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."

Comments

Copying is fine!

[OpperNerd]

So copying music to cdrw is fine, you have already payed.

Options

[storem]

There are few options in this scenario:

• 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!

Re:Options

[amorsen]

There is an EU directive forcing all EU members to implement some kind of levy (notice that this is /not/ a tax; taxes go to the government). So far Germany has chosen to keep theirs very low, so that is where I get my CD-R's. It is legal to import CD-R's for personal use to other member countries without paying any extra tax; EU guarantees the free movement of goods within Fortress Europa. There are many webbased shops in Germany that will gladly send all over the EU.

As long as just one member country maintains a low levy, it will be possible to get cheap CD-R's. If all of them raise the levy, we are screwed. It is highly likely that a similar levy will be introduced on hard drives and printers. DVD-R's are a sure target, there /will/ be a levy on them if there is not already one.

Only for cds you own

[fille]

The flemish article states that this extra tax is only a compensation for copying cds you own. So no, you can't copy a friends cd legally just because you paid the tax.

Some political parties even want an extra tax to compensate the industry for losses of illegal copying! Since the elections are sheduled for may 18th, you can punish those bastards right away! *grin*

Re:Only for cds you own

[den_erpel]

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.

Re:Only for cds you own

[dago]

Well, the point is that the copyright law I (was suppose to) studied at school stated that 'copies made for private use' are allowed.

And the problem is what is private use. And I can't find anything which state that copying something from kazaa is illegal. When napster was hot, IFPI menaced (email, letters) against people sharing stuff, not downloading it ... so ...

Now, for 'ethical' things, artists should be retributed for their work, of course. But as you stated, ther are a lot of problem with existing bussiness models ... talk to any small group about the SABAM.

So, that's currently a very blurry situation where eveything is evolving ... let's see what will come. The spirit proposition go into that sense : to find another solution (now, wether it's good or not...).

H'mm...

[codeButcher]

Time to make that career move to musician that I've always dreamt of... Seems that there's money to be made.

Not CDRW

[sconest]

The flemish article talks about CD-R not CD-RW.
It also says there was already a tax for audio CD-R that'll be increased from 12 eurocents to 23 eurocents.

Re:Catching up to America...

[Basje]

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.

Re:Big Deal

[Tralfamadorian]

'just bitching about taxes'

It's the justification for the tax that people don't like.

That's some kinda tax!

[Muad'Dave]

...the tax will add 12 euro cents (13 cents) per hour...

Good Lord!! 12 cents/hour adds up to 20.16/week! That's 150.27/month!

What's that? Oh, they mean 12 cents/hour of recordable time on the disk...nevermind.

Freedom Waffles

[n1ywb]

In other news, Americans are now referring to "Belgian waffles" as "freedom waffles".

Personally

[Snowspinner]

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.

Re:Personally

[Dyolf Knip]

Gee, I wish I could lower supplies, decrease the product value, increase prices, and generally piss off my customers and then get the government to augment my mysteriously reduced profit margin.