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.

Comments

Wow! What a scam!

[bluesangria]

So the copyright holder gets to sit back and be subsidized based on what people *might* copy?

Quick! Everybody release a copyrighted CD of themselves singing in the shower and ship it off to Europe!

I smell EASY MONEY!!

All this sort of stuff sucks, and here's why

[Kris_J]

Any tax-like levy that funnels money into private enterprise is open to abuse because private companies are not as accountable as government organisations. If the RIAA does stuff you don't like with your money you can't vote them out of office. Moreover, money is power. Creating legislation that hands power from the people to unaccountable private businesses is not in the interests of the community. Ever. All of these "people might copy stuff with this, so we bung on a levy" taxes should be torn down in short order.

(Meanwhile, order all your stuff from contries that don't do this.)

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Re:Rights and Responsibility.

[rgmoore]

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.

Are you calling me a criminal?

[Kris_J]

If I never copy a copyright song, why am I paying this tax?

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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The next target...

[leviramsey]

"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.

Here's Some Better Articles

[vergil]

I've been trolling around the web, looking for some substantive articles about the new European Copyright Directive. Here are some of the more informative ones:

"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

Corporate Rights and Responsibility.

[Syllepsis]

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.

hmm yes

[Dr. Awktagon]

"We think we should at least double our income," Mr. Depreter said.

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!

THESE ARTICLES ARE A PLAIN LIE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out these aricles on heise (german), which prove that the exact opposite is true!
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-14.0 2.01-00 4/
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/tig-06.02. 01-0 00/

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.

Re:THESE ARTICLES ARE A PLAIN LIE!

[Baki]

The working links are: here and here.

AC: You didn't read quite well.
Indeed, copying for private use remains legal. But alas, national governments do not have to take actions against copy protection mechanisms. The first article says that the parliament declined to force states to take such actions.

OTOH, at least circumvention of copyright protection mechanisms has not become illegal (as is the case in the DMCA), and states even may take actions against it, which is especially logical for states that already impose a tax on copying devices and blank media.

Also, states do not have to impose tax on copying devices and blank media.

Summary: It could have been worse (like the DMCA) and the practical consequences depends for a great deal on what the individual states will do. Probably there will be big differences, causing people to circumvent taxes etc by ordering media or equipment in another state. I think that in a few years time this will cause new discussions. Lets hope that in the meantime, politicians will become more experienced with this subject matter so that they will see how dangerous these developments are for consumer rights.

Ummm, are you sure about that?

[BeBoxer]

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.

What this does show...

[verbatim]

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?

The only thing this tax proves is that these people are greedy.
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a=b;a^2=ab;a^2-b^2=ab-b^2;(a-b)(a+b)=b(a-b);a+b=b; 2b=b;2=1

Music Companies

[B.D.Mills]

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.
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The 'EU-DMCA'

[LarsG]

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.

It's here in the US already

[jdeitch]

Here in the US this already exists ... if you buy any kind of blank recording media -- cassette or video tape, blank CDs, DAT tape, etc. -- you pay a tax on that media.

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

Where have I seen this before?

[selectspec]

here and here and here.

keepin' it fresh!

.

Switzerland...

[fReNeTiK]

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.

Moronic.

[pb]

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?
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Tax method is flawed

[B.D.Mills]

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).

--

Rights and Responsibility.

[Urban Existentialist]

I can understand this action, it stems from a fundamental philosophical principal. In order to have rights, a creature must also be responsible (this is why talk of animal rights is so much crap. If animals had rights, my cat would have to incarcerated for murdering mice).

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-

Right-wing crap

[coyote-san]

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!

I think that when babies are born...

[SIGFPE]

...parents should be charged a tax on every one with a penis to offset the cost of compensating rape victims.
--

What are you talking about?

[jonfromspace]

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