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

Over forty countries have tariffed CD blanks

[Anonymous Coward]

In the U.S., naturally, we get no rights in return for the tariff, although in some countries copying copyrighted works is permissible to some extent in exchange for the tariff (in Canada and Germany, for example, you are free to copy music that you are borrowing from a friend or library to a disc for personal use, but Napster-type MP3 serving is illegal). I'd bet the U.K. has this type of tariff, given that U.S. copyright laws were almost completely crafted to fall in line with the European laws concerning copyright (i.e.: Berne), which is amusing given the amount of fingerpointing going the other way for things like the DMCA.

Australia will almost definitely roll over to this type of law given their policies in the past, so anyone living there might want to push their representatives to at least give you something in return.