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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.""
As long as people consider it the right of Government to steal from others through compulsory taxation, this is the kind of thing we'll be seeing. The only difference between this and compulsorily-funded social welfare is that the money is going to private companies, rather than private individuals.
This will become law sooner or later. The media companies lobby politicians heavily and usually get what they want, particularly since users aren't typically as well organzied.
The truth be told, most users are rather ignorant of the politics involved in these areas; Slashdotters are on the oppostite end of the spectrum.
What I would like to see howerver is a repudiation of anti-copy tactics currently in place by media companies. If you're going to charge users a levy tax, we should be free to make copies. There shouldn't be any impediments in our way. This will require a few courageous politicians to step up and go against the grain.
Unfortunately for us, courageous and politician are two words that don't often go together.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
Listen, if you were making an absolute boat load of money off of other peoples' work, wouldn't you get upset if some newfangled Internet thing came along and disturbed your flow of income?
All this proves is that all of us, together, can help to stomp out the music executive thieves over time with continued support of decentralized pee two pee programs like KaZAA, Napster, and GNUtella.
The RIAA et al. can see ten years down the road and realize that things don't look good for them. Don't worry, we'll all get through this and then the music artists will finally get some penance for their years of hard work, singing, and dancing.
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
So, if they charge a levy, don't they end up legitimizing copying, and therefore making it legal for me to make copies with levied media?
Someone had to do it.
It's not fair because there are thousands of other legitimate uses for cd-r's. Copying pirated music doesn't account for anywhere near 100% of CD-R use.
This tax is like ben-gay saying they want to tax old people since 90% of the ben-gay that is stolen ends up on old people. Or something like that?
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty nor security
Maybe someone should tell them that CDR's are not only used for Music burning but for DATA backup!
And besides that, most people that download mp3s from the internet are not going to burn CDRs from them, they're going to keep it on their hard disks. Thats the whole point of mp3, play it on your PC instead.
Sign, when will these people get a clue?
Innocent until proven guilty on an individual basis. Anything less is a breach of human rights.
"There's nothing novel in this," Mr Lake said. "Forty-three countries including the US, Canada and most EU nations have enacted private copying royalty schemes."
...and knowing full well how myopic and sycophantic our current Australian goverment are, it will be implemented here as well.
Why the hell should I pay money to APRA when I burn copies of music that I wrote and produced?
My music is art for art's sake (I give my music away for free) and now I may have to give money to record companies, AND the artists whose music I despise the most... and don't bloody listen too!
http://jesus.everdense.com/
We might be able to get the entertainment industry off our backs if we just go ahead and give them some money every time anything happens that could possibly involve proprietary material. In Finland they want to collect royalties from daycare centers because workers sing songs to the kids. No problem. Just institute a daycare tax payable to the recording industry. Churchgoers singing hymn-ized pop songs during services? Fine, just fork over some of that collection plate to the RIAA. Cab drivers playing CDs with passengers present? Gas tax! People going to the bathroom during commercials? Water tax! [You do flush, don't you?] In fact, the simplest thing would be to collect an ongoing daily entertainment tax from everybody to cover any copyright infringement we might commit during ordinary activities. Then maybe the entertainment industry would finally ** SHUT THE FUCK UP ** and leave us alone.
P2P wasn't the music industries biggest problem. Do you think that this will really help solve the problems, are people going to buy more CDs because of this. So 5 - 10 cents per CD well a pack of 30 is at the most going to make them $3.00, while the music cd cost $10 - 20. I don't see how your going to recoupe yourself. Also the crap that the RIAA and other organizations like them is trying to pull isn't going to make people want to jump and buy a CD either.
Given the current Australian Govt's track record on bending human rights you expect anything less?
Speaking as ain Australian, I am willing to support the proposal on three conditions:
I've never copied a audio CD or DVD in my life. I have made compilation CDs for two schoolteachers based on CDs that they own for educational purposes (I believe this is legal), but I'm willing to try if this becomes law. I promise to make it fair by adding up the levies that I have paid on blank CDs and only pirating CDs worth up to the value of the levy. When I've effectively paid for a CD, I figure I deserve a copy of it.
What do you think, APRA?
Incidentally, I'm not quite sure how you calculate what is a fair levy to pay for losses which are, in the admission of the CEO of Screenrights, "incalculable". I'd like to see how they managed to work it out.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
In the U.S., naturally, we get no rights in return for the tariff [...]
So I wonder how long until someone hauled into court by the RIAA says:
"But, your Honor! I already PAID them their royalty when I bought the disk I downloaded the music onto. I paid [this amount] extra, according to federal law, and that money was given to them to pay for music I might copy onto that disk. I move to dismiss on the ground that they've already been paid any royalty they were due and thus have no case."
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It doesnt take much time to send off an email to your local federal representative about this otherwise they'll only hear APRA's side of the story.
They may donate $$$, but everybody has to vote.
The Australian had a negative editorial on this proposal, so not all of the media lobby is behind it.
---
Silence is consent.
Wise up and smell the coffee. Anyone who tries to argue that the MAJORITY of CD-Rs they use are for data backup are either telling less-than-half-truths, seriously non-informed about what you can put on a CD (can you say DivX?), or legitimate business users. Like always, it'll only be legitimate business users that get shafted, not Joe public.
Apparently, I'd be telling a "less-than-half-truth" if I told the truth. I go through dozens of cd's every month, and I'd say maybe 1 of them max is for burning mp3 files. The rest? Try these: backing up my personal files (including artwork, papers, programs, music recorded by myself), burning linux distros (many discs right there), and burning (freely downloadable) programs for my friends still on dial-up. I'm not saying that their are no people who really are as you describe them, but I think you are very wrong for making such sweeping generalizations.
I honestly don't see any strengths in these pro-taxation arguments anyways. For example, before I purchased an iPod, I carried around a cd player almost everywhere I went. There is no way that I would be carrying my original discs with me, as they get scratched, bent, warped, etc. So I'd make a backup of my cd, and carry that around instead. Why should the recording industry get more money off of that? It's plain theft! No one should be taxed for carrying around their music in a different format, be it carrying them on an iPod or burning a cd. On the other hand, if in the US they actually legalized copying audio due to the levy similar to Canada, it's a bit more justifiable than if they do it just to recover their "losses".
I am a doctor, operating a group practice. Each day, we burn 8 CDs and 2 DVDs - data backups of our health recordsand financial records. That is 2920 blank CDs and 730 DVDs a year, coasters not counted. I can account for every single medium I burn - I have to in fact, for tax deduction reasons.
I do not pirate copy CDs or DVDs (I do not even own a TV, and in our waiting room we play exclusively recordings from local artists), thus my patience with those shameless parasites (RIAA, APRA and the likes) has reached the limits.
What right do they have to abuse law abiding citizens and steal their money? Yes, steal, sine they would take my money against my will without giving anything in return.
Their wrists should be smacked forcefully and repeatedly, and they should be subjected to a class action for libel.