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Germany Mulls A Copyright Levy + VAT For PCs
Willard B. Trophy writes "How does a US$13 plus an extra 16% tax on computers sound? That's what intense lobbying by publishing industry groups has forced the German government to consider. UPI has the story."
ecks-tore-shun
-- Insert wisdom here:
Im so glad I live in a country where Im innocent until proven guilt by a court of my peers.
errr... Im sorry Mr Ashcroft, your right.. I was having evil thoughts, Im guilty of thought crime. Yes we are at war with the people from the east.
you americans are so pathetic while we here in Germany|Sweden|France|Belguim|Whatever we anjoy very many freedoms and the DMCA* has no powerful and everything is wonderful and blah blah blah.. [sic]
Mwahahahaha.
Now back to our regular schedule.
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* 'DMCA' used as a placeholder. Replace with favorite law, tax, levy, weird burden or policy that exists because of commercial pressures from Big Media
How can they one-up on us in passing laws more ridiculous than OURS? We pioneer making laws supressing free-speech and protecting the best of the interests of richies and we won't let this lag behind of other countries, EVER! I'm going to talk to my senator about this.
This kind of levy has been on any kind of recordable media for as long as I can think back (it's called The GEMA-Gebuehr). The sales price of all audio tapes, DAT tapes, CD-Rs, CD-RWs, etc. etc. includes this added price which is distributed among the recording industry. Note that the artists are actually not seeing a penny of this money.
So, by levying recordable CDs, they should actually already have their fee to level out the damage done by copying. Now they're proposing to add a second one to computers, cause they can't get their pockets full enough.
Some people have actually researched and found out that the decline in sales they're reporting is pretty much in harmony with the decline in new releases of music recordings. Surprised? I'm not.
A side note:
"Blank magnetic media, especially recordable CDs..."
That's a new one. The magnetic CD...
who needs a sig anyway?
Do you have to register your beer to prove you paid your sales tax on it?
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Perhaps there should be a 20% tax levied on all computers purchased without Windows. I suggest that this money goes straight to Microsoft, as everyone knows that anyone buying a computer without Windows is really in fact just pirating it.
Even illegat... uh, illeget... uh, pirot... uh, w4r3z3d copies of Office include a spell checker. Give it a try.
Yes. In Germany there are beer-detector-vans that drive about looking for anyone drinking unregistered beer. Violators are required to surrender all beer to the men in the vans, who then drink it.
In fact, the only thing I think they could use their tenuous logic to justify would be a hard drive. In that case, what if I build a computer with two drives?
Two hard drives? Of course you should get taxed twice- the only possible reason you'd need that much storage is to steal twice as much music!
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
You steal from goods from the store, the store puts up prices on the goods.
You steal from the Insurance company, the Insurance Company puts up insurance prices
You "steal" music from the Record Companies, the government puts up PC prices
The argument doesn't follow.