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German Court Sets Copyright Tax on New PCs
graemee pastes: "The District Court of Munich has ordered Fujitsu Siemens Computers to pay a copyright levy on new PCs. The landmark decision, announced on Thursday, ends a nearly two-year dispute between the largely Germany-based computer maker and the country's VG Wort rights society, which has sought compensation for digital copying. VG Wort had filed a suit against Germany's largest PC maker, Fujitsu Siemens, seeking 30 euro (US$41) for each new computer sold in the country. The court agreed to a 12 euro copyright levy."
VG Wort is not about music. VG Wort is responsible for collecting money on written documents / books and the rights associated with them. And they are right about wanting to get that levy on computers, because people who want to set up Xerox machines and use them commercialy have had to pay that levy since, eh, always (And thereby you have the right to copy material out of books without owning the books).
So yes, you have to pay the levy, but you are also allowed to make non-commercial copies of books / magazines etc because of that. Stop complaining.
First they tax CD-R(W) media by default because they assume you will use them for copyright-protected content and now they're also making you pay an additional tax on computers because they assume you will illegally be using copyright-protected content on your computer. They just assume mens rea without proving it on an individual basis. Guilty until proven otherwise is the premise Germanic law is based on. The German legal system as well as all other modern legal systems are based on Roman law, which is based on the premise that you are innocent until proven guilty. How this decision could have come about is totally beyond me. What's next? An additional tax on eyeglasses because you might use them to view copyright-protected content?!
Just as a reminder, the four levels of mens rea set forth in the MPC (Model Penal Code) are:
Do let me know when I'll be free to start smoking marijuana, won't you?
You were somewhat free to do so after they passed it. Except that the law required you have the marijuana to get the license and required a license to have the marijuana.
The Supreme Court didn't laugh and ruled it unconstitutional in 1969 on the grounds that it forced self-incrimination. In 1970, it was officially made illegal in the Controlled Substances Act.
In Germany dogs pay tax (true), and TV and Radio receivers pay tax also (16EUR/month). There is a tax of 16% in just about everything you buy, including most food items, and there is also a solidarity tax that goes to rebuild east Germany. If you don't ask for it, you will get a deduction called "church tax" from your paycheck, and at the end of the year there will be even more tax deductions.
Those who live for creating new taxes will succeed on collecting them, and their money will be one legally collected, but somehow not really deserved, which will benefit them on the short run only. The problem is obviously an old set of laws that were not created with the new Digital World in mind. Hopefully governments will call young people to revise outdated schemes making impossible for old structures to predate on people's resources in such ominous ways.
For the rest of us, there is a law that says: "hecha la ley, hecha la trampa" ("done the law, done the trap" or, there is always a way around a stupid law). Hack your system.
By the way, if I remember correctly, Canada for one applies the levy also to hard disks (I'm not sure Germany does this). So Canadians already pay the IP tax on their computers.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
In Canada, there has been a copyright tax on blank CDs and on MP3 players. Well the supreme court of Canada just ruled these to be unconstitutional in Canada. Though the court has yet to rule on remidies, it is widely expected that refunds of the levy should be forthcoming. Hence statements in the press of late, that if you should decide to buy a media player in Canada, keep your receipt.
The publishers, the composers and the lyricists get each their share directly.
From the horses mouth.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
This tax was already applied to CD/DVD-burners and blank media. ...
http://www.golem.de/0301/23447.html(german)
(google tranlation)
The GEMA is/was also trying to get the tax on printers, IIRC
Not a small part. It's about 40% of the retail price.
Teosto also collects over 1 euro for every DVD-+R(W) disc. As a result a pack of 50 no-brand discs costs 129 euros here versus 25 euros when ordered from Estonia INCLUDING shipping. However, importing CDs and DVDs without paying the levies is illegal and carries insane penalties (fines over 20 euros for a single disc and even jail time).
And no, you can't legally download or copy CDs nor DVDs even though you have to pay the levies - there's absolutely NO way for a non-corporation to avoid paying the levy other than ordering from abroad, but like I said before that's illegal.
The reason for this insanity is partly the fact that the majority of Finns continue to vote for the same celebrities year after year, even after they raised their own already mind-boggling salaries by 60% and lowered their retirement age to 45 years while the country was suffering from record-high unemployment and new lay-offs were announced every week.
As my personal opinion I think only those with higher education should be allowed to vote and all goverment officials should not be paid more than the average salary.
Capitalization is the difference between "Helping your uncle jack off a horse" and "Helping your uncle Jack off a horse"
I can add some perspective as someone who has received funds from VG Wort, because after all, this is all about people like me, right? The whole point is to protect the rights of copyright holders and ensure that they are adequately compensated for their work. So is it really worth it?
I co-authored some long-since-forgotten academic articles and a book back in my days as a graduate student. The articles appeared in some conference proceedings, and the book, as well as a couple of the articels, were published in the Lecture Notes series of the Springer Verlag. So my name got put on a list somewhere, and every year for about three or four years, a check from VG Wort came in the mail.
To put it briefly, I could have just as well done without it. I don't know how they determined how much money was dispersed to each individual, it was based on some formula that I never bothered to try to understand. At any rate, it was nothing to get rich on, maybe about a hundred marks or so if I remember correctly (this was back before the Euro). About enough to take a girl out on a nice dinner date, once a year. Which of course is nothing to sneeze at, especially if you're a student hustling to make ends meet and struggling for ways to impress a girl. But I could have just as well managed without it. (If she's worth it, you always find a way, you know; and one nice dinner in a year won't get you very far.)
More prolific authors get more money from VG Wort, since the money is based on how much you've published. But I doubt that the cash from VG Wort makes a whole lot of difference to people who make their living as authors; they have to get the vast part of their income by other means.
So if this is the benefit to society that is to be gained by making everyone pay an extra 12 Euros for each PC, I think it's obvious that we can just as well pass it up. Aside from all the philosophical debates about copyright law and whether it's fair and just to pay creators of content this way, the practical effects of the scheme are just not very significant. Why put this added burden on the buyers of PCs just so some student can take someone out once a year? It's better for everyone, economically and socially, to keep the prices of computer hardware down than to extend this meager benefit to copyright holders.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
> you may be able to argue that there is an implied agreement
No, there is no implied agreement. There is an explicit agreement on which this tax is based.
Article 53 defines what kind of copying is allowed. Article 54 says there should be a compensation for it.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
The VG Wort is also the reason why scanners, printers and copy machines often are slower in Germany than in the rest of the world.
The VG Wort gets a fee based on the throughput of these machines. To lower this fee, many devices sold in Germany are (or were?) sold with reduced speed.
Sometimes you could speed up peripherals by installing english drivers.
The grandparent was originally talking about Canada. Copying music isn't illegal in Canada. You may legally upload and download all the music you want because everyone pays the tax.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
Has the Canadian government ever paid even one cent in the collected copyright tax to the copyright owners?
The last I have heard it had been a couple of years and they hadn't paid anything to the copyright holders, yet.
And, for what it's worth, in the US, there are also taxes on both audio recording equipment and media. Check out Title 17, Chapter 10, Subsection C - Royalty Payments
The important legal difference is that private copies are legal in Germany. Again: In Germany, I can take a DVD, CD, video, whatever, and rip a copy for my own private use. Of course, if I start distributing that copy or screen it in a public place etc. they get to throw the book at me, and will do so very, very hard.
This Recht auf eine Privatkopie is something German consumer groups have been fighting tooth and nail to keep in he face of massive industry pressure to adopt an American-style "sorry sucker, you can't do jack" system. On the long run, this new ruling will actually work for the consumer, because it weaves the right to a private copy tighter into the greater legal fabric. Now, when I buy a computer, I have paid for that private copy, so industry can just go shove a bratwurst up their Po, with mustard. Or they can try to get the VG Wort system changed -- and good luck with that, because it touches just about every scrap of printed matter in Germany, from newspapers to pornographic novels.
All the talk here about "guilty until proven innocent" is pure crap by people who haven't taken the time to read the background kindly provided by the Germans on the list and should be modded down as ranting, if not German-bashing.
As somebody who has lived in Germany for a while let me say that German law for the most part is a very sane, logical, and balanced system that almost across the board is superior to the 18th Century money-comes-first atavism that the U.S. is forced to suffer through. The SCO case proved this quite well: German courts took about a week to bitch-slap Darl's minions back into the real world, while, what is it now, years? later IBM and RedHat are still forced to pour millions into legal fees.
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
As a footnote: the movie industry has used lots of pressure on shops and video stores to forbid the import of non-RC2-DVDs (you can't buy/rent them anywhere anymore). There are sometimes price differences that you could order an RC1-DVD-player from amazon.com with your RC1-DVDs and pay less than buying the RC2-DVDs in Germany.
Example: just waiting for the 4th season of Angel;
RC1: ~42 Euros from playusa.com(+possible customs and German VAT (16%))
RC2: 110-120(!) Euros, depending on the shops..
Stories about the exact same levy: Germany Mulls A Copyright Levy + VAT For PCs, Have You Paid Your Bertelsmann Tax Today?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
The last time I checked (a few months ago), there have been no monies paid out.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
"The average computer user don't donwload music."
I beg to differ. Now being a department lead for a stores software department gives me a vierw most opeople don't have... But the two questiosn I get asked the most are about software to copy music and software to copy movies...
In fact I get more pissed off people from having to say that it would be illegal to sell them software that could copy commercial DVD's than anything else bar none... With repsonses like "Why would I buy a DVD-burner except to copy DVD movies?" and "Your kidding right?" The average person doesn't give a rats ass about copyright and really misplace their anger about it... Rather than getting pissed at the MPAA or RIAA they get pissed at the computer manufacturers and salesmen for giving them a 'defective' PC... Really nice trick the MPAA and RIAA manage on that...
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
Atlas Shrugged, Chapter 3. George Orwell wrote 1984.
It isn't really FAIR-USE but legal private copying. When the law was made, it was pretty clear that there is no way to stop private copying without a police state and criminalizing a huge part of your citizens. Because of that, the lawmakers allowed private copying but also decided that copyright holders have get a compensation. (like this copyright levy) Imho a very good and fair idea.
Now there are just two basic problems with this system:
Jan