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Belgium To Tax Rewritable CDs
An anonymous reader writes "The Belgian federal government will quietly introduce a tax on rewritable CDs on May 1, the office of the country's minister of economy confirmed. Officially called a "compensation for personal use," the tax will add 12 euro cents (13 cents) per hour to the price of a CD-R. The proceeds are earmarked for composers, copyright holders and performers. Here is the scoop."
So copying music to cdrw is fine, you have already payed.
-- unix is for people without a social life - Patrick van Eijk
- Buy before May 1st (law is know since Jan 1st) : Who doesn't have a few hundred CD-R's at home?
- From anywhere in Belgium drive 100 miles and you find yourself in another country. : 5 miles in my case (France)
- Start using DVD-R's : 650MB is too small anyway to backup all my data
I'm not saying anyone should copy music. Buy the CD if you like it!StarTrek.org Free Webmail
well, next to the fact that a lot of ppl will go to France, Holland or Germany and the ever interesting Luxembourg for CDRs, a lot of ppl (including myself) will have no moral objections agains copying anymore. I guess I have bought my last CD spindle in Belgium (good move again from the government).
Heck, I hardly burn _any_ music CD (I'm not a music fan), and as a result I will have paid any music CD I would ever copy several times on taxes.
If they tax it, they should compensate, in this case, it's just like any other tax in this poorly gouverned country and another excuse to get money from the (already) overtaxed population.
I really hope this one backfires on the SABAM lobby.
Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis. You can't simply say, "Today I will be brilliant."
Maybe someone from Belgium could write a letter to the European Commission. Supporting commercial entities with tax money is illegal in the EU, and will lead to harsh penalties (Sabena anyone?).
Then make it public the government's illegal support of the recording industry is costing the community a lot of money.
There are elections in Belgium in 2 months. Make an issue of it.
the pun is mightier than the sword
'just bitching about taxes'
It's the justification for the tax that people don't like.
I think that taxing media is a perfectly reasonable way of handling things. I'd be perfectly happy to pay a CD, DVD, or even HD tax per gig in exchange for the right to use P2P networks, burn, swap, and pirate at will.
The problem is that this law doesn't actually do that. It just adds another penalty, rather than switching penalties from prosecution to a small tax.
But I still think this is probably the best way for the music industry to make up its lost profit.
Philip Sandifer's academic website