to these basic precepts of the US Constitution. We are all very concerned with freedom of speech issues, but to me, it appears the real war to undermine the constitution will take place over this taxation issue. Once they've curcumvented that part of the constitution, the damage to the dynamic on capitol hill will be the foothold they need to bring about whatever changes they desire.
::I will not moderate my opinions for your stinking karma
What sort of socialism is this? It strikes me more as a tax on copying. What sort of socialism is that? Sounds more like a large corporation protecting its interests.
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Just doin' my job!
Which I believe works out to roughly an American penny LOL.. but that's for another thread... :)
While we're on the offtopic of Canadian currency, did anyone see the new horrific blue Canadian $10 bill? Looks like toilet paper you'd see in a really bad Vegas hotel. The first run had a typo: "In Flander's Fields the poppies blow." Looks like spell-checker-dependanitis is everywhere. Nobody nose how two proofread anymore.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
- Copying copyrighted works for non-personal purposes is illegal
- Copying for personal purposes is legal (i.e. fair use)
- Copyright holders shall be compensated even for fair-use copying
- To compensate the copyright holders, a per-use compensation for fair-use copying has so far not been technically feasible
- Thus, a "tax" on media and copying equipent is used to collect royalties (which are BTW paid to the artists and not the labels)
Does anyone know if in the US, copyright holders are compensated in any way for fair-use copying? I tend to think so...this kind of 'law' only serves to make people guilty of something they *might* *possibly* do, and are made to pay for it regardless.
Which begs the question: if I'm already paying for it regardless, why the hell shouldn't I copy something?
AC comments get piped to
I think it is a tax on recordable magnetic media (and its digital equivalents). I couldn't imagine even the European Commision (an unelected bunch of wankers) trying to outlaw pens etc.
As for regular consumers well again it is just a really bad assumption to make. I will grant that some people do use computers for illegal distribution and copying (though there is a major grey area), but that should not mean the rest of the legitimate users should be punished.
Sorry if this sounds so obvious, but it really is. I mean doesn't innocent until proven guilty mean anything to these people? And further more, where do they get off thinking that they have the power to ask the government to create such a tax? Oh yeah I forgot, they have lots of money and thats all that matters. I'm starting to lose faith in humanity (well government and business anyways) and yes at one time I did believe it could be better then this. I still think it can.
If this stuff pisses you off then make sure you let your representatives know and support groups like the EFF. Believe it or not, democracies are still the power of the people, sometimes it just takes a lot of us to make changes.
TraceProgram
To turn the perspective around a bit, we can see that it would be profitable just to have a copyright - despite whether the album has ever even sold a single copy. Which brings up an interesting question: how the hell do they propose to divy up the tax? Based on the number of albums sold? If they sold sooo many albums then they aren't really hurting, are they? But the corolary would be give all the tax-money to the copyright holders who never sold anything....whatever. Piss-poor logic if you ask me.
Now, applying this tenet to the music industry, we can see that in order to have the right to copy music, you must also be responsible with this ability.
I put it to you that the reason companies and governments are being forced into these drastic actions is because people, the geeks and high school students who use napster for one, are not responsible with the ability to copy music.
If you are not responsible, you do not have any rights, and any whining is pointless and idiotic.
Those who would copy music need to start being responsible.
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
I think of little else but you.
If governments charge an arbitrary tax on each system based on its ability to duplicate copyrighted works you may find a near future where linux is no longer free because it has been taxed to death. Meanwhile, a media secured system like Win2003 may not be. You may find yourself with two choices, a windows system that is completely media secure running on identity checking hard drives, network cards and the like which has no taxes or, a 'free' linux system with simple hardware and hundreds of dollars worth of taxes going straight to the corporations you are trying to avoid. In the end, it is the same as always, the only ones with any freedom are the ones with enough money to pay for it.
http://www2.europarl.eu.int/omk/OM-Europarl?PRO
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You are not "paying" for anything. It's almost like a tax -- a form of socialism if you will. The people who can influence the govnerment get to influence the laws and can therefore do what ever they want. (an off topic example is Marc Rich)
You could also think of the transaction like this and I know that the politics don't realy work this way but I'm simplifying them and the net effect is the same. Company A sells DVD movies. Company B sells technology to copy DVD movies. After company B's technology hits the market the sale of DVD movies goes down and company A is upset. So company A goes to company B and says "Hey, your product is hurting our revenue. We need more money. Could you pay us for our lost revenue and just pass that expense along to your consumers?" Company B says ok and now you are paying extra to the DVD/record/whatever company to get no extra privilges. Only YOU arnt paying them. The government (acting as a middle man) is taking your money and giving it to the company.
If you think about it, just about anything can be used to copy music. Let's take normal household items. A pen. A pen can be used to copy proprietory sheet music, which is illegal if they have there way. A refrigerator magnet. Floppy disks and harddisks are magnetic media. As soon as i can think of a way to make a paperclip a "piracy tool" I'm going to cancel my vacation to france and instead spend the time watching monty python and wishing all Europeans had as much common sense as they do.
I am !amused.
In a socialistic economy copywrite would be theft and punishable by death.
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
That's not to say that we don't pay a levy, of course. I think we pay around 5 cents for each blank CD-R, and significantly more for CD-Rs for consumer media.
On the other hand, it is legal in Canada to copy music you do not own, provided it is for your own use and you aren't going to sell it (or perhaps give it away).
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Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
people talk about buying their blank cd's from HK. Why bother..., just rent space somewhere without stupid taxes and keep your data there. As long as you have sufficient bandwidth.
Of course, this is no good for many legitamate uses of computer storeage. It would work fine for storing all your bootlegged mp3's though. Make it much easier to share too.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
Somebody told me that there is a tax on recordable CDs which goes directly to the recording companies simply because the cds can be used to copy their material. Can anyone confirm/refute this?
If this is true, obviously we would have a green light to copy, since we're already paying.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Because really, how much can they economically require you to add to the cost of a computer?
The money will be limited, and it'll go to their legal team. You will be paying for your own chains. That's my guess.
If they do theis, then it can be argued that if you pay this tax , then you should be able to copy anything because you have already paid for the right to copy it. Well not anything, just anything produced by someone who receives royalty from the program. Heck, we already have a tax on computing hardware, the Microtax. This one just allows us to get something we might actually want.
Personally, I have ripped all of my CDs b/c carrying around hundreds of cds is a real pain. My main problem is that music I listen to wouldn't get squat from this tax since I tend to buy music from small time bands that may have pressed 1000 copies.
You think the copyright holder gets any of that money??
./
ROFLOL!!!
It is the movie studios and record companies that get ALL the money. The tax isn't to help the artists whose work is being ripped off, it's only for the benefit of the big corporations who lobbied congress to pass that SHIT.
BTW- Have you noticed the price difference between generic CD-R's and the ones that are sold as 'best for audio'? The 'best for audio' CD-R's are the ones that have the tax on them.
But don't worry since you don't take the time to write your congressman you'll be paying the tax on all computer media soon... Crying here on linuxslutdot will not help. Your congressman has never even heard of
If you voted for Nader, THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!!
Twice as much? Time to give whatever you're smoking a break. =)
DAT machines don't cost $800 (and up) because of the tech inside of 'em. Sony convinced Congress to impose a 100% percent tax on them, to discourage people from buying them (and keeping perfect digital copying away from the masses).
One cannot be betrayed if one has no people.
Sorry... How is that a misprint? =)
In order to have rights, a creature must also be responsible
This is absolute crap. Rights are never "absolute" in the sense of one right always trumping another, but they ARE absolute in the sense that all humans retain these rights no matter how irresponsibly they behave. That's why they are call "rights," not "concessions."
The classic example from the past few years is the Oklahoma City bombers. Despite their actions, they still had the right to a fair trail (even if it required moving the trial hundreds of miles and killing the political future of several participants), the right to freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, and ultimately the right to a humane execution.
Taking on a more controversial issue, "gun rights" are a current hot topic but very, very few people dispute the concept of the right of individual self-defense. A person can walk nude through a neighborhood shouting that he's looking for (offensive racist epitath) (offensive sexist epitath) to (offensive sexual act) and he still has not only the right to be free from physical assault (meaning that the people who attack him will be charged with a crime), he has the right to defend himself with deadly force if necessary to save his own life. The fact that he was acting so irresponsibly that he would be facing serious prison time himself (for inciting a riot) doesn't diminish his right to defend himself one iota.
Now, applying this to the music industry, we see that the sale of an album to the consumer necessarily involves the right to listen to the music in the time and manner that the customer prefers. That is what customers expect and demand - every attempt to sell restricted media in exchange for a lower price has failed. (E.g., the unlamented "DivX" players.) Commercial use of the music clearly conflicts with the publisher's and artist's rights, but there is absolutely no justification for the music industry to claim they are "harmed" if I elect to transfer the content from a CD to cassette tape so I can listen to the song while commuting to work, or if I elect to transfer the content to an MP3 file that I can listen to with my laptop without risking damage to the original media.
Do some people abuse this technology? Of course. But that's completely irrelevant - the reason "rights" are so powerful is that the rights of a single person can (and often do) trump the desire of millions of other people for "convenience." These proposals would be convenient for the record industry, but they stomp all over the right of people such as myself to use CD burners and CD-R media to back up my computers and produce small-volume software releases without being forced to pay my hard-earned cash to a third party in exchange for absolutely nothing of value to myself. I would literally get more value from burning the cash in an ashtray - at least it would warm my house by a fraction of a degree!
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
The particular model i'm setting up with Silent Noise is we're basically a services organization for bands. They contract us to perform services such as CD distribution, promotion, etc... In turn, we get paid for our services out of the sales of CDs and related activities. Without ever dipping into the Band's royalties. So, bands on s/n will be getting their royalties from day one, instead of having to 'pay back'.
There are elements of the business model still being worked on. We'll really only work well with self produced bands (since we aren't acting as a loan organization, for financing recording), and we're bouncing around ideas of co-investing with the bands to cover spin up costs (e.g. getting that first run of CDs done, etc...). But in the end, the band still owns everything.
If you want more info on what Silent Noise is doing, and how we'll be working, feel free to email me at dgarcia@silentnoise.org. I'd be more than happy to answer questions about how we'll be working. Once the website is finished, all that information will be up there as well.
Cheers,
--Dg
Huh? A levy on computer or media prices, when it is only to offset increased permission to copy that is granted (e.g. Canada's blank audio media levy, which coincided with the granting of permission for Canadians to make copies for personal use of audio recordings - even those they don't own) seems like a pretty fair trade to me... How is this overregulation? Sure, sometimes the group benefitting from the increased freedoms and the group paying for them are disjoint... I agree that this difference should be minimised as much as possible. But, many (myself included) would argue that the opposite (overzealous intellectual property law) is more truly overregulation.
That's because it's Canadian Tire money. The Canada Mint has decided on a merger.
BTW, last time I checked Factory Direct on College St. in Toronto, you could get a spindle of 100 CD-R's for $40.
Personally, I don't give a rats ass about media levies. What is far more dangerous is all this talk about building hardware copy protection right into the burners and disk drives. Now that is frightening.
jc
"Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not." --George Bernard
Indeed. A collectivist ideology that partners closely with business (and often religous groups) is more correctly identified as facism, as practised in Italy (1923-1945) and Spain (1936? - 197-something).
I'll avoid making comments about the Bush dynasty...
...parents should be charged a tax on every one with a penis to offset the cost of compensating rape victims.
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-- SIGFPE
First of all, I think that's a very good (related) point about buying the right to copy it.
This trend strikes me as bizarre. We've seen stories about this before -- if you remember http://slashdot.org/yro/00/12/20/1337235.shtml, about paying the tax on recordable media in Canada, this is just a logical extension.
What's strange and scary is that I see no boundary in site. Since when do you have to pay to compensate for crimes you _might_ be able to commit using a technology? Floppy disks have been around for piracy for _years_. I was copying games on floppies using my disk drive on my Apple 2 in the early- to mid-80s. Same goes for audio tapes. What's new that suddently requires a tax? Not copyrights. Not digital media.
Did you realize that you can use just about anything to commit a crime? Soon, the recording industry will be taxing my kitchen knives since I might use them to stab somebody and deprive the industry of the income from the victim's potential future purchases. Scary.
This strikes me as almost a deranged form of insurance. Companies are trying to compensate for their percieved loss due to piracy by spreading the cost over the legitimate as well as illegitimate users. However, unlike life insurance, it's obligatory insurance against a _deliberate_, _illegal_ act. This is undoubtably a poor analogy, but when you buy a can of spraypaint, do you have to pay the insurance on all the buildings on your block because you might use it to tag someone's garage? Undoubtably this paragraph is a flawed argument, and someone will hopefully respond to this and point out what I'm missing -- please do.
However, I can't see where this is going to end, and I don't like where it looks like it's heading.
-Puk
This is rediculous, charging the companies that make hardware for *crimes* that the users commit. That'd be like a company suing slashdot for something I said (hmmm....)
But seriously, this is punishment for uncommited crimes. It's a punishment simply for the ability to commit a crime. That's like putting people who buy guns in jail, simply because the might shoot someone. Or for putting a person who can drive in jail because they could hit a pedestrian.
That this is even a possibility is rediculous, and another example of the music industry wanting money for everything. I can't wait untill I get sued because I was humming a song to which I don't have the cd.
Y'know that none of this tax will ever go to any recording artist. And if so, how will they determine who gets what?
/*drunk.. fix later*/
The cat only kills to keep itself alive Most cats don't kill to survive or keep alive... They do it while "playing" with the mice... catching it and set it free again because a mice is much more funny than a ball... sometimes they also kill birds or mices to show you how good they are, and then bring the mice to your bedroom at 6.00 AM as a present... I love cats
CD's here are cheap. we buy them in bulk (80) for under $1 CANADIAN a piece.
You americans are dumb sometimes. What's next? we all have Uber-Overclocked cpu's because we live in igloos and have no need for external cooling?
Moron
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
The fees levied in Canada for CD-R is only 5c per cd-r... it doesn't at all make them 'double' the price.
CD-R-audio, the ones you *require* to use blackbox cd audio recorders (like lots have those, right?..) have a larger tarrif, because they are supposdly obviously for audio use. But who cares about them.
corporations have become the new nobility. landed in IP, and carrying a Heavenly Mandate by virtue of their mere corporateness. You either go with the flow, as confuscious would have you, or make yourself miserable.
In other words: don't fight this. let it come to pass. once the corporations have assuaged their possesive greed, then we might pursue our cheap entertainment at leisure. IF you make for open opposition, you just make for sport, like a fox or pheasant.
a legal department has nothing better to do than attempt to exert dominance over percieved transgressoins of the consumer.
::I will not moderate my opinions for your stinking karma