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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.""
Right. Soon we'll be having taxes levied on shower cubicles in recompense for the copyright violations caused by showerees whistling Hit Me Baby One More Time as they clean themselves.
-Mark
Not to mention the FACT that this is a slap in the face of people that have programs THAT THAY MADE to back up not to mention small bisnesses that require acouting records backed up on to CD.
:)
Hell I wouldent be to surprosed if Micro$soft isnt suporting this as one of the main ways Linux gets spread is from mates with CDs and net conections (I know meany people that wouldn't have even SEEN Linux becuse thay dont have net conections - or god forbid 56k ones)
Hell even backing up CDs and Games is alowable by law(I FUCKING wish I backed up operation flashpoint CD got snaped by doggy DVD case (happend to a mate of mine too but he still was in warenty))
And like it will get to the same people whos information you coping - I dont want to give the RIAA (cuse thats who these people are acting on behalf of) if im backing up say CIV 3! Such a fucking arrogant statment there!
A halirios consicence will happen if these laws are enacted though - every atomican in the country will buy as meany 100cd silos as thay can
(unfoutunetly this will be interpreted as "lost earnings" by the RIAA assholes)
if they charge you for cd's can you legally copy copyrighted stuff to them?
anyone know if a charge like this exists in the uk?
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.
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.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
I'm on the official list of objectors about this particular levy law. Don't worry, we've got some pretty convincing evidence to show at the hearing that illustrates that the proposed levies are much too high and should be struck down like a red-headed stepchild.
It will be interesting to see the outcome. If it passes, the market for blank media and mp3 players will be hit hard.
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
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
I have the same opinion on marijuana. Every kid does it so lets facilitate some standrds in the marketplace. Time for legalization ands quality control. You know the makers of marijuana should levy a tax on the RIAA. Without drugs, there wouldn't be as much quality music in the world. I think Mrs. Rosen should write a fat check to Columbia right now.
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.
Sure, that sounds like a great idea. Swamp the law-abiding users with paperwork, so everyone will bend over and take it.
Of course, the cry that, "We offer a refund!" will be the sound byte, not the 12 page invasive rebate form.
I think I'll hire the people that sign up for Yahoo accounts all day to fill out thousands upon thousands of applications. I might even break even....
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?
They should give a percentage to go to free software development. I don't particularly like most open source software, but a lot of people use a lot of CD-Rs to burn Linux distros. It only seems fair that they get a chunk.
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
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
Pawlo.com
The canadian tax included $21/gig on physically tiny hard drives that can be used in portable mp3 players
A tax on cd-rs, they say, and piracy they condemn
To me, the whole thing seems rather odd
Do they think of those who have legit uses for them?
NO, those INSENSITIVE CLODS!!!!
Don't give me none of this "nature theme" business.
Just because there are some people that do it, does not mean that everyone else does. Punishing the whole for what only a portion of the people are (as you admit!) does not seem morally correct to me.
At work, we use blank CDs to fulfill orders from customers and mail their data to them. Why should our customers end up paying levies on media (like we're going to absorb the cost? HA!) to have their data delivered to them?
Granted, most of the CDs burned that I see my friends make are for copying software, not music, but you don't hear about the SPA asking for levies on blank CDs.
As for blank DVD's, the only thing that I do with those is convert my home movies to DVD for me to send to my family.
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.
$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.
What they really need to do is levy the AOL CDs that keep clogging my mailbox! Now that's a law I would get behind!
I watched some of the report on the today show this morning, they were spewing so much rubbish I had to turn it off. It was a one sided reported that basically said two things: 1. All kids are pirates 2. Everyone who buys CD-R, does so to pirate CDs An interesting note, is that they had already tried to get the levys on CD-R through the court system but it was thrown out because it was a tax.
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.
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
> Well, the sudden surge of traffic to .au will probably cause the satellites to melt.
It's mostly cables under the Pacific, actually. If it suddenly seems a little hotter than usual in Hawaii, blame the slashdotting of Australia.
David.
"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.
Smoke home-grown and give an American kid a mercedes and a machine gun!
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
I actually watched the broadcast, and it was disgusting.
The shmuck claimed that "every family" does it, as does "every kid". When asked how much it would be, he said they have no idea yet, but wants it to be worked out in consultation. Obviously thats a lie, as other posts point out they want anywhere from 3-10%.
He pointed out that this levy would make it OK, but not for those who do wholesale copying.
What was worse is the show didn't have anyone else on there representing the other view.
My question is: If a levy is set, does this mean I am free to download any mp3 I wish? Could I borrow all of my friends CDs and have hundreds of thousands of mp3s legally? Cause if it does, bring it on! I will never buy a CD again!
At the moment I don't mp3 illegally (IE I buy my own CDs and mp3 them, but not others), but if it was made legal through the levy, I would certainly burn hundreds of CDs from friends.
Cut the marketing bullshit. They're lies. Not all the kids on the entire Australian continent burn ill-gotten music to CD or DVD. If I can find one kid who burns perfectly legal CDs all the time (hey, there goes one now), I've proven this statement false.
Call a spade a spade and call bullshit when you see it from now on. This site doesn't need to put a spin on such blatantly false crap.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
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.
Over the years, I have purchased and used 7 CD burners. I have burned at least 2000 CDs. Of those, about 10 were an original music project I was working on (nothing the music industry had any rights to), about 5 were audio compilation cds made from mp3s I legitatmately bought the original CD (content the music industry does have the right to) and the rest of the batch (at least 1985 CDs) were various data backups, file transfers, etc.
If, the record industry got 3 cents for each CD (that is their minimum here, they'd rather have the 10c) I would (and actually have, thanks to stupid US law) payed the music industry $60. I have not copied any music I have not paid for, bet yet I am taxed the cost of 150-200 more blank media. If it was a 10cent tax, then I would have spent $200.....that is about how much I have spent on my entire music collection (the vast majority of my collection is gifts). $200 is a pretty hefty chuck of money to have paid for the priveledge of transfering my own content to my own media for my own purposes, especially when that $200 is being given to a massive corporation that had absolutely nothing to do with how that media was used, and had lost absolutely nothing in sales to my actions.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
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.
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This has been before the supreme court before, and it was knocked back becasue the court said that it is in affect adding a TAX on media for a party other than the government.
As such this will NEVER get passed into law now, as it would take a serious cahnge in what is now precedent.
lounge around on the blue couch
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
I shower as a result of singing Britney, not while I shower.
I feel so dirty when I sing cruddy pop songs to myself
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.
Why not sell CD-RWs with a song pre-recorded on them (this should work in Canada too.)
.sig
I can see three advantages;
1. You beat the tax (I'm assuming they include an exemption for pre-recorded media like Canada and virtually everybody else.)
2. You become a music producer, so you can collect the tax that your competitors pay.
3. You probably have the number one song on the charts, since people will buy far more than
one copy of a CD-RW- basically free advertising.
You could probably sell the title track for money too -
Coke would pay to have the number one song in Australia be a commercial for their product,
especially if they got to pick the name of that song.
-- this is not a
If this goes before the government for real, there's a few points I'll be talking to my MP about:
1) The money better go to the artists, not the record companies. After all, what expenses do the record companies have for stolen music? (Well, maybe advertising)
2) The money had better go to the artists in a proportional matter. So some mechanism for working out which artists get copied the most better be decided on. Don't look at what's selling well; arguably, that's what's being copied the least.
3) I should be able to take a CD that hasn't been used for copying music, and get a refund on the levy. Not sure how this would work for CDRWs, but that's not my problem.
4) Fair use rights should be encoded explicitly in law. They are there in Australia's copyright legisilation implicitly (and have been upheld in court), but let's end the legal challenges, okay?
5) Copy-protected CDs should be illegal; after all, by paying the levy on the media, I've explicitly paid for the right to copy music on to it, haven't I?
6) I should have the right to return a CD that I don't like to the distributor (ideally, to the store), and get a full refund on the price.
7) People who use that lame excuse that CD sales were down last year should be shot unless they immediately point out that so were new titles and that sales/title were actually up in 2002, same as every year in the last 10.
"Software is too expensive to build cheaply"
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.
Burried deep inside the paper is the following in respect to users engaging in "format shifting" (ie: copying their legally-purchased CDs to tape or MP3):
(the emphasis is mine).
It should be noted that there is no fair use exclusion for NZers - any copying of music, even just backing up your CDs or creating a compliation disk from legally-purchased disks is illegal.
The hinted-at levy in the position paper would be solely to reimburse the music industry for the losses they would be incurring when users ripped their own CDs to MP3 for use on their own MP3 players or PCs.
Besides which, it leaves consumers asking: in these days of copy-protected CDs, how can the industry even think of collecting a levy for something that they've made it impossible to do?
And you think the Canadians and Aussies have got it tough?
Everytime a bell rings... the Riaa gets .50 cents
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".
Imposing the levy on the CDRs and any other form of media storage device to cause sales to drop significantly. This of course should lead to losses in sales and profits for these companies. Now, it would definately be poetic if these companies sue the Record industries back for losses in sales caused by the levies and the damage to their business, in exactly the same manner in which the Record companies sued the P2P software companies to shut them down.
My 2 cents.
Paladiamors
If levies are implemented (or the proposed ISP fees are universally implemented), how many CD's do I need to rip until I have got my moneys worth?
I don't copy/download music, but if I am paying for it anyway..........
I'd agree to the levy.
Obviously, the same bill should make it perfectly legal to copy any copyrighted CD or DVD music made by recipients of the levy, because after all they're receiving dues for it, aren't they?
... NOT.
In Denmark we have had an empty media tax for a few years now.
On December 22nd the Danish Parliament ratified a law to make it illegal to make backup copies of digital media (such as CDs) if the media has any copy protection. This means that putting a green marker to a copy protected CD is illegal. - And this has happened even though a different law states that everybody is entitled to make backup copies of CDs.
Government thinking, an oxymoron if I ever heard one.
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.