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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.
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
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!
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.