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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."
But computers do have legitimate uses other than music/movie/software piracy. Some people do actually buy legit software to run on their computers and do legit things on them such as writing letters, email, browsing the net.
I personally think that law is crap but thankfully I don't live in Germany.
From the article:
"Blank magnetic media, especially recordable CDs"
Yes, because CDs are magnetic...
But on a more serious note, they are calling everybody who buys a computer a theif. No questioning use. No checking if the computer will even be connected to the internet.
Everybody. Every man, woman and child. Every office assistant, every student.
Let's pretend that the computers sold are $700. That's not including the monitor (which is used to see what pirated files you want to download), printer (which is used to print labels for your pirated CDs), or any other peripherals (such as your speakers, used to play the latest pirated Rammestien singles). They get $13 right off the bat. Now, let's add another $112 for the 16%. That means that on a $700 computer, you have to pay an additional $130, not including peripherals / other sales taxes.
I work at a retail store. We sell about 6 computers per week. Multiply that by the amount of stores in Germany, and that number by $130.
And the recording industry needs how much more money to pay for the pirated CD sales losses?
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
It's a large step toward the end of free personal computing. You have to register your computer to pay this tax, right? If you don't pay your tax, you lose your computer or some other fine occurs. To make sure you paid your tax, the computer has to be identifiable. There you have it - no computing without a license. It comes in small steps. Evil, very evil. It's not about the money, it's about control and much larger money that will be lost by certian entrenched intrests when control is lost.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Are these fees going to be levied on a pre-manufactured machine as a whole? Or on just processors? Would you be able to circumvent this by building your own PC?
So, what makes the item a computer? If someone goes into a different store to buy each part and assembles a computer, which store do they get charged the extra $13 at? The one they bought the cpu at? Well, that could be an upgrade. So could a new motherboard. 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?
Aside from the logic problem of defining what part should be taxed as the computer, this ignores, for example, servers. Do people installing servers at an ISP get to ask for their $13 back for every box they build to serve, say, the billing system or internal database? Who tracks that?
Finally, I find the article's mention of precedent interesting. The article mentions that none of the money collected to date in Canada has yet to get to the members its supposed to go to.
While the article has a decided tilt and is certainly not unbiased reporting, I find the collective sum to be appalling, and hope the measure gets a sound thrashing, along with whoever proposed it.
These ideas obviously aren't new - I understand Canada has a "tax" on blank CDRs and other countries have similar laws in place or under consideration - although this German proposal is quite extreme.
However, you have to question the fundamental motivation of the various industry associations. Should their motivation be to maintain/replace revenue from new streams (the path they seem to have chosen), to generate new forms of revenue (online music sales being the most obvious), or to make sure they get what they are due from their current streams (antipiracy).
It seems the option they have taken is the one of least benefit to the users. As someone who pays for CDs, I am paying a "tax" to subsidise the pirates. And I get nothing new for the money - I am just unwillingly propping up their obsolete business model.
Seems poorly thought out to me.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
Hmmmm.... isn't something like a 16% VAT pretty much standard in Europe anyway? Surely it's the $13 that is the extra charge.
Might be time to start up the 'almost a computer shop' where you sell cases with a mobo, ram, hd, cd drive, nic etc but no CPU, claim it is modern sculpture. Then you set a street cart outside where you can by processors. So people come in, by the computer, err sorry sculpture and then pop out to the street card and buy the proc for the box!
Go out and get sailing!
$13 Bucks and legal napster. Fair deal.
Very good point, something many people don't realize. However, what they are posing is a double-whammy. First they jack up the price of movies, games, cds, etc... then they turn around and tax you. You don't pay an insurance tax when you buy your car just because not everyone has insurance, do you? That's essentially what is being proposed.
-Chris
With all the taxes and assorted fees being placed on CD-Rs and presumably DVD-R's, what are we supposed to use for legitimate backup purposes? Will it get to a point where normal people can't afford DVD-R's because the MPAA is afraid they will copy commercial DVD's? CD-R's and DVD-R's are the largest writeable media format for backup right now, but soon we won't be able to use them because of outrageous taxes. I was excited to hear that DVD writers would be available commercially but at this rate, normal folks won't be able to afford media due to taxes.
I have one more observation. Why don't they tax CD players, which are obviously necessary to listen to the pirated CDs. Computers have so many uses, yet CD players have only one. And what if I buy a Computer with NO CD-Rom drive? What then? How do I then pirate music?
So many questions, so little karma.
We all share a common enemy: the RIAA/MPAA consortium.
....etc etc.
:)
Every country is at risk from these pressure groups. What is worse, the government's urges make copyright laws consistent across continents threatens us, because they always move them upwards, dont they. EU is looking at the DMCA, the UK raised its copyright duration from 50 to 70 years to be consistent with europe,
My fear about this tax is the precedent: why not tax ISPs next. Everyone knows 73% of all network traffic is pirate music
The standard of proof is high (or why else did law enforcement work so hard to track him down), and the punishment is severe.
For-profit "pirates" rate this kind of treatment, and heavy P2P sharers may risk it too (the 0.2% that provides 80% of all files). (In fact, someone with ties to organized crime, fraud, or tax-evasion / money laundering will have many worse things facing him in court. The actual copyright violation is a minor concern for gangsters)
In this case, there is no proof at all, but at least the punishment is so light you can't really call it a "miscarriage of justice". However, these fees simply make some high-tech products seem slightly more expensive, and don't create any disincentive to violate copyrights. In fact, they may encourage it, "But I've already paid!"
Does anyone else see an opportunity to create an intermediate category of punishment for copyright violators? Not so large that it'll ruin the offender's life, and not so small that people can ignore it entirely. And certainly not unfairly assuming that 100% of the population is guilty.
How about something of the same magnitude as a traffic violation? Exceeding the speed limit isn't a real crime, as usually nobody was really hurt, so the punishment is light. Copyright violations don't necessarily hurt the "victim" either. So lets treat these things similarly.
Suppose a police department (I'm ignoring questions about whose jurisdiction applies) assigns an officer to fire up Kazaa, and then fire off "tickets" to the first pageful of people who appear to be sharing something obviously copyrighted to someone else. Fees starting in the $30-$60 range for first offenders.
A critical point is arbitration should be similar to traffic court too: If you bother to contest it, you probably get off. Allow anyone who claims the police were mistaken to get off with a warning (but in the future they might investigate closely, if he shows up in the list again). Additionally, the police can only send one citation at a time- the can't count multiple uploads on a single day as repeat offenses.
For this to be possible, of course, an internet service provider would need to give the cops a means of matching IP addresses to people's names. The DMCA is a representative law that would allow this (or a similar law or technical mechanism could).
Now, I don't approve of the DMCA, but given that it's a law already (and more like it are on the way), I would rather it be used to send out minor fees, than throw people in jail. From the looks of things, the current DMCA is being used by corporations to threaten individuals with big crimes. A government agency threatening people with minor fees has at least an ideal of fairness (plus bureaucratic apathy).
A couple of official police citations is all it would take to get parents to rein in their teens' file-sharing habits, and that'd stop 50% of copyright infringement right there.
The Ashcroft DOJ is moving towards more and bigger prosecutions of "cybercrime" like copyright violations. As a compromise, I offer the "traffic ticket" model. It sends a strong message that copyright infringment will not be tolerated, but individuals are protected from excessive or capricious punishment.
PS. The use of "schizophrenic" in my subject is incorrect psychological terminology. Multiple-Personality Syndrome is a different condition than schizophrenia.
Would legally deaf people have to pay this tax?
Why, since they can't pirate mp3s?
Well, it's six o'clock in the morning here in germany, so forgive me if there are any inaccuracies, but I gues I'm the only one still awake here, so I'll try to explain what this is about. (And note that I didn't read the article, my bed is waiting for me.) ...
This has nothing to with piracy. It's a way to compensate artists for private copying. (Which isn't piracy.) Well "Privatkopie" is a supeerset of fair use. You can make copies of your CDs for your car, stereo, whatever, but you have also the right to make copies of your CDs and give them to your friends. (I think it was up to 9 friends.)
You have the right to record radio shows, and copy them for your friends. You can mix your own CDs, and give them to your friends. Well can't think of any more examples.
This taxes are collected for blank media and devices to copy. So scanner, printer, cd-recorder
I'm sure that between themselves they could allocate the money on some mutually agreeable basis. So don't worry about that as a reason for not getting it in the first place.
It would be penalizing EVERYONE
There are lots of ways I pay for the cost of things that I don't use. I either accept the need for them as a general rule or they are so small as to not be worth my while to argue about them.
on the basis of the industry's absurd projections about how much piracy is costing them. They simply add up the retail price of every unauthorized copy and call that their "losses"
Is that the case. I've not seen how they get their 'loss' figure but if that is the way then I agree that it is absurd.
when the obvious fact of the matter is that people download 10-100 times more than they would actually have paid for hard copies of if they hadn't been able to download anything unauthorized.
Every time I read that point I get more confused as to what it actually means.
An alternative argument would be that record companies sell music and the downloaders are getting the benefit of the music without paying anything for it. But that opens up the old argument about the validity of copyright per se and we don't want to start that argument again.
Go to the local record shop with your recorder and instead of listeneing through the headphones jack you recorder in a see what the record store says. I don't think they will understand that you are "only interested in recording the cds you would not have bought anyway so whats the beef".
Plus, mp3 downloads have the mixed benefit of providing record albums with free marketing.
I agree that there are some cases where more cds are purchased by individuals after hearing downloads but as you said in respect of the record company claims about statistics I doubt that every downloader has increased their purchasing. I suspect on balance that there has been a drop in overall sales volume.
They actually PAY radio stations to play the songs (not the other way around) as a form of marketing, so how is this so bad?
They may pay the radio station but they can work out easily if that payment was worth it by seeing the increase in sales. I think if the recoed companies truly believed that downloading increased sales they might not be so upset. Any evidence that it is beneficial is anecdotal at best.
If people really like the album they will buy the whole thing instead of going to the trouble of collecting the low-quality songs individually on Kazaa or Bearshare.
Most rips are of good quality and perfectly useful for casual listening.
And the argument is usually that we sholudn't have to buy the whole cd just to get one or two songs. This of course avoids entirely the question of which songs on an album are the good ones. If its the single releases then they are already available as singles so there goes that argument.
And cds these days have so little on them that it is ridiculous. Is it true that the new Linkin Park cd produced at hugh expense and time has about 34 minutes of music on it.
Therefore, in effect, the industry's projected losses figures are inflated from their real world losses by a factor of at least 20.
As are you estimates of the benefits of file sharing.
The fact of the matter is that the reason the industry is only posting meager profits is because their expenses are unnecessarily through the roof. More than 75% of all of their revenue is spent on marketing, lobbying, PR, and other such bullshit that contributes nothing towards actually putting out a good product for a good price. Maybe the RIAA should try the latter for the change.
And this is the biggest joke of all. The reason why record companies spend so much on marketing is to get t
Not really. In germany once you have payed the CD levy you are entitled to copy the music left right and center around your household. So if this is linked to prohibition of extortion like CactusShield and such I see no reason why not. PCs are cheap nowdays anyway.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Unless someone tells the government that you can't make people pay twice for something. So when Germany outlaws DRM and CD copy protection, who will laugh then?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
These taxes make people feel right about downloading music. Why can't we download music music, we payed for it when we bought our computer?
;)
Since Germany is part of the EU, I think they can purchase computers all over europe without paying the extra tax (that is, is thay don't plan on downloading music with it
There are some musicians who may compose beautiful things in their studios, but can't play in front of a crowd to save their lives. Should they be denied compensation for the music?
They should be paid a fair price for the work they actually do. Touring is more likely to comprise a full time job than doing only studio recordings.
You know, Hitler and the Nazis instituted a VAT tax on printing presses....
Finkployd