France to Impose $1/Gigabyte Hard-Drive Tax

SysKoll writes: "Some obscure commission in France has decided to slap a 0.50 euro per GB tax on all hard drive used in appliances that can record video or audio broadcasts. The official announcement will be made on June 27. The tax is on bulk HDs so consumers will end up paying twice as much, or about $1 per GByte. All these taxes will go to a state agency supposed to redistribute it to copyright holders, i.e., disc labels and TV networks. This is quite frightening because if this test balloon is left unopposed, the rest of the tax-hungry European countries will follow, and the RIAA and MPAA will have a real-life example to show to Washington lawmakers. Here are the details: This tax applies not only to TiVo-like video 'time-shifting' recorders, but also to all the upcoming digital set-up boxes and HDTV sets that include a hard drive. As for audio appliances, MP3 players with an embedded hard drive will also be taxed. The 0.50 euro tax is imposed on hard drives sold to audio and video manufacturers, so by the time the manufacturers and distribution channels have added their mark up, the price increase will easily be doubled to a cool dollar per gigabyte (1 EUR = 0.93 USD or so these days). The news article (in French) is here. Use Babelfish if vous ne parlez pas French. Note that the French abbrev for Gb is Go. Here is an excerpt: 'According to our information, for a decoder of 80 GB, the [proposed tax] goes from 15 to 20 euros. And for a hi-fi system with 40 GB, they would be spread out from 20 to 25 euros. "But one has to expect that for the consumer, these prices will double," warns Bernard Heger, representative of Simavelec (Trade union of industries of electronic audio-visual equipment).'"

Comments

Go?

[Otter]

Note that the French abbrev for Gb is Go.

Wondering about that? Me too. Apparently it stands for "gigaoctet". I guess "byte" is a non-native word so it had to be replaced with a certifiably French equivalent.

Reality check

[babbage]

Just to be sure, can someone -- preferably from or at least in France -- confirm this story? I'm just suspicious because this sounds a lot like a permutation of the urban legend that makes the rounds every now and then. You know the one -- the hysterical, shrieking paranoid email chain forward claiming...

{ $agency } is planning to put a tax on { rand qw/emails bandwidth memory discs CPU/ }, because the growth of the internet has prevented { $agency } from earning the same revenues that they used to get from { rand qw/postage phones tarriffs whatever/ }, so you all have to contact { $local_goverment_official } letting them know that this will bring an end to modern society as we've all come to love it.

So, like, I'm willing to accept that this time it might be real, but considering how many times this hoax has made the rounds, I want to hear it from a reliable source rather than some web site I -- as an American that doesn't typically prowl the contemporary French tech/political web sites -- am reluctant to trust without at least getting a second opinion.

Why I'm asking for a trustworthy second opinion on Slashdot, well, let's just dance around that one eh? :-)
(And while you're at it, pardon the pseudo-code, I'm just trying to get the idea across... :-)

Re:Sounds like a good idea

[Dyolf Knip]

As long as citizens are given immunity from copyright lawsuits using hard drives

Indeed. Such is the current situation up in Canada, I believe. But I have to wonder how long it would be before the -AA's start demanding you pay for your cake and for eating it as well.

Furthermore, Moore's Law dictates that the dollar value (or rather, Euro value) of this tax will very soon become wildly out of proportion to the cost of the drive itself. When terabyte drives reach the price of today's 100GB drives (4, _maybe_ 5 years?), this current tax would increase the cost of the drive by 900% ($1000 tax on a $125 drive). How often are they going to adjust it to reflect the decreased cost of media, if at all? Canada's CD-R tax is going up, despite the ever-decreasing price of the discs.

So while it might be convenient today, it certainly won't be tomorrow.

If true, interesting things will happen.

[jotaeleemeese]

French consumers with a clue (I hope there are many) will order their stuff from other EU countries. Now finally they have got an incentive to polish that English, German or Spanish.

Secondly, artists not belonging to the enterteinment cartels would be amazingly stupid if they don't claim their part of the share, which if it is denied, will give them a huge case to go to the European courts to fight this appaling piece of pseudo legislation.

Thirdly, French consumers should demand to store whatever they want in the medium of their choice. They will be paying blanket royalties, they should get blanket access.

To be honest I would not be against an scheeme like that: you pay for media, get taxed, the money goes to the artists (or their leeches, if the artists don't have guts to organize themselves I could not care less) and then you can put whatever you want in that media without ever been bothered by one of the cartels' lawyers.