Australian Gov't Lobbied To Implement Media Levies

TheScream writes "Screenrights has been activly promoting its proposal for a CD-R DVD-R levy (similar to that implemented in Canada, as previous reported on /.) with a 5 minute interview on popular Australian breakfast television show Today. News.com.au reports that Screenrights and APRA "...want a recording levy of between 3 per cent and 10 per cent..." and includes highly debateable mis-truths such as "Every kid does it, so let's facilitate some standards in the marketplace.""

Comments

With the huge size, and low cost of hard drive...

[saskboy]

I wonder when hard drives will be taxed to death by ignorant government goons?

Most serious pirates I know, don't even put their music on CDs, they just by another hard drive to back everything up.

So what should they do?

[mpawlo]

Levies are not good, but what should music companies aim to do? I just wrote a short piece on a related matter in light of the Verizon decision. Some of you might find it interesting.

"Greplaw's editors, although we are reporting indepently of each other, often tend to criticise the RIAA's efforts to stop illegal music trading online. One may still wonder what a proper action might be."
(---)
"The Internet is a new kid on the music industry's block. From the right holders' perspective the digital domain is often presented as a problem and not an opportunity. In this column, I have identified five possible ways for the music industry to treat this new kid on the block."

Read the entire article.

Regards,

Mikael

Re:With the huge size, and low cost of hard drive.

[Anonymous Coward]

The canadian tax included $21/gig on physically tiny hard drives that can be used in portable mp3 players

Re:Yeah, ok...

[OzPixel]

$10.99 ? The article is talking about Australia, new CDs are $30-$32 here. (Which is about $US 16-17, at the current exchange rate).

David.

Re:A different view

[Prof.Phreak]

So what happens to people who are paranoid about backing up THEIR OWN videos that they made with their own digital cams??? Or backing up their HUGE family images in raw tiff format???

Or backup your own development projects? (mine needs at least one backup every week, and the dir is 600MB)

Or download and burn legitimate video/music? Like tuff licensed under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0 (like these few wonderful lectures?)

I happen to do all those things, and I go through a TON of CDs (MP3s really do use an insigfinicant number of CDs - Not enough for them to charge me ANYTHING extra).

Are they providing me with a service for me to pay them? Since the way that I see it, if they will be charging me for "their music", I might as well burn it AND distribute it (since, hey, you're paying for it anyway - they already factored in the cost into the price of a CD).

AND according to their logic, I'm a software developer, and I'm sure some percentage of disks is used to distributed warez, so I might as well get some money for EVERY CD sold... (it might be *my* programs that are copied, so...) we have a 3% tax on music, then we'll have a 5% on Videos, then we'll have a 10% on software (with money going to our good friends in Redmond), and what's next??? Don't think that the 3% or whatever it is will be the end of it.

Re:Get Used to It

[Anonymous Coward]

This will become law sooner or later

Unfortunately for APRA, the High Court of Australia rejected a similar scheme in regard to cassettes a while back. APRA knows it, they are just trying it on, but it's unconstitutional.

Re:Refunds available on application?

[mabinogi]

Presumably you mean APRA, or possibly ARIA.

It's interesting actually, that it's APRA not ARIA that's behind this...because APRA, the Australian Performing Rights Association actually represents the artists, not the record companies...Any musician can register themselves with APRA, and get a cut of the royalties payed by venues for playing their music (providing, of course that your music is actually played some where). So there's a chance this levy may actually go to some artists, and not just into a record company's pockets.

ARIA, the Australian Recording Industry Association would be the Australian equivalent of the RIAA, and they're not mentioned anywhere in the article.

Don't complain! CALL your MP

[divereigh]

I can't believe the number of comments based around "this is going to happen, there's nothing we can do". Yes there is: CALL (don't fax, write or email) your MP (Member of Parliament). I just called mine and he wasn't aware of it, but was definately interested.

How do you get the number? First find out the name of your MP. Then put his/her name into the search engine here. Call the number displayed. Most likely you will get straight through - at least to a knowlegable side-kick.

Be brief, just let them know what's going on - send them a copy of the URL. Give them your name and address and ask for an update.

Hopefully we'll get some democracy going on this.

Re:legally copy?

[Losat]

if they charge you for cd's can you legally copy copyrighted stuff to them?
Actually, while the law doesn't say it is legal to copy copyrighted stuff, it does say that the copyright holders agree not to sue individuals who do it for personal use. (I think the holders agree to this by signing up for their share of the "pre-paid royalty.")
US Title 17 ... "1008. Prohibition on certain infringement actions No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings."

Re:Screw Angels

[valisk]

Amusingly enough, If the Capra family hadn't forgot to renew their copyright on 'It's a wonderful life' resulting in it being in the public domain, then you probably wouldn't have heard that line.