Slashdot Mirror
Dutch Pass iPod Tax
An anonymous reader writes "The Register is reporting that in a few short months a proposal to tax all MP3 players in the Netherlands will become law. The levy taxes 3.28 euros ($4.30 US) for every gigabyte of capacity. This means a 60GB iPod Photo will be hit for an additional 196 euros ($258), all of it going to the record industry's copyright collection agencies. And they call file sharers thieves?"
Well I'm an American that went to grad school in the Netherlands and in my personal opinion it seems that much is changing in the Netherlands for the worse. There is a lot of pressure being put on their government by the United States, which just adds to the current tensions.
A lot of the "problems" the United States has the Netherlands shares, like immigration (the Turkish, etc.). I absolutely loved the two years I spent there and only hope that they don't buy into the US corporate way of messing stuff up.
This iPod tax seems completely absurd and I hope that this proposal is just that, a proposal and nothing more. Just my two euros...
I hate to pay a "steal" tax. But if I'd pay 258$ steal tax, I'd "steal"....
The answer IS 42.
This means a 60GB iPod Photo will be hit for an additional 196 euros ($258), all of it going to the record industry's copyright collection agencies
I think SOMEONE didn't quite think this through. I don't doubt that consumers will simply revolt, either running across the border to purchase their electronics, or just not buying them, until some idiot politicians receive enough letters and this whole measure is canned.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
196 euro extra?! Does it even cost that much?
I'd just buy a MP3 player that has low onboard memory, but that takes removable memory. Voila! Less than 5 bucks o' tax, infinite memory.
"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
Apple stores in Germany will probably welcome this law ;-)
wheres the details? sounds ridiculous and I wager it's not true.
because it takes like 2 and half hours from e.g. Amsterdam to drive to the next big german city, where a lot of people will be more than happy to sell mp3 players to angry dutch customers.
and: people will just buy them by mail order, because there is no customs check inside the EU.
IAAL
While this seems extravagent (it is), places like The Netherlands and Sweden, etc. have excellent copyright and IP laws. Its widely known that taxes in those countries are very high, but unlike some nations (cough), you see that cash put to work. It would be interesting to see how they handle iPods bought in Germany or France, and brought over.
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandersnatch.
This is even more reason for an MP3 player to come with a drive bay. You buy it without a drive, then add your own. Makes upgrades a snap, and has no Dutch taxes!
I thought it was a joke. Adding $258 to the cost of a 60gb Ipod? Thats not a tax, that is the stupidest thing I've ever heard!
Like the article says, what happens when we get 100gb, or 200gb ipods (it'll happen eventually), then we're talking about not just doubling the cost of an Ipod but tripling it.
Don't they realise this amazingly exorbitant taxation will only lead to illegal importing? And I thought the U.S. Government had lost its way....
There's a similar levy on blank media, in my native Denmark.
But, I honestly don't see how they can justify having a levy on media that can be used for assumed copyright infringement, and at the same time seek redress for copyright infringement - isn't the levy supposed to be a sort of "shared" payment for the copyright infringement that occurs?
I mean, they can't have both. Either they have un-levied media, and sue copyright infringers. Or the other way around. Having both is getting paid twice for the same supposed loss.
And that looks like fraud to me.
- Peter Ravn Rasmussen
The concept of taxing something to offset the effects of illegal activity. I mean, it hurts those who use it for legit purposes. But I guess this is what happens when the special interest groups and the lobbyists get their way. Perhaps we need a higher rate of legislators per number of persons, which would allow grassroot campaigning.
1) Charge a ridiculous tax on iPods
2) Profit!
Wait a second, something's missing here.
It is very kind of the Dutch parliment to create this new business opportunity for the electronics retailers of Germany and Belgium. Let us hope that other EU member states approach this issue with a less corrupt attitude. Meanwhile, I'm going to invest in electronics outlets in Antwerp and Aachen.
Another good reason to use OGG... *ducks*
Doesn't that seem like too much money? I mean, wont people simply stop buying mp3 players in the Netherlands?
.:Semper Absurda:.
Anyway, who is to say they won't turn around and start using this as a precedent?
After all, people use their ISP connections to "steal" their music, buy hard drives to store their "stolen" music, buy CPUs to run media player applications to listen to their "stolen" music.... etc
Where will they draw the line? When will they stop?
Besides, why do they just tax the iPod only? What about other mp3 players? What about cell phones with mp3 capabilities? Heck, what about pocket PCs and other PDAs even?
I think Apple's popularity has came back to bite Apple in their gonads...
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
www.FreeIpodLevyFeeRefunds.com
(patent pending)
From the article: The idea of all levy based legislation is that some form of copyright collections agency collects tax by imposing a surcharge at the point of sale for any storage devices that could possibly be used to store pirated works.
Does this mean you can "pirate" all you want as you've already paid? So long as the booty passes through an MP3 player first, of course...
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
not 'pass' tax. Hasn't been passed yet.
Fortunately, if you had RTFA, you would have seen that this law is not yet passed. It's only a proposal, and therefore likely to be the starting point of negotiations.
This is really great news!
It's always great to see how the recording industry penalizes a system that allows people to legally listen to music.
I'm sure that the record industry's copyright collection agencies will hand the money gathered through this tax to needy musicians.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for musicians being able to make a living, but penalizing a system that encourages people to buy music online is just plain stupid.
So much for iPod sales in the Netherlands. Any European country that levies a punitive tax on a luxury item will drive purchasers to the neighboring countries. Not only will the Netherlands lose the "stealing" tax, they will also lose whatever sales tax they would have collected. Dumb move.
mmmmmmmm.....iPot.....
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Not really. That's what's called a government.
Taxation without representation? Hmm... Maybe there'll be a Rotterdam iPod party. I'd buy that for a dollar.
... how can people get fooled n-times. First you pay tax when buying DRM protected music, that can't be played on your player (remember the BBC story about britons being frustrated with DRM?), then you pay tax *just in case* the music you store on your player is stolen. I mean WT*!! Isn't it enough to have to pay a very similar tax for all storage devices?
the iPod Shuffle should be getting pretty popular from now on, huh?
Not that I like this tax, but a few Euros is a lot better than a few hundred, right?
But why has all this money go to the corporate major label? (Socan in Canadan, RIAA and so on) Same with CD-R, DVD-R....
The answer IS 42.
You still can buy great hashish, marijuana, pre-rolled joints and space cookies in every other coffee shop in Amsterdam. And if you ask the right people, they'll point you in the direction of some dark alley where you can get an untaxed ipod. Just don't let the DEA catch you.
As opposed to a few long months?
From the article...
The idea of all levy based legislation is that some form of copyright collections agency collects tax by imposing a surcharge at the point of sale for any storage devices that could possibly be used to store pirated works.
Already in Germany there is a levy on PC hard drives, that will soon become larger than the entire PC industry revenue if it is left in place. Within two years, as disk drive sizes move to terabyte class on notebooks, and petabyte levels on home DVRs, the tax will come to far outweigh not just the cost of the drive, but the cost of the device. Under this Netherlands law, if it were extended to the PC, the cost of 1,000 GB would be 3,280 ($4,300) and yet drives of this size will be delivered by 2007.
It's a tax on ALL mp3 players
"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
Yes. For example, in italy there is a ridiculously high tax on recordable media ("to compensate for piracy"). Result: everyone buys blank CDs and DVDs by mail from other EU countries.
Sell the damn things without drives and have people buy the drives as DRIVES - separately. How asinine this is - especially for a Euro country!
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Maybe?
Timo's Audio Software http://www.esseraudio.com
Ok so if I pay this stupid tax will it be legal to download any kind of mp3 music from anywhere into the player? After all I *have* paid the industry what they wanted now.
- boycott
- lost next elections for whichever party drafted (& approved such idiotic law
- Netherlanders who want to purchase an MP3 player being helped by people outside of their country, gray import etc.
any other measures?The recording association there does...
> Stichting Thuiskopie foundation
Sounds like an NGO/lobby group: i.e. an organisation nothing to the goverment is suggesting maybe a tax...
(probably funded by the music industry to spread FUD)
I wonder if this tax will be extended to PDA and pocket pc's as well since a lot of people use those for mp3 playing.
Anyways, this just give me another reason to dislike the Dutch. j/k
However, similar regulations already exist for blank CD-ROMs, tapes, and photocopiers, because it is assumed that these are (partly) used for the copying of copyrighted material.
Such copying is legally allowed, the levy exists as a compensation for the copyright holders.
I think it is possible that a levy on MP3 players will come into existence but at much lower sums than now proposed.
Can anybody say "Cross border shopping?"
It's time to buy shares in Luxemburger mp3-player retailers.
After all, they can be used to play MP3s. And the Ipod Photo is also more than a normal MP3 player. Where do you put the limit between the 2?
Timo's Audio Software http://www.esseraudio.com
Apple could sell iPods there with removable hard drives. Buy an iPod with 0 memory and then purchase a mini HDD as a separate item. Combine the two and evade the tax.
Yes, I understand that the tax applies to every mp3 player. Everyone could do the same thing.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Wouldn't they have to tax computer hard drives too? because they could be used to store and play and also PIRATE mp3s, something ipod's cannot do. So if that works out the way it does, then wouldn't computer hard drives need to be taxed... Based on my calculations, a 200 gig hd would have a tax of 656 ($860), many times over the price of the hard drive itself...
buy one off ebay from the states.
The only solutions are to reduce the power of the government, and/or to move these powers to more regional authorities (thus increasing the cost require to influence the entire nation).
What if i make a song that nobody listens to, can i claim some of that tax back claiming that its because it has been stolen. i think its an excuse for the industry to make free money and continue making shit music that isnt worth people spending money on, i think its just a vicious circle.
I hardly listen to music any more, and hope it will be the same for eveyone else eventually. Instead of spending money on CDs why not spend money watching a local band at a local pub or wherever.
That Vynil Industry lobby sure is sneaky, ain't it? BRILLIANT!
If my entire use of my audio equipment is to record and playback music that I have written, performed, and recorded, is it fair to ask me to pay this tax?
It's not a hypothetical question. I use my musical gear exclusively for music that I write, perform and record myself.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Since this isn't an iPod specific law, why is this in the Apple section?
Keep passing taxes like that Republicans will be winning elections in Europe!
This is my sig.
GAWDDAMN! Despite Emperor Bush and his jack booted thugs, I've just now decided not to defect to the Netherlands. Sheesh, C'mon folks, since when did music become the new gold? What's next, humming taxes and some deviant of the broken face recognition tech we have in the US but that seeks out folks humming catchy tunes? Yeh, that's it. Will I get locked in the elevator at my office building in downtown LA until I pony up for humming that catchy tune I just heard? This is ridiculous, no, RECALCULOUS! And that's a $5 word ;-)
New York: Shady character standing in front of the Apple Store selling weed
Amsterdam: Shady character standing in front of the coffee shop selling imported iPods
Hear recorded Slashdot headlines on your phone! New service beta testing. Just call (248) 434-5508
Tax every removable media: SD, cF, MS...
et voila ! more tax money.
--- Back to the trees, back to the trees !
Taxes like these are such a bad idea. Even if they come with the benifit of avoiding avoiding copyright infringment.
The tax by itself assumes guild of copyright infringment for anyone who owns and mp3 player. Not to mention the fact that one could be using an Ipod as a removable hard drive.
Even if this was a situation like canada. The ones who would really loose out are the small indie labels and self signed artists. Like they would get any of the money out of the deal.
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
But does it mean they can freely share files between iPod owners now?
bash$
pass v.tr
...
10. To discharge (body waste, for example); void.
It makes a bit more sense if you read it ("Dutch discharge body waste in the form of iPod tax") that way.
Actually this 'bill' is being initiated by the Foundation for the Home Copy and has not been passed yet. The weird thing is that there are a couple of those 'foundations' which are supposed to be not for profit. If you startup a new restaurant of something along the lines you will get about (no joke) 20 of such foundations asking for money.
BUT it is very difficult to find out were the money they make is going to.
- In Memoriam: Jeroen de Bruin (1972-2004), bye bro
Whoever dreamt this up must have clearly been hitting the crack pipe at the time. This kind of tax is only going to increase piracy..
So what if someone is going to buy an iPod photo and legitimately purchase music from the iTunes store, and only copy CD's they own? Why the hell are they getting stung $200+ worth of tax for a crime they didn't commit?! This will only serve to increase piracy quite honestly.
And I know the dutch certainly seem to love their iPods. I recently came back from a short break in Amsterdam (where I bought a 512MB Shuffle to compliment my 3G 20GB iPod) and was amazed at just many Amsterdam residents were gliding around on their bikes with a pair of white iPod earphones in their ears. Seriously, they were everywhere!
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
Well, they "tried" to get a "per gigabyte" dollar value, but the CPCC got turned-down.
Personally, if it passed, I'd just buy in the US and bring it into Canada (Canada Customs does NOT apply levies to purchases, just taxes). This sort of thing makes Canadian Retailers scream bloody murder.
But the fact remains, the music industry can't have it both ways. If I pay the "MP3 player/media tax", then I have no moral issue at all with downloading or sharing files. If they want to revoke the levy, then I won't download. Simple as that.
If they try and increase the levy AND ban file sharing, I'll buy my media/MP3 players out of the country AND still share files.
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
It's not a revolt until they start dumping mp3 players into the ocean at some port.
I pay taxes on gasoline because I use gasoline. If I would have to pay taxes on "stealing" music without actually stealing music, I would start.
"Tread softly because you tread on my dreams"
We have the same thing in belgium. Although it isn't as outrages a tax as proposed/passed in Holland, we pay an extra tax on blank media, hard disks,... and there's even a proposal to extend this to computers in general (adding a hefty 40 euro's per pc).
So basically, all Belgians that own a computer or digital technology in general are considered to be pirates.
Then again, the actual control/exploitation is delegated to a NGO called SABAM. A financial investigation several weeks ago revealed that there's possible fraud. The investigation happened after a claim from a memberartist that hadn't seen ANY financial compensation in years. Another belgian company called URADEX seems to be following the same strategy. It seems that these kind of organisations are quite greedy in collecting the moneys, but are very reluctant into actual passing the moneys to the actual artists. Moreover, they keep the money on several high interest bank accounts making a lot of profit. Which is, to say the least, a very discutable practice.
I'm telling you guys, we should encourage artists all together to sue these companies right into hell.
I'm from the Netherlands, and I can tell you first of all, that The Register is a bit slow when it comes to news reporting.. and second of all, yes, this is only an idea this organisation called "Stichting Thuiskopie" (Home-copy Organisation) had. They are a tool of the justice dept. in our government.
:) Not every silly idea actually makes it to become law.
Seriously guys, don't expect this to really happen, it's impossible
For more info (in dutch), this is a letter
There's dude, like, dude, TONS of germans, belgians and french, dude, hopping over the border to get hold of the more, like, exquisit Dutch agricultural products. And dude, I'm not talking, like fucking tulips here, right? So like, I guess the dudes just got themselves a whole new currency to pay with.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
You are right, the Dutch article/news mentioned iPod in particular because it is the predominant player in the market.
But the news mentioned further that it goes for all players, and then it might also get applied to:
USB keys, hard disk drives, cellular phones.
But it is plain idiocy. I *CAN* use an USB key for storing illegal content, yes. But what about my recovery tools for systems I do administering for?
I swear, where the photo industry has seen new opportunities now that digital photography is a hard reality the music industry is still a bunch of clueless morons living in the early 1920's.
Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai
Well, this is old news in Holland (see article on tweakers.net, English version available too).
For now it is a prooposal only, but the current Dutch government is pretty good in 'silently' upgrading such things to law.....
In fact, the proposal is even worse than mentioned in the article.
The tax is not only intended for iPods/MP3 players, but for ANY device capable of storing copyrighted content for later playback.
That includes, computers, HD and DVD video recorders, even spare HD's, SD and Comapct Flash memory, etc.
All major computer manufacturers have already written letters to the Dutch prime-minister stating, that if this insanity becomes law, they will be forced to withdraw from the Dutch market.
Several members of the Dutch parliament (at least from the opposition parties) have spoken out their concern's about this too.
So far the government has made no attempt to actually get this "law" throught the legislation process.
I just hope they never will get around to it.
Current Dutch political climate is such that no Parliament member will vote against party policy. The parties of the ruling coalition will never vote against the government so any proposal is bound to be accepted.
The state is looking for ways to get extra income, as the current expenses can't be covered with all the current taxes.
When you sell the stuff with drive bayus the disks will be taxed for the same amount per GB. As the 200 GB disks are now less then €100 this would add €656 to the drive...
You'd think they wouldn't be that stupid, but they already added €1,= tax to a €0.25 DVD+R disc... (resulting in massive imports of DVD+R spindles)
I for one would be happy to see the climate change from making bigger mistates than the americans to making their own mistakes and making up their own mind instead of following the rest of the world wherever the US leads them.
Ah well, if you don't like it here, leave. While looking at the way things are going around here (Yeah, dunglish) it even might come to that.
Just my €0.02 (with &euro2.00 tax)
... Wenn ist das Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer? Ja!... Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
Am I wrong in thinking the following?
Guy puts a song on his server, gets hauled into court and is ordered to pay the RIAA (or the equivalent in whatever country we are talking about this week) for the lost revenue ie "damages"
However, said country has a law in place that assumes all MP3 player owners will steal music and preemptively compensates the industry when the user buys the player. How then could the industry argue that people who share music are depriving them of revenue - they've already had it!
Within two years, as disk drive sizes move to terabyte class on notebooks, and petabyte levels on home DVRs, the tax will come to far outweigh not just the cost of the drive, but the cost of the device.
You're telling me that in two years, we'll have 1000GB laptop drives (~10x up) and 1000000GB desktop drives (~2000x up)? Man, Moore must have been a pessimist. Particularly since HDDs have been slowing down *greatly*. Since the first 3x83=250GB HDDs came in 2003, the GB/platter count has been inching along (as far as computers are concerned, at least) with Seagate leading the pack with 133GB/platter. The only real "growth" has been from pushing the number of platters back up to 5 (The IBM GXP75 series had 5*15GB), leading to 5*100GB HDDs. Even hitting 1TB in 2007 seems optimistic just about now. I'd guess more like 800GB, unless there's a "TB race" on the way there was a "GHz race".
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
that your computer with a 200+ Gig HD can play mp3s too.
you've spend more than 25.000 euros om music, the extra 200 euros won't matter all that much. Seems to me that the people who need 60 gb for 'their' music and whine about 200 euros, are a bunch of freeloaders.
That said I really hate those kinds of taxes (I live in the Netherlands). For every (DV/C)D+-R(W) I buy, I have to pay taxes that go directly to the BUMA/STEMRA (dutch RIAA equivalent) even if I never use those blancs for music. They are almost forcing me to download music from the internet to get my moneys worth.
First of all, this law is proposed and not yet accepted. My guess is that we'll eventually get this tax on MP3 players, but in a much lower rate then the mentioned 200 euro.
Secondly, I wanto to point to the 'advantage' of this tax (we already have a similar tax on CD and DVD media): namely that we are allowed to download, copy and distribute (non-commercial) music and movies.
that the 'industry', be it movie, music or whatever, is generally composed (forgive the pun) by manager types that couldn't play a note, write a line or film a scene if their lives depended on it. All these bloody hangers-on that milk the half-a-dozen creatives (who I suspect if you explained things to them wouldn't mind their material being shared fairly) in their 'stables' are simply too annoying for words.
;)
Furthermore, these kind of managerial/legal landgrab exercises make me sooo mad, mainly because it has nothing to do with protecting the 'good of Art' and everything with cynical attempts at boosting shareholder value.
Unfortunatly the only way to really take a stand against this cr*p seems to be by not buying the products involved - both content and hardware. But who's got the patience and backbone to be consistent about _that_?
Prolly only RMS
- It took western civilisation 2000 years to ensure popular literacy, and now we work with icon driven GUI's. Go figure.
Presumably the tarriff is meant to pay for the revenues lost due to uncontrolled copying.
It stands to reason then, that in the Netherlands, that if you own an iPod you can copy music off the internet to your hearts content because you've already "paid" for your crime in advance.
Still, that is a rather steep compulsory license.
The distance from any place in Netherlands to nearest border is less than what people in northern Sweden would consider to travel to visit a favorite pub on a saturday evning. So I imagine that most people down there will buy their ipod from abroad.
In that respect the law seam incredibly stupid, but look at it this way. By granting a law like this, they can show the record industry that they act forcefully to prevent piracy. That may make it easier to prevent even more stupid suggestions from reccord industry lobbyists.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
1) Charge a ridiculous tax on iPods
2) Profit!
Wait a second, something's missing here.
Yeah, you're missing step 3:
3) ???
which represents the confusion and consternation of the general populace
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
As I (in the Netherlands) still have the right to make a copy for personal use, this is a ridiculous proposal. I have NO illegal mp3's. All the music on my player, I have already paid for.
There are allready taxes (small, but they are there anyway) on CDR(W) tapes etc... for the same purpose. People should start demanding those taxes back when they can prove that they burned data/audio on it they have either already paid for or does not require any payments (backups, linux distro etc). Better yet... remove these taxes altogether... as they are demonstrating the hideous way the world is turning into : a 'firewall' concept. Deny everyone, not only the 'bad' people, but also the good), and let the good people demand access, then grant them access.
People are not computers. Rules (Laws) should be trying to prevent or punnish bad things, not to hinder good things.
Put extra money into catching the bad guys, but don't get to much in the way of the good guys.
I don't have anything to hide, but that doesn't mean you can invade my privacy.
I don't have illegal music, so don't tax me like I do.
Excuse me. I have to go and buy a fishing net.
Note that a bare hard drive appears to not be exempt, since TFA mentions "storage devices" not "players". So even an iPod that only plays DRMed files would get taxed unless the HD was locked so it wouldn't work outside of the iPod environment, even if reformatted.
What next? Customs officers demanding piles-o-cash because you've got an iPod on your belt when you arrive for your week's holiday?
Never mind Spamassassin. When's Spammerassassin coming out?
More and more I am beginning to wonder why do I have to live this messed up county called The Netherlands. I used to be proud of being a Dutchy, but since the new government, I'm beginning to shame myself more and more for those moronic politicians.
That's true. It is well worth the £squillions of tax money that the uk pays the EU for the privilege of belonging to a common market. Now I can buy drugs from amsterdam and guns from all over the EU. Oh, wait. No I can't. The dutch could easily ban the importation of ipods in the same way.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Good grief, if they applied that to regular hard drives, you'd be paying $160 for the drive and over $1000 in music taxes for a 250GB drive! Drives are up to 500GB now, and are expected to be up to a TB in 2006, that would be a $4000 tax!
While they're at it, why don't they just tack on a 10 cent tax per sheet of blank paper...maybe the book industry should claim that the reason sales of books are down is because of Internet file sharing.
Disclaimer: I have only done an A-Level in Economics. Now the EU is a common market, right? How does this work out then? Don't they all have to levy this tax? Can you just pop into a neighbouring country and pick up an iPod?
R.
Buy this 16Mb CF MP3 player and get a free 4Gb CF hard disk!
If I use a lossless codec that I need more space per song. I have to pay more per song, unfair I tells ya!
Oh, BTW: Keep a careful eye on the CPCC - they try and raise the levy rates every year to try and slip one past Canadian consumers.
Music industry thievery must end!
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
They can have both now. This way the 'normal' copier at home (renting/borrowing a dvd and copying it) pays for the copyright infringement. However, when someone copies DVDs and sells them, they will arrest and fine him. (&euro100 per movie wirc)
The general idea is to tax the smalltime infringers and prosecute the people making money with copying.
It's just the same with the softdrug users. It's illegal to prduce it, buy it as coffeeshop owner, but it's legal to sell it (including VAT) for the shop owner.
Hey, we're dutchies, if it can be taxed, it's legal, if not, it's illegal. (providing it isn't to bad for you) :-)
Remember, we were the people that sold in a war with the spannish cannons to the spannish to buy better cannons ourselves.
... Wenn ist das Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer? Ja!... Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
Guess it's time to start marketing OGG players?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
You have an 80GB drive Sir, which you can rewrite x times - so that means that you can possibly download, store and play y songs during the lifetime of your drive. With an average tax of 1 euro per song, that'll be a nice tax, won't it?
Seriously, isn't it about time the music industry changed it's tune? All this DRM stuff, taxes and other hassles only makes me want to buy LESS music and download MORE.
As long as they ensure that consumers have less rights than pirates (their term), they'll continue driving their customers away.
http://jcsnippets.atspace.com/ - a collection of Java & C# snippets
If you think an iPod tax is outrageous, since three years now France has levied a tax of around $1.50 on every blank CD sold. This money goes a the "copyright protection" organisation as well. I can see a music tax being levied where the music is, as most probably 99% of iPod users use their players for music - but CD's? Are there any other abusive laws like this in any other countries? This tax is still in effect here, but as usual, after an inital bout of protest, it's faded mumble-grumble from our minds...
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
So, I bought my car in the Netherlands. They even have higher taxes on those, than here in Austria.
I paid my tax in austria and came away with a saving of somewhere in the 3000-4000 EUR (4000+ US$).
Since we can trade goods without problems and import tax, you can buy something for the price including tax in germany and ship it to the netherlands.
Friends of mine do that with blank CD's and DVD's thru ebay all the time. We also have a lot of tax on those, but when you already paid your tax in germany, you don't have to do so in Austria again.
It all just boils down to knowing what to buy where and how.
Course, Apple will loose a bit of sales in the Netherlands, but maybe that will leave us with "upgradeable" ipods with exchangable HD's? Sometimes even big cooperations get creative, if they fear they will sell less.
-- MicAttAck
Religon is an insult to human dignity.
Wow, they're shitting on the concept of the free market, since there's no way to distribute the money to the artists based on how many people acquire and/or listen to their music, and at the same time they're shitting on socialist/communist ideals by taking money from citizens and handing it to private businesses!
Of course what they would really do if they pass this law is ensure Dutch retailers won'tbe able to sell mp3 players, since anyone who wants one will hop over the border to buy it.
-- Sigs are for losers
To quote from the link: "Het bestuur van de SONT heeft nog geen besluit genomen over de hoogte van het tarief; de onderhandelingen zijn gaande. Berichten die suggereren dat er al enige duidelijkheid is over de hoogte van een tarief zijn onjuist.", which translates as, "The management of the SONT has not decided yet on the height of the tax; that is still being negotiated. Any statements that suggest that there is any clarity on the height of the tax are false." This message is from April 2005.
The tax on blank DVDs is something like a couple of cents. I suspect that the tax on storage space in MP3-players will probably not be much higher.
it was in the netherlands that i purchased the cheapest and coolest mp3 player i've ever seen.
..
5 euro's.
it didn't come with storage; it uses SD cards. so no tax applicable here.. because i just add my own 1gig SD cards, and away we go
all this means is, in the netherlands, mp3 playing capability won't be paired with storage.. it'll be a user-add.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
And you're missing step 4.
4) REVOLUTION!
Burn Baby, Burn! ---MP3s!
"Oh drat these computers, they're so naughty and so complex, I could pinch them." --Marvin the Martian
This logic is great. It works well for struggling third-world African nations, so it should work well in Europe and the US as well! If that's your solution to a proposed surcharge on iPods in the Netherlands, I'd love to see what your solution to a genuine concern would be.
I also enjoy how you can't say copying other's copy-righted works without paying is "stealing" without 5 or 6 angry replies, but putting a fully-disclosed surcharge on a luxury item is an obvious example of thievery and stealing. Not to say I support the surcharge, but this manipulation of language to suit the group-view strikes me as a bit ugly.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
The single market in the European Union means that people living in the Netherlands can just buy their iPods, blank CD-Rs etc from a country like the UK, which doesn't impose taxes like this. Which is one reason why I bet the proposal will end up either being dropped, or else watered down sufficiently to create less of an incentive for shopping around.
My worry is that the UK will end up being forced to adopt similar levies in the name of "harmonisation", which would be ruinously expensive for those of us who only buy blank CD-Rs to use for data rather than music.
Similar law exists in Latvia. We pay tax for every CD-R, HDD or USB storage. Our neighbors (Estonia and Lithuania) have no such tax. If someone needs large amount of CD-R it's better to go to Lithuania and buy media there.
This law is really stupid because I have to pay them even if I use media to store my own files (I am amateur photographer). Large enterprises and state authorities have to pay tax even if they use HDDs for their databases.
Please note that this law hasn't been passed yet, and, I can quite garuantee you guys this, will never be passed. The people that are proposing this law are a bunch of music industry funded lobbyists, not a political party. Our politicians are stupid, but not _that_ stupid :)
While the proposal is real, the register's claim it will be Eur 3.28 per gigabyte is not correct. The website of the Stichting Thuiskopie explicitly states (loosely translated): "Reports stating there is any agreement at all about the level of taxation are incorrect".
He who laughs last, thinks slowest.
ANY general-purpose computer can be used to store pirated material. Laptops are portable music players, and desktops are non-portable music players (I use my desktop to download most of the music I download, though I download legitimately downloadable music.) And taxing per gigabyte is silly - users of small players don't keep all their music on them - they keep it on the much bigger disk drives of their regular PC, and download the player with what they plan to listen to real soon. I've got a 1GB iPod shuffle, but probably 40GB of FLAC/Shorten files on my PC, and that's only because iTunes doesn't like my CD-ROM so I haven't ripped my CD collection into iPod formats yet...
If the Netherlands has some kind of "equal protection" laws, somebody who's getting hit with this tax should sue to make sure it covers all computers, especially including those used by businesses, because that'll make the absurdity more obvious. (Or some non-Netherlands disk drive maker should sue them under the various world trade treaties.) As it is, the tax of EU3.28/GB is about four times the cost of disk drives themselves for the desktop market - laptop drives are more expensive, but most of them are still less than the tax (the newest cutting-edge drives seem to be about twice the price per GB as the smaller slower laptop drives.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Denmark had a tax on blank CD's and DVS's following the same system and for the same reason for a long time. I discussed this with a friend not too long ago and the interesting part is that even if you fill up CD's with pirated material downloaded from the net, you could argue that you already paid for the right to do so through these taxes. I mean - since the tax go directly to the copyright owners, they have - by accepting the money - accepted that the copies are put on these CD's.
To my knowledge it's never been tried in court but I would love to see the result.
Surely if thiis is a tax it gives you a right to listen to the music. It's a bit like paying for cable TV - you can watch the shows and record them for you own use, but you can't record them and sell them.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I think this is kind of academic as goods are allowed to be freely distributed for personal use within the EC, and anyone in Holland who wants an ipod will just buy it mail-order from the UK or somewhere without the tax.
Exactly the same thing has happened with the iTrip - it is illegal to sell or use here in the UK but so many have been imported, that they are turning a blind eye to the selling now.
It's a bit like trying to tax the super wealthy - if you try to do it too much, they just move somewhere else, and you end up with no money.
I am sure that the shop sellers of ipods will just arrange to have them delivered from another country, but will lose out big time to the intenet and mail-order sales. If they want to destroy their high-street shops, who are we to stop them?
Humorous signatures are over-rated.
Oh my, I love this country. We call this kind of behaviour 'niet lullen zakken vullen' (don't talk just grab the money). When we are finished we leave to countries with a better (tax) climate: Belgie, Portugal, Greece Thailand etc. This is a country to make money, not to live in.
Germany yes, but Belgium probably not.
The situation in Belgium is largely the same.
Amen to that, the article doesn't make clear if that will be the situation. You have to assume that filesharing will still be illegal.
Which kinda sucks seeing as everyone with an MP3 player is paying music companies up front and receiving exactly nothing from them in return. The best thing is they can still be sue'd if they actually put fileshared MP3's on a device. A device that they have already paid the music companies for privilage of using!
-- If you think my attitude stinks, you should smell my fingers.
Can I then pirate as much music as I want without prosecution? That might almost make it worth it.
I don't want to read
I can play mp3s on every single computer I have, and collectively, my computers have over 1tb of disk. Does that mean that if I lived in The Netherlands, I'd need to pay US$5000 in *TAX* to the recording industry on my *COMPUTER* storage?!?
Next, someone will propose a tax on raw hard drives just because someone might put MP3s on it???
Come on!
Current levies for DVD+/-R/RW are range from Eur 0.09 to Eur 0.13 per Gigabyte. Applying the high number to a 60 Gig iPod would mean a price hike of about Eur 7.80. Agree with it or not, Dutch law does require a fee be paid to the copyright holder for every copy you make of any piece of music/video. This is true even for copies of CD's/DVD's you bought legitimately and even if the copy is for your personal use only.
He who laughs last, thinks slowest.
Now to buy $2m worth of ipods and sell em at $50 profit and $150 under retail.
Wooooo!!
Thanks stupid MOFO govt workers.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
That's exactly how it works. We already pay levies on blank CDs and DVDs, but we are allowed to make copies of protected works for our personal use, from any source, preferably but not necessarily legal. The proposed law aims to extend the levy to a storage medium that has become increasingly popular for portable music players: the hard disk. It's all logical if you think about it.
CDs = Music
DVDs = Movies
CF, HDDs = ???
There's no strong correlation between the medium and the content. Am I going to plug this CF card into my DigiCam or into my MP3 player?
Is my HDD full of
a) pirated music? (RIAA)
b) pirated movies? (MPAA)
c) pirated tv series?
d) pirated software? (BSA)
e) pirated games?
f) pirated pictures, ebooks?
g) pirated porn?
h) purchased [all of the above], that I have a legitimate need to store a copy of (and probably a back-up too)?
i) digicam pics, DV home videos, sound recordings to which I hold the copyright or that are free (as in beer or speech)?
I fear for a world where we must pay for all the potential copyright infringements we might have been doing. It is like having a speeding tax instead of issuing tickets. If you drive, we assume you have been speeding.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I swear, where the photo industry has seen new opportunities now that digital photography is a hard reality the music industry is still a bunch of clueless morons living in the early 1920's.
That is a flawed analogy - the 'photo industry' (that I think you are referring to) sells the means to make photos. The music industry (that I think you are referring to) sells music.
The music industry that is actually comparable to the 'photo industry' - i.e: the industry that makes equipment for making music (and playing it), has moved with the times just fine, embracing digital technology just as much as the camera industry.
Conversely, I would imagine that the 'photo industry' that sells photos is just as opposed to 'stealing' their images as the music industry is about 'stealing' music, although it's probably a lot smaller and less powerful.
Damn, that was somewhat incoherent.
If music download and sharing is legal. Then the governments stance on taxing media (like ipod) may actually be a happy compromise. After all it's one thing to tap your network connection and show you downloaded stuff, but how are they going to prove that you didn't pay tax on your Ipod. ...oh but sorry we don't have the resources". The only thing the RIAA (or their equivalent) could do is lobby the government every few years for a hike in taxes
In this respect the law would weaken the music industry ability for enforcement as the government can say "There we have done something about it now it is down to customs and excise to enforce...
In australia, alcohol taxes are $58/litre, that is, a .37% 750ml vodka has a bout $18 tax, thats including the 10% GST ontop.
Makes you wonder who can make money selling $22 vodka bottles with $18 tax.
Not even the mafia sell services or 'tax' victimes that highly, they want a real return without killing the 'victim'.
Usual politicians excuse are, "we're saving the people from drinking too much" which is bolony, since they know that its a damn good earner.
I think if we reviewed every single tax/levy/fee the govt charges for fairness, we would see a 20% drop in govt revenue^H^H^H^H THEFT.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
These taxes are driving me absolutely NUTS. I have plenty recordable CD's, about ZERO of them contain music. None. Still I have to pay this idiotic tax.
But wait, it gets *worse*. They also tax my copier *AND* my fax machine! Just because it *could* be used to copy magazines and/or books! Scanners are next.
And now they want to tax DVD recorders too? Totally LUDICROUS! As if there's anything on Dutch television worth retaining for longer than 2 minutes. It's total junk. Who in their right mind would want to waste a totally good DVD-R (that already carries a copy tax!!) to record Britney Spears and her latest junk?!?
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
Why do you find this scary? I think it's tremendous news that I'll have a petabyte (one million gigabytes) in my DVR in a couple of years. So what that those Dutch guys will have to pay $4,300,000 for one? I don't live there.
Or maybe the Register got some of the details wrong in this article...
If this is all true, it is pretty ridiculous. I'm pretty confident that Aachen has a MediaMarkt, Münster has a Saturn, and your next ProMarkt might be somewhere up north. It's a short hop over from pretty much anywhere in the Netherlands to Germany (or Belgium or France), and if people don't like to go there, they can simply mail order stuff (there is no duty to pay within the EU). That's why the Dutch government is simply destroying a huge market; I would find it extremely unlikely that they'd be stupid enough to implement something like that.
Well if I was a Dutch lawyer (which thank Grud I'm not) I would interpret this to mean that a Dutch citizen who has paid the tax is now free to use any means they wish (p2p, borrowing CDs from the library and ripping them, ripping from radio, web casts etc.) to fill their iPod. After all if they've paid a tax they should receive the benefit of that tax.
Hopefully this should shortly mean a huge upsurge in the number of law abiding, tax paying, Dutch citizens legally sharing stuff with each other on p2p. etc. Then again the beauty of Europe is they can just pop over to another EU country and buy their iPod there instead (anyone for L'iPod ?)
What next ? another attempt at a window tax ?
"Oh how the dinosaurs roared as they sunk deeper into the tar pits of extinction"
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
They do not tax blank paper just yet.. But they *DO* tax *owning* a copier as well FAX machines! The reason being that you *could* use these to copy books or magazines with copyrighted material.
I get more and more discusted by these MAFIA organisations, who are somehow legalised by the Dutch government. It's totally *SICK*
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
Maybe, but this doesn't solve the real problem.
The problem is that western governments are starting to work for corporations instead of for people and democracy is becoming a hollow shell. More and more laws are favoring corporations over people and this is quite evident to anybody reading Slashdot in the last few months.
The US seem to be a long way down the road to this change and the smaller western countries (The Netherlans, Ireland, Danmark, Australia are a few examples) are being pushed by them. The larger countries (France, Germany are other examples) provide more resistance but there is nothing that money can't buy.
The fact that many people may use illegally copied music on their iPod is utterly irrelevant. My MP3 player is populated with songs ripped from my own CD collection - if I were to buy a new player this would still be the case. Why should I pay what amounts to a fine for a criminal act that I haven't committed?
Assumption of innocence is the founding principle of the legal system in all vaguely civilised countries. This tax (and other like it) are based on an assumption of guilt. For this reason alone they should appal anyone who has even the slightest respect for an individual's liberty.
The same foundation that is behind this proposal ("Stichting Brein") is also trying to prosecute filesharers. Most ISP do not cooperate with them by providing the names of their users as this foundation has no legal rights of discovery ("opsporingsbevoegheid"). Thank $DEIETY that copyright violations are still a matter of civil law, not criminal law.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
Guess it's time to start marketing OGG players?
why wouldn't OGG get taxed? They are not taxing the actual file format are they?
Presumably the Dutch music industry has just given me approval to reclaim this payment via free P2P downloads? No?
Well the Dutch live in a democracy, it's up to them to lobby their members of parliament, or alternatively, boycott CD sales in some imaginative way.
I can use my RAID-5 array of 200GB HDDs for storing illegal content as well....
Thank FUCK I don't live in the Netherlands then
The upside of this is that the Canadian courts have ruled that the levy actually makes copying music from a source you obtained legally (e.g., a copy loaned to you by a friend who him/herself has it legally) is legal in Canada since you've already paid the copyright fee in the blank media.
Foo
Since these organizations redistribute the recieved funds amongst the copyright holders and since this tax will apply to HDD's too, I guess I should ask them for a cut since I too have copyrights to my name!
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Won't be long before all music is government-sponsored, and as such must conform to government standards for decency, content, and message. Where have we heard this before?
If that happens, it'll be a world right out of Demolition Man where the only songs on the radio are old commercials for Leave it to Beaver...
Did you know the Dutch are allready paying this type of tax on Cassete tapes, DVD-ROMS and CD-ROMS? Effectively, if you are just using DVD's as storage space, part of your money still goes to the movie industry (or so the dutch taxes make you beleive). I guess they still don't have enough money, so now they'll blindly start taxing storage space as well. In a few years you could actually be paying taxes on your harddrive because you potentially could store music or movies on it. It is allready going there. On top of it all, the music industry is trying to cripple discs to keep you from copying them, and by doing so also keep some customers from actually playing the music. Also: Legal movies have 3 minutes of warning screens before the thing starts. Most illegal copies are stripped of these screens (thank god) and start immediately. "Nice way" to reward people for buying legal DVD's... And do you like the WMA DRM scheme where you can only play the music you bought on just the PC with which you bought it? You own it, and still you can't play it It just shows how much feeling the dutch governement, and the music/video industry has with the real world... Meanwhile, the players which take smartmedia cards or alike are the way to avoid these taxes, until Apple starts selling iPods and their drivers seperately: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000 04RG6K/102-6743478-3663353?v=glance
To give some more insight in the Dutch law. Downloading a movie or music and burning it on a cd or dvd is legal (you payed the taxes when buying the cd) as long as it is for your personal use.
So you can use kazaa to download stuff (only movies and music, this doesn't apply for software) and burn it and it's legal. You are not allowed to share anything.
So you get a new ipod 6 Gb mini. If you were to fill it with music from iTunes then you would be spending USD$1500 to fill it with legitimate music (through itunes) so a mere USD$25.80 (1.72%), in tax seems quite reasonable (sales tax is even more), especially if you were thinking of filling it without paying the USD$1,500! If you were actually buying the CD's and then converting them to MP3 you may have spent about the same amount of money. If you were filling a 20Gb Ipod with 5000 songs then you'd be spending USD$5,000 and taxed USD$86 (1.72%) or a 40Gb with 10,000 for USD$10,000 and taxed USD$172 (1.72%). How many people do you know with a 40Gb Ipod who have spend anywhere near USD$10,000 on filling the thing? In fact how many people would have spent USD$1,000? or USD$500? If music cost 1.72 cents per song then you could get the 40Gb Ipod filled for USD$172. So if they are at least making 2c per song for a full ipod then they are happy and you have only spent USD$172. I have no problem spending 1.72 cents per song, but if they made me pay the full USD$10,471 (Ipod+Tax+Songs) to buy an Ipod then I would be pissed!
So, Apple should just start selling their iPods without hard drives. Sell the hard drives separately. Since bare hard drives don't have a tax, there ya go...
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
In my own country there is already a levy on blank media which means the Recording and motion picture industry are profiting from the millions of such media that are used to record data, personal digicam images, somebody's garageband music etc...... which have nothing to do with music/movie theft but are made to pay anyway.
What interests me is the newest line from these guys which is a levy on internet connectionns. With the levy you can already make the argument that copying music is legal since the copyright holders are being paid (theoretically at least I know the artists don't see much of that money). What has been illegal here is not the copying so much as the downloading. However if they levy a tax on internet connections on the assumption the owner is stealing music/movies they have effectively allowed the practice and must stop whining. I can't wait to see what happens if this goes through and they try to slap a lawsuit on somebody for illegal downloading/copying and that person defends them selves by citing that the dues were already paid through the levy and he/she did nothing wrong. It will be interesting to see which argument wins out in court.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
There's a 2.5 ct per page levy on copying-machine us in The Netherlands. No joke.
There are already similar laws in Canada and Italy (and from previous messages it seems also in Denmark).
It's far worse then a tax (which in theory should finance public services which is possibly very good) in some implementations it's a tax used to distribute private ASSUMED loss of profit over ALL of the population buying either cd-r or dvd-r or basically any media that can be written by consumer.
Therefore even the innocent consumer who uses the media for lawful purpose is hit by this kind of corporate tax, the guilty trip of people thinking most of media is used for piracy notwithstanding..there are plenty of legitimate uses that are struck by that.
But the absurd assumption is made that you're guilty by association therefore you should be subject to the levy, whose proceedings one way or another will reach private pockets who anyway can't possibily offer but -extimates- of loss based on hot thin air and doctored figures.
So two absurdity in one package
1. making you guilty by use of media
2. using government levy authority to enrich private interest
If this isn't corporate welfare it's certainly strikingly similar.
Because they were the ones who paid the politicians to draft, advocate and pass the law. Don't make the mistake of thinking that only the US suffers from this problem. Any country with a large, highly centralised government (which is pretty much the entire Western World) is going to suffer from the same issue.
It doesn't happen that way here in Sweden. And I'm sure there are many countries where that is not the case. I think what's important is that there is some choice, the fact that we have seven governmental parties puts some pressure on the top ones, if they would appear to sell them out to corporate interests, they'd instantly lose lots of votes to smaller parties with similar politics.
Don't make general conclusions out of some few countries. Not every western country has such bad political system as USA have. It is, for sure, possible to not let the large companies rule the country as they wish.
Well, due to a technicality, OGG players probably wouldn't get taxed as soon as MP3 players. All the bigwigs know what an MP3 player is, and probably won't have any idea what an OGG anything is in the near future. You'd have to, between wiping the drool, teach them that OGG is conceptually no different than MP3 except for design differences.
You're right though, in then end they'd legislate to tax anything that plays music outright. It'd be easier for everyone, removes the element of doubt. In, say 5 years time, won't the recording industry be doing nothing but collecting taxes?
One more reason to make your vote count. I don't know anything about Dutch voting, but there HAD to be someone that came up with that law. Easy enough to do everything in your power to ensure that person is never in public office again. A VERY vocal response will also ensure others don't try to tread down that path.
You know what I mean *wink wink*
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
Since this is not an EU tax all they have to do to avoid it is go to another country to buy it. The train fare is less than the tax and you get a vacation out of it... Itdiots.
"It's because they're stupid, that's why. That's why everybody does everything." -Homer Simpson
I'm quite shocked by this! It's insane!! 3.28 euros per gig?? These people obviously don't have a clue as to what that means. They figured it sounded good, so they did it.
What I want to know is, how could this have happened in Europe?? You'd think they'd be more liberal and progressive there?
But it looks like they're sucking up to big business just as much as the politicians here in the states do! You have to wonder whose pocket they're in eh!
The Netherlands is definitely different. You can smoke weed there, get a prostitute, but you have to pay insane taxes on your iPod??
I was in Central Amsterdam last night, it being the late night shopping night, and happened to go two of the three Apple stores we have here.
I found it strange at the time that everyone seemed to be buying 60Gb iPod Photos.
[Apart from windowshoppers like me, and a guy in a suit buying a "customized" powerbook]
Could this law fuel a frenzy of iPod purchasing before it becomes law?
watashi wa bengoshi dewa arimasen!
Put a insanely large tax... on what may be your future primary income source. Genius DOH.
...but a bit different. Here CD/DVD media are charged (and they tried DSL and hard drives but AFAIK they are exempt from the tax... for now.) The point is, here it is totally legal to copy music as long as you do not sell it. The problem is that a certan "non-profit" (Ha!) organization tries to spread FUD about it and maks people believe taht downloading is illegal. They use the excuse that downloading avoids you having to buy the CD, and thus saves you money, which they believe is profit. Mind you, that isn't profit, and even if it were, if I couldn't download I'd just not listen.
While they're at it, why don't they just tack on a 10 cent tax per sheet of blank paper...maybe the book industry should claim that the reason sales of books are down is because of Internet file sharing.
Actually, this year every Dutch company got a letter with an estimate of how many copies they make each year of copyrighted documents with a requast to pay the copyright association. This is why in college handouts don't contain copyrighted material. The copies of copyrighted material are handed over during class, which is legal, since it is paid for.
So this 'tax' is a pain in the ass and mighty convenient at the same time; people have to make an estimate of how mucht they copy, but when they have done so, they can copy copyrighted material at will (for personal use only, but still).
How on earth do you think a tiny country like the Netherlands could ever impose such a heavy tax on a small consumer product? All Dutch consumers would have to do is to cross the nearest border with Belgium or Germany and buy the product there. Keep in mind there is no border control between these countries. This will never become law, it is just a stupid proposal that was made by someone who can't multiply and that will not pass, so get off your horses already and don't jump to conclusions about corrupt politicians etc.
Well actually plain paper is taxed indirectly. Companies in the Netherlands pay taxes for owning copy machines. They are actually taxed even if they don't own a copy machine.
The glass is half-full. With poison. And there are cracks in the glass. The dirty, dirty glass.
that makes downloading (possibly uploading) files from holland 100% legal. hopefully the record industry will live to regret this.
I bought my MP3 player cause I needed a Memory-stick. The added ability to play MP3's and WMA files just was a neato added value.
Being taxed for pure the "ability to store" is a bit disturbing. I don't want visualize the evolution of such an idea resulting in the payment of 1024*tax_value when I get a TB-HD cause it can store all sorts of media (music, movies, games, ...)
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
And anyway, MP3 would hardly feature in legislation anyway - they'd say something like file formats that do not feature DRM protection. Which might be a good time for the lads at Ogg and Flac to think about adding DRM as a feature - after all, Linus supports it: http://www.linuxkp.org/en/content.php?&content/edi torial/drm_torvalds.html
the problem at the moment is that the efforts of the music industry only affect a small number of people. We hear about some toddler being sued for thousands and tut-tut, but nobody really does anything as it doesn't affect us.
Currently legislation is trickling in and slowly screwing us over, but nobody is motivated enough to do much as our rights erode.
I say the only solution is to give the industry as much rope as they can grab with their evil little mits. Let them have more tax. As much tax as they want - across Europe.
A $1,000 tax on an iPod is precisely the sort of thing that's going to be hard to explain to potential owners that don't read slashdot. Suddenly Apple's going to wade in and bat for the consumer.
Oh you get the point, the industry seems to have completely lost it's senses and dropped any pretence of hiding it's greed - it's taking itself beyond parody - let it hang itself.
Im really outraged with this kind of tax, here in Portugal we must pay this so called tax over DVDs CDs and the kind, as a software developer and copyright owner I do not see any return of this tax, were does it go to ? further more its also outrageous that I must pay VAT over this tax (wich they give a diferent name), resulting in a double taxation , tax over tax wich should not be legal, go figure... About a month back i tried to find whoever could awnser me, I called the authors association, Public entities, to no avail , it seems that the money simply desapears ....
oh well...
Jorge Canelhas
Are you a retro Computing fan ?
http://www.retroreview.com/
I'd be quite happy to pay, say 25% tax on my copy of gtk-gnutella. or 100%, 500%, 1000%. whatever.
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
Awsome law in the name of the friendship of dutch and german people. Trade german IPods for dutch Weed. Makes the currency union obsolete.
Do you think the RIAA might be shooting themselves in the foot with this one? If the Dutch courts have the same theory you just mentioned I forsee a bunch of copyright ignoring websites suddenly registering with .nl extensions and being hosted from the suddenly thriving tech boomtowns that would spring up to support them. {joke style=cheap}If this happens make sure to share the files to the left side.{/joke}
Hey!!! the parentheses are good for something
"I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible." - Milton Friedman
Circumcision is child abuse.
... they smoke marijuana legally in Amsterdam. Creating laws has to be fairly tough when under the influence.
.. it can't possibly be copyright "theft" when you share someones MP3 file.
I mean, there's no more customs between countries in "Europe" so what's to prevent people from having their iPods shipped from Belgium or Germany or Dänmark???
In, say 5 years time, won't the recording industry be doing nothing but collecting taxes?
And that's what i call a scary thought!!!
Now that memory is smaller and smaller, just buy an empty shell player and buy memory on ebay....problem solved. If this goes into law, I can see people going underground with everything...most people will not buy anything over the counter if it is too costly.
At least they can fire up legally to help kill the pain of the memory tax!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I'm thinking this would make iPods a hot commodity in duty free shops. Wo-ho!
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
There's really no need to use profanity.
There are, on the other hand, numerous initiatives where the young are being taught in their classrooms that copying is theft. Maybe they'll take it for granted and happily pay taxes for the use of a song. And the player it's played from. And the ISP they downloaded it by. And the HD they stored it on.
"Those innocent fun games of the hallucination generation"
Yeah, the city government in Chicago weren't corrupt. And the corruption at our federal level is nothing compared to many county and city governments in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana,... The corruption in Florida was so bad that we passed a 'Sunshine Law' to prevent out-of-the-public-eye meetings of government decision makers. There is some question as to whether three city councilmen are allowed to have breakfast together.
Our national politicians are pandering to corporate interests, but most of this is above board, "We worship your ability to earn money, let us kiss your ass." rather than actual corruption (aka pay-for-performance). As long as campaign contribution caps are not being violated, is it right to call this 'corruption'?
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
It strikes me that the Dutch politicians are being quite cunning here.
They know that Holland is a small country.
They know that since their download laws are quite lax they need to do something to appease the various recording industries and the various countries they've bought.
Solution... Give the industry what it wants - a large tax on downloaders. (and take their money - Cha-Ching!)
Give the people what they want - the ability to sidestep the tax with a nice day trip to Hamburg/European city of choice.
The only people they're really annoying are the 5 people who actually sell iPods IN Holland.
Bear with me.
Ignoring where the person lives, lets say Joe Public goes out and buys an ipod and has to pay a levy of x amount of dollars.
Now this levy was more or less agreed upon by the RIAA to cover the cost that piracy is having upon their poor antiquated method of distrbuting the latest fluff they call music.
Now Joe Public decides to share his wealth of music on a p2p app and gets caught by the RIAA and the threaten to sue him for (pinkie to mouth) a bajillion dollars.
Now since he paid the levy up front shouldn't that be his get out of court free card?
But even more interesting, shouldn't the maximum that they could sue anyone else for piracy who hasn't bought a blank cd or mp3 player be the maximum levy placed on any of such goods?
Just a thought.. and probably completely out to lunch but thought it would be funny if that was the case.
Now if I copyright the idea of extortionating money out of mp3 manufacturer's based upon there storage size would I be able to sue the muppets at the "oh my you must be using illegal music division and we dont care your being double taxed".
Kinda ironic for what is afaik europes most libral and open minded and as close as you get to free speach kinda country. Now they want to tax you for your words.
Still bright side being I can now go on holiday over there and pay for my accomodation in iPods - bwahahahahhahaha.
am i paying for the media or the quota of the media ? if i buy 'x' amount of storage, why not associate it with the amount of space? since, in case if the ipod or whatever goes phut or stolen, my tax money goes waste. so why not pay it for the 'x' number of gbs. create a license for the same. that ways - i buy 200 gbs of quota from the government. and the tax stays for whatever number of years. or does it ?
it opens up new avenues. what if the storage becomes cheaper ? does the tax stay uniform ? one of these days samsung or such volume players, decide that holographic storage is the way to go, and offers 150 terabytes on disk space from, say, the coming xmas season. how much tax do i pay then? this whole tax thing is crazy. this whole tax scene for something intangible as this is really, really crazy!!!
What's going to happen in 5 or 6 years when iPods have 400GB hard drives?? $4.30 x 400 = $1,720 in tax.
WTF?
sig?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
First, you don't want to believe everything you read on Slashdot. Take things with a grain of salt.
With that said, however, Western Governments have been working for corporations instead of people for a long, long time. It's just that before you didn't know about it. They had the common sense to do it behind closed doors and not be too obvious about it.
Now they don't even bother to hide it. It's like they're daring us to hop into our cars, roll into D.C. and start electrocuting everyone. And of course we won't do it. Why? Because we're fucking pussies. We aren't willing to fight for our rights anymore. We'll just complain about it, agree that it's fucked up, and continue about our business. And since our only other options from our current asshole lawmakers are other assholes, we don't really have a choice. We be screwed. Maybe I'm cynical, maybe I'm right, maybe I'm both. I fervently hope that there will one day be a reckoning for those who lead us, where we get to hang them with their own entrails for fucking us up the ass.
P.S. Just because I said this on Slashdot doesn't mean you should accept my viewpoint. Make sure you get input from an extremely wide variety of sources and make up your own mind. And remember; take everything with a grain of salt. Or maybe even the whole salt shaker.
Governments will tax anything that moves without much concern about the economic havok they are causing.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
You don't need to steal.
3 6245&tid=123&tid=99&tid=95&tid=17
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According to this earlier slashdot article,
"A french appeal court ruled yesterday in favour of somebody who downloaded about 500 movies, on the ground that those were private copies, and that he didn't redistribute them, and that a tax was payed on blank media. This sets the huge precedent that P2P is legal over there."
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/11/1
Also from the French,
"the French courts have banned DRM copy-protection on DVDs, because it is a consumer right to make a backup or to change formats (in this case, to VHS)"
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/25/1
I don't care how you want to slice it, how you want to paint it, what kind of spin you want to use...... that's just plain wrong
My karma is not a Chameleon.
In the UK, the tax on alcohol and fags is very expensive: this is to compensate the National Health Service for the extra cost of treating illness caused by drinking and smoking.
..... But nobody has come up with a way {yet} of reliably taxing the act of smoking a cigarette, just the same as no-one has found a way of reliably ensuring that a songwriter receives the same few pence they would have received from the sale of a song on CD everytime someone makes a copy of that song independently of the CD company.
It can work out cheaper -- especially if you live in the South -- to travel to the Continent and return with a carload of beer and tobacco, than to buy such things here. {Of course, you have then paid your taxes to the French, Belgian or whatever government. But in those countries, you have to pay towards any medical treatment you receive: everybody has medical insurance which is paid for separately, not through pay-as-you-earn.}
So it will be the same with storage devices in the Netherlands, if this tax is approved. Under European law, once you have paid any taxes applicable to an article at the time of sale, it is your property and you cannot be held liable for any further tax if you move that article to another country {unless you sell it}. As long as some EU member state does not impose this tax, and an audit trail exists to show that the transaction occurred in that country, nobody in the Netherlands need pay it.
The British government is now finding, for the first time, that due to the availability of cheap poisons overseas, it is losing money treating lung cancer and other smoking-related patients. This is why we are seeing a clampdown on smokers' rights: the smoker is no longer an important contributor to the Government's coffers, but a tax-dodger. And this is why the UK government is making such a big noise about obesity: the fag tax money is drying up, so another source of revenue is required to replace the millions in nicotine-stained pound notes. Soon, crisps and Mars bars will be taxed; the government will spout about the evils of junk food with one hand {instantly doubling its attractiveness to kids}, while raking in the "dirty" money with the other.
One could argue that it is not the act of buying fags that gives you cancer, but smoking them. And if you have to walk to the shop to buy your junk food, then you might well be undoing the "damage" on the way
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
See, you'd think that with how the slashbots love to bash America and embrace anything that's "Not America," but find me a supposedly enlightened Euro nation that DOESN'T tax blank media. I know France, Britain, Germany, Italy, and Belgium all do, all the Scandinavian countries do, and it looks the Netherlands is about there. Not sure about Spain. Canada does as well, and I think might have been the first.
Not starting a flame war, just pointing out that it's easy to focus on the crappy things that happen anywhere...but I don't see a "media tax" happening in the US. People say the US is controlled by corporations - true to a large extent, but or RIAA isn't as influential, evidently, as their Euro counterparts. We prefer evidence of crime before punishment...at least for our citizens. ;P
that everyone who buys a hard drive-based MP3 player can pilfer songs off of the internet freely? After all, if the money is going straight to the recording industy, then you've already compensated them for all of the content that you are putting on the player.
Me, personally, I don't download songs from P2P. Not at all. All of my music collection is either from CD's or iTMS. So why should someone like me have to pay such a tax? It's insane to punish me for a crime I'm not committing.
I'm going to run down to my travel agent this afternoon and book a plane ticket to Munich. While I'm there, I think I'll max out my credit card buying iPods, and jump on a train to Amsterdam. I should be able to make enough in black market sales to pay for my plane ticket home.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
...yearly tax? What if you buy your player out country?
I drank what? -- Socrates
we can further the change a bit.
You're now going to pay the RIAA equivalent to listen to anything (regardless of the art or artist, they have now become irrelevant.)
The tax cannot apply to a deaf person. Legally, he can't hear a thing, it would be illegal for him to have to pay. (It doesn't have to make sense. It for a court of law.
You are being forced to tithe for the sin of having been born with ears. Let them force the thing through as the "Ear Tithe."
What a fuckin' great racket.
We have five senses and they're going to try to get money for each.
The perfume industry should be glad. Now, everytime we buy a new car, they can charge the car company. (the 'new car smell is going to be pure 'cha-ching') Fuck perfume. What about that garbage truck?
ONe way around is to have someone who is legally deaf buy all the disks and resell them 'sans-tithe'
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Billary lover!!! Communist!!!!
If you don't love America and follow its leaders unquesiontionably, then get the hell out!
I'd love to stay and belittle you more, but I have to go to work my second shift. Health care ain't cheap, you know, and my WalMart job doesn't quite cover the $700/month health insurance I get rom my 9-5 IT job.
Yeah, right.
There's a difference between politicians being on the large companies side and politicians being directly paid by them.
Even in a working democracy there can be support for stupid legislation to help companies. It's all down to what the public wants, if they'd want more leftist government they'd vote for some of the other two parties in the current coallition. Note that such a vote is not wasted in the same way that it is in USA, every party that gets more than 4% of votes gets places in the parliament.
So does this legitimize music theft, up to the amount of the tax? They should at least give you a gift card at iTunes or equivalent for the amount of the tax.
Actually, it's more like:
2) Profit??
Because I doubt they will see more than $10,000 of this iPod tax.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Christ, if you're not going to read the article, at least read the summary.
"The Register is reporting that in a few short months a proposal to tax all MP3 players in the Netherlands
Great. So come school time when everyone is buying notebook paper to store class notes on their government will nail them for a tax because they just might be taking a music class too!
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
This is nothing more than mere protectionism and it's only going to cause a depressed mp3 player market. However, homebrews will be quite the thing there!!
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
If I wre going to be paying that tax per GB and I'm NOT a file sharer and I DON'T download music, what do I get for my taxes?
If that were to happen in the US, I'll be the first to stand up and declare that from that point on, I WILL be downloading music I don't own because the music industry IS being compensated for it.
And the artists see how much of this new tax revenue? My bet is $0.00
People who are intolerant of other people's culture, and the Dutch.
It is illegal to use the iTrip in the uk but is not illegal to sell them.
Now remeber children, once you've paid your pirate tax, it's OK to download anything you want. Go a head, you already paid the fine. If they try to sue you, just argue that if they can do that, then there is no point for the tax. They either have to choose one or the other.
1. If universal health care worked as well in the US as universal education, I want no part of it. 2.You might have a point if the money from the iPod tax went to universal health care in any of those countries. It doesn't. It goes to the recording industry.
Anything else?
And sell "hard drives" that plug into it on the rack next door.
Because the "hard drives" dont play music, there is no tax on them.
And because the MP3 player has no inbuilt storage, there is a tax on 0.00mb of storage (i.e. none)
They should all throw their iPods into the sea to protest this tax.
Glorious Victory Forever.... we also do design. www.coidesign.com
I'm just sayin', the newsgroups and p2p networks are stuffed with Dutch files. Look at the header count in alt.binaries.misc.
And we thought it was only Goldfinger who was a crazy dutchman...
Still, given the location of the Netherlands, would you rather spend Eu. 258 on the tax, or Eu. 100 to go to Belgium or Germany and buy it there?
Hell, wait til you're on holiday anywhere else in the european union.
I toggled a toggle and buttoned a button, but when I got done, I was done doin' nothin'.
I agree with the consensus here: it's absurd and ridiculous. Tax systems in general are.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
Unemployment in Europe just hit all time highs as people stopped being able to afford anything. The president of the EU said on Friday "This tax will go to help all those who are unemployed and seeking jobs." It remains unclear if all the ministers heads are stuck up the Presiden't ass, or just their own.
Those are items that are illegal in Britain. Unless iPods become illegal in Holland then your barking up the wrong tree.
Under EU law, you cannot stop someone from buying something in one country for use in another. Of course, if it's actually illegal to possess that something in the country that the goods are going to then you'd have to be an idiot to do it, but the flow of the goods must be unimpeded in terms of trade restrictions - that's what the whole single market is about.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Tax they would, because apple will not release control over their hardware. There is no way that they will let other companies manufacture and sell hard drives for the iPod. As such, any separate "iPod" hard drive will easily be identified by said governmental agency and taxed. Historically, anything that can be taxed will be taxed until the people no longer support it. Thus, the number of people purchasing the iPods will greatly diminish in that country until the tax is no longer worthwhile. (But we all know that the gray/black market will feed the demand instead)
The problem lies with the fact that basically they are doubling the cost of ownership. I know a lot of people willing to throw down $300 for an iPod, but very few willing to spend $600.
I'd like to think that this could never happen in the US, but we just passed a law that would send someone to jail for 3 years just for letting out a sneak release. Personally I think a stiff fine and public humiliation would be much more appropriate.
Shameless plug: Why do all that work when you could get one for free?
This sig has been removed pending an investigation.
No, it would give them the right ..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
What is next, smuggling of ipods across the borders?
relabeling them as 5gb when they are 60's?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Isn't that the equivalent of a 50% tax?
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
What kind of a fucked up system is this. And I thought my third world was corrupt. This is grand scale legalized larceny - And the stupid citizens - what are you smoking. Cant you even lodge a protest.
1) Smuggle iPods into the Netherlands and trade them for weed.
2) Smuggle weed out of the Nehterlands and trade it for iPods
3) ????
4) Profit!
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
The dutch tried this in the 60's with radio and television. The result was booming business across the border. :)
Yould could, for example, purchase your TV in Germany, bring it over, and never register it. Given the current mobility of folks, this is even more so a no-brainer these days.
Rotterdam to Antwerp is ~30 euros by train -- people will just buy their ipods elsewhere.
This isn't going to work unless all of the EU does it.
-charles.
The difference is that the photo industry sees you as a creator. You are the photographer. You are the one taking pictures, and maybe you can take better pictures if they can make a better camera and convince you to buy it. They seek to empower you. If you start enjoying taking pictures with a 4MP automatic digicam, maybe you will really enjoy taking more and better pictures with a 8MP digital SLR. You are the copyright owner of the pictures you take (barring any contracts you may have signed).
I for one have over 30GB (or more, including backups and galleries) of pictures I have taken, and am saving up for a digital SLR. I have spent much more on my digital camera and accessories than I ever did on my film camera and developing. And I take 100x as many pictures now.
The music industry sees you as a consumer. You make nothing, you just consume. You are not creative, you will buy what they tell you to, and they are not aware of any other alternatives. The only use for a 100GB HD, in their eyes, is to store copyright infriging material. Their material. And you should pay for it in advance.
I for one, have stopped listening to RIAA music and buying RIAA cds. Now I can save that money and spend it on a digital SLR!
short (oversimplified) summary:
digital camera industry - try to empower the customers, and maybe they will come back and buy more cameras and accessories and storage media
music industry - the customers should just consume our products, and never dare to do otherwise. noone stores their photos from their digicam on a compact flash or hard drive!
The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them. -Einstein
Traditional platters haven't been increasing much because HD companies have been looking hard into new tech and different method of storing the bits in the same amount of space (witness the recent stacking press releases). They are only a couple short breakthroughs away from returning to the blistering capacity increases of 00-03.
--- I do not moderate.
Soon, THEY will tax my HDD space, then anything I have in the fridge' and then, the air I breathe.... Looks like it's time to pack my bags and emigrate to Moon.
If this were me the first thing I would do would be to download 250 worth of free music of some illegal file sharing network to get my money back.
Yet another way that copyright holders are going to destroy the technology industry.
I swear PowerPoint is going to be the downfall of higher education in western society.
Smaller recording companies and independent musicians won't see a dime. It all goes to the companies who lobbied for the bill. It'd be like paying $50 for a Microsoft Windows OEM license when you buy a Mac.
Why are there 3 words for this place? Holland, Netherlands, Dutch??
Also makes me wonder why in Spanish, Germany is called Alemania. Is that because they're crazy about beer there? And why is it "Germany" and "German" in English but "Deutschland" and "Deutsch" in German?!
Why don't we call foreign countries/people by what they call themselves instead of some word that from our own language?? It would seem to make things simpler to me.
And don't get me started about China...
This is the same government who are now passing all kinds of other idiot laws and done things that make the American government look positively enlightened:
- Everyone who has less than 8 years of education in the country (except other EU citizens), no matter what their passport, will have to take a test to show that they are "integrated" into local society. If you don't, you'll pay repeated fines until you do pass the test.
- To move to the country, you'll have to show that you've learned Dutch first.
- Cut government spending in times of economic downturns, while boosting in times of economic growth (everywhere else in the world, it's the reverse).
- Looked at making criminal punishments relevant to your ethnicity.
- Proposed vigoursly pursuing a campaign against female circumcision (when was this a problem in NL?), but after a rash of (Dutch, white) family murder-suicides claimed that the number was lower than in the past and nothing needed to be done.
Need I continue? This tax will definitely make it into law.
I've been told that Anheuser-Busch (the US' largest beer brewer) is taxed about $0.12 per bottle of beer, and the revenue (not sure if it's net or gross) on a bottle of beer is about $0.05. And beer is the taxed much lower than distilled alcoholic beverages.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
Can you imagine? Go to the bank and ask for 100 Euro from your account:
TELLER: "That'll be 25 Euro, sir."
CUSTOMER: "WHAT?"
TELLER: "The tax on your media is 25 Euro."
CUSTOMER: "So I have to pay 25 Euro to get 100 Euro in cash?"
TELLER: "Yes sir, because you could copy music onto the bills."
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
Let's be honest: $3 for a gigabyte of music is a pretty sweet deal compared to the 99 cents per song the iTunes store charges.
So pay your $750 for a top of the line iPod, and then pirate music to your heart's content. After all, you've already paid the music industry.
As for why no one uses the simple way of calling people by the name they gave themselves, bites me, guess it'd be too complicated, or people like being bitches to others. Or more than likely there are problems with prononciation (sp?) and people don't want to make the effort of learning the right ones...
Doesn't really matter, does it?
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
If Big Music is gonna charge you for music you might copy, then I say they've given up any expectation of copyright protection.
But, IANAL.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
I haven't read the entire proposal but if this levy is for iPods purchased in the Netherlands, what's to stop an individual from going to another country to get one and bringing it back? I don't know if there are declaration taxes (such as the ones in place at the US-Canada border) but if there are, it'll probably be less than paying this levy.
The GEEK shall inherit the earth...
I don't think that it's posible to tax an illegal activety, so either this tax on CD's and/or mp3players is not legal or the downloading is not legal. I think this will finaly legalize the sharing of music as it should be.
Besides, you could simply cross the border to buy an ipod or even buy it by mail order from any another country within the EU.
With a broad tax like that, people should steal to make sure they get their money's worth. If I buy a 60 GB iPod, then I must be entitled to steal $258 worth of music! Oh, and I think songs really ought to sell for $.25, so I'll enjoy those thousad songs.
Start Running Better Polls
Problems? That's a feature! That's exactly the reason this idiotic levy will fail unless EVERY EU country adopts it (not likely, and if they do, expect a drop in sales and jump in illegally imported units - how long until the retailers scream?).
The heck with blank paper...tax all paper. Books, manuals, even playing cards!
AC's modded -6. I don't see you, I don't mod you, anything you say is lost. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
So, I have the right to re-distribute the work non-commercially with attribution with a share alike clause (those I give the work to are entitled to the same rights I have).
This is essentially a Creative Commons license.
Does the Netherlands permit derivative works as well (without copyright-holder consent)?
Taxing the people for the benefit of industry? That is fascism, by definition: government and business working together (the U.S. military-industrial complex is another example).
Of course, fascism is easier in socialist nations, when you have a large, powerful, well-funded-by-already-high-taxes government to implement such fascist policy... A more-limited, smaller government is easier to watch over and thus, easier to prevent from doing such things...
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
Of course for the purposes of the law, you may as well just ROT128 the file and call it DRM. It may be technically simpler, but in theory it's exactly as easy to crack as "real" DRM.
The US doesn't have a CD-R/MP3 player tax like other countries.
How much you wanna bet?
This may come as a shock to you, but not only are you wrong, but the US was one of the first countries to introduce something like this.
The only solutions are to reduce the power of the government...
Let's hope the people take that to heart when they vote. The politicians attempt to "bribe" the people with lower taxes and "better" services. The voters apparently fall for it. Who are the corrupt ones here? Don't expect any change as long as the average voter won't see past his/her own nose. Without a sense of community, how can things possibly be any different from what they are now?
What?
Of course, fascism is easier in socialist nations, Um, methinks you understand neither facism or socialism with a statement like that.
What kind of monopoly would the professional content industry be if it didn't extract a tax from consumers for work it didn't do? A poor one. A poor one indeed.
This Stichting Thuiskopie Foundation has already succeeded at taxing DVDs and CDs, showing its excellent capability to immitate its ilk in the US. But this, this tax.. it's awesome! $4.30 per gigabyte! That's 10 times the price of the raw disk!
Can you imagine disk-makers like Hitatchi and Seagate looking on and watching these old-school hitmen come in and feast on their kill? I'm sure they're a bit angry, but probably a good deal more envious.
A tax this creative, of this size.. ahh. My hat is off. This takes a lot of balls. And more importantly, a lot of politicians in their pockets.
Congrats to Stitching Thustoopid on their coming out event. Let the good times roll boys! Pass the cigars around!
- Cd's and dvd's from luxemburg, no tax on them there(and while i'm there I also buy cigarettes and booze because of the low taxes)
- Cannabis from holland
- computer hardware from germany
Living in Belgium makes it easy to pop into those different countries in one day. You have to look at the EU as a supermarket, picking the best from every country.Considering that no modern western government (with the exception of the USA) could survive a court challenge whereby they tax something that is illegal, this law has effectively made downloading songs legal in the Netherlands.
A similar thing has happened in Canada, where courts have ruled that downloading copyrighted music is more like a library than stealing. Canada's similar law helped them make that ruling.
The industry, by persuing these "royalty" laws is admitting defeat.
If you ask me it's a good compromise.
The concept of charging for blank media started with 8-track or cassettes tapes. The much larger tax on the ipod (if it does end up that high) is even more severe. But shouldn't there also be a tax on computer hard drives? Just because an iPod is more likely (assumption) to have downloaded music, it doesn't mean a person can have even more infringing music?
And since I have burned about 3000 cds and a about 400 DVD-Rs without infringing copyrights haven't I already paid for a few downloads? I think the perfect defense for any pirate in court is that you cannot have a theft if you have already been assumed to pay for the infringing action. It's like having a Sears clothing fee of a few dollars a month on my clothes hangers--shouldn't I be entitled to go into Sears and get some clothes?
So, as soon as everyone in the Netherlands pays their iPod tax, please make sure everyone then IMMEDIATELY downloads things they have already paid for.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
196 euros extra price? Damn that's greedy!
In Finland, for MP3 players, Teosto charges 0.005 euros per minute on average capacity. For devices over 2.2 gigabytes, they have capped the levy to 15 euros! And that max actually went down recently, from 25 euros per 3.96GB!
Far more reasonable prices in my opinion...
The only solutions are to reduce the power of the government, and/or to move these powers to more regional authorities (thus increasing the cost require to influence the entire nation).
That's impossible! How will the Emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy?
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
As a Chicagoan, yes, Chicago is, and has always been, extremely corrupt. Mayor Daley here deserves a hot fire poker jabbed in his eyes.
And that's the point the grandparent was making: the more limited and smaller the government is, the easier it is to watch. The easier it is to watch, the less-corrupt it can become, because the ratio of citizens' eyes to political actions rises.
Moreover, there's a point implicit in your own argument you're missing. The fact that corruption occurs at all levels of government, perhaps particularly as the level becomes increasingly-local (much of the problem is that we in the U.S. focus more on national politics now than state or local politics - thank you FDR and the New Deal), is why laws against corrupt politics become ever more stringent -- that is, as govn't corruption rises, we have more incentive to create laws against corrupt politics, and as government shrinks, it becomes easier to root out that corruption and determine the laws to be written against future ill political dealings (like your "Sunshine Law").
Yes. See the Wikipedia definition Google lists:
Our politicians use their position to return favors for businesses. That is corruption, according to the above definition. The U.S., by this definition, in some ways could even be argued to be a kleptocracy -- there are points at which we don't even have a pretense of honesty in our government...
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
The theory behind this is that as individuals live and experience the world, those individuals will hear music, watch movies, read books, and have access to many forms of copyrighted intellectual properties. These properties are essentially stored in the individual's brain. For example, how many times have you had a song stuck in your head? This law would guarantee that copyright holders would get paid a fair amount for bestowing upon you the priviledge of having that song in your brain.
The tax, of course, would go directly to the RIAA and MPAA, to cover the losses those organizations suffer from the misappropriation of such valuable copyrighted works into the minds of countless individuals on a daily basis.
Microsoft can intimidate the EU into passing kleptocrat IP laws, but Apple can't keep the NL from doubling the price of their most popular product, handing the take to the record companies already on iTMS life support? How many divisions has Microsoft got?
--
make install -not war
A simple search will get you a map. I personally use the CIA's website (really). They have a great feature called the World Factbook (http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/inde x.html). You just go and locate the country you are interested in and you'll get a map showing neighbours, historical background, grographical and demographical breakdown, politicial, economic, military and communications information and so on.
If someone mentions a country and I want to know more about it, or want to check their facts, that's where I go. It's generally pretty accurate too, which you'd expect since it IS the CIA's job to know about other countries. As far as I know, it's accessable to anyone in the world, not just US citizens.
We live in a world with International trade, and nice little marketplaces like eBay. Surely if you're paying $4k for a drive in taxes, you'll just hop on eBay and buy the drive from the US for $19 bucks? Does this insane tax happen when items arrive via airmail, or just at the point of sale?
If the distribution of the levy were according to official download statistics, measured in a sensible way by independent observers, this proposal would make more sense.
It would still be taxing people who don't download, but think about it: the money would go to artists that people actually like. When downloading, you'd have a motivation to choose to download artists that you want to reward, and avoid artists that you don't want to reward, while not having to pay cash to express those wishes.
It also means everyone's opinion counts equally, not just those who are willing to pay directly for music. People buying old second-hand players for example, may be poorer but will have the same effect on download statistics.
Yes, it penalises people who don't download. But, done as I've described, it also creates an environment where people are guilt-free able to enjoy artistic works, knowing the artists are being compensated too.
The only real question then is: whether it's worth penalising those who don't download (or download only a little), to create a society where everyone is free to enjoy artistic works, happily guilt-free, and sustainably.
Here's an analogy: in the UK we lobbied for a long time for "flat rate" internet access where you pay a fixed monthly fee and can then use the 'net as much or as little as you like. People who don't use it much as subsidising those who use it more (but only a little bit nowadays, because there are so many plans to choose from). But it means that people can be comfortable when using the 'net, instead of keeping an eye on the number of minutes online, and many people think that's a good thing because it changes how people use the 'net for the better.
Imagine the same for music: where people pay more up front, but then are able to be comfortable listening and watching whatever they want to, and it's legal. That's only workable when people know the money goes to the artists (and producers etc.) who are producing the work people actually choose. It does not work if the money only goes to "industry representatives" who don't represent all the artists. Done wrong, it's ugly. But done right, even your friend artist neighbour would get a little share, if people are choosing to download a little bit of his work... Think about it.
-- Jamie
Explain.
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
Yep - DRM in name but not in nature. But that's what Microsoft has been at for years - delivering DRM software that is so shoddy it gets cracked overnight. But nonetheless they are the market leaders - at least here in Germany nearly all "legal" music files downloaded are wma. That's why .ogg, which is waaay better than wma should bust into the market. Who cares if anyone cracks it or not - certainly not the music industry, or they would be kicking up a fuss about wma now. And after all, there is always the DCMA anti-circumvention clause.
Ignore what the other guy said who replied to your message. He doesn't know what he's talking about.
The reason the name for "Germany" varies so much in different languages mainly has to do with which Germanic tribe the country in question had the most contact with (but not always.)
The French knew them mainly through the "Allemanic" tribes of Western Germany. (Keep in mind that "France" comes from "Franks", another tribe of western Germans.)
The Finns call Germany "Saksa", related to the "Saxon" tribe. The Scottish word for Germany is similar.
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_162.html
How many times have you seen a ridiculous proposition publicized solely to make a less ridiculous but still dangerous proposition look better?
It happens ALL THE TIME. Give 'em six months. They'll come out with a new $30 levy that'll seem perfectly reasonable.. and passing it will be tacit acceptance of 'guilty until proven innocent'.
That kind of tax would never disappear, even if the sum Dutch population suddenly shunned file sharing. It's like a toll road; just because they've paid off the asphalt doesn't mean they'll stop collecting the fee!
u15
George: What is Holland?
Jerry: What do you mean, what is it? It's a country right next to Belgium.
George: No, that's the Netherlands.
Jerry: Holland is the Netherlands.
George: Then who are the Dutch?!?
Canada has imposed a levy on blank media since 1998. It is called a levy (not a tax) because it is collect by the group Canadian Private Copying Collective representing the recording industry; not the Canadian government. The levy for a 40GB Apple iPod is $25 CDN ($19.89 USD, 15.40 euro). Other levy amounts are collected for blank media such as casette tapes, CD recordables, and smaller fixed storage devices.
IMHO: Canadians have paid for the right to freely copy music. Period.
Actually, fascism does have a definition in relation or coporation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
Except in this case, its not government working for corporation. Its the corporation that controls the goernment.
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
I was poking around on some bar code websites and one proprietary manufacturer said that they could store 140 bytes/square centimeter if their symbols are printed and scanned at a 300dpi resolution.
If my rough calculations are correct, we're talking about 15 single sided pages per megabyte of data. That means about 66 pages per Gigabyte. At that rate, ordinary laser printer paper from Staples would cost something like $1.06 (U.S. figures, sorry. I can't quite think in Guilders and I have no idea of how much office supplies go for over there.) for the paper cost alone. It might be best to go to a copy center because of the high density printing that is going to suck down large amounts of toner.
If my figures are correct, one ream of 500 sheets will yield about seven gigabytes, and will cost about $8.50. that means that the tax on the ream would be about $32. So yeah, that is getting reamed.
The figures are mostly bogus because nobody is going to use the proprietary system I used for my figures to do p2p, higher resolution printing on the same sheet totally skews the figures, and really doubt that our European friends are going to get violent about making sure all their paper has a tax stamp on it. Or maybe they will, who knows.
Paper could be a music storage medium, and a good one for some purposes. I'd like to see the taxman try to beat that one. It has the same appeal as watching a microcephalic rodeo.
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
I once emailed jensen (now audiovox) about adding OGG support for their car head units. Their reply?
"We currently have no future plans to support the royalty free OGG-Vorbis format."
WTF? If it's royalty free then why would it not be appealing. I'll freakin add the DSP code to your head units myself for free, just gimme the kit!
What would stop someone from the Netherlands from just driving a few kilometers out of the country, buying an mp3 player much cheaper, and then driving a few kilometers back? Not much.
I'm not aware of the law of my country changing, so do you have any pointers for that?
Which country is your country?
In case your country is another EU country than Denmark:
This law change was not a result of changed EU directives. It was a result of local lobbyism in Denmark. So the laws in other EU countries were unaffected.
In case your country is Denmark:
Go visit Retsinfo on http://retsinfo.dk./ Find "Lov om ophavsret". Read $12 stk. 3 which says:
Uanset bestemmelsen i stk. 2, nr. 5, er det ikke tilladt uden ophavsmandens samtykke at fremstille eksemplarer i digital form på grundlag af et eksemplar, der er lånt eller lejet.
This text is new. It was part of a change which was effective from December 12 2003. Until then, it was legal to make digital copies of borrowed CDs.
The "full" history is:
Until May 29 2001 (well, actually a little longer since the law was not made effective from Day 0):
Digital copying of CDs without the copyright holders consent was illegal.
From May 29 2001 to December 13 2003:
Digital copying of original CDs was allowed.
After December 13 2003:
Digital copying of your own original CDs is allowed.
The guys at the RIAA will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Holland is only part of the Netherlands. It's actually North Holland and South Holland provinces. Amsterdam is in North Hollland.
:-)
The Netherlands is the whole country, what little there is of it
Dutch is a corruption, or so the story goes, of Deutsch. I've no idea as to the validity of this...
I think much of this discussion about the tax levy, as well as the tax itself, is besides the point.
This is far from the first time we've heard the record industry's "Eeek they're pirating us!" screech - remember when cassettes came out? Ask your grandad what the record industry had to say about the hullaballoo when radio started airing music. And ask you're great-grandad what operetta owners had to say about the invention of the gramaphone. Each "old technology" thought that the new would be the death of it. The marked did indeed change, but this was never so.
What makes the game different this time around is not only the government's "trying to help" in a very undemocratic way (and "the road to hell is paved with good intentions", my grandaddy always loved to say), but also the state of the music industry. it is a wreck.
As far as I'm concerned all this whining and grubbing is for the sake of stockholders only. Music sales are indeed going down the tubes but it's not only for the piracy. Granted many young'uns have been brought up with the "if it's online it's free" mentality, but we all seem to be forgetting one major major detail - sound quality.
When I was a kid I was happy with the sound of a tape recorded from a friends LP - or from the radio - but could I stand that flat muffled quality on my hi-fi today? Methinks not for more than ten minutes, and that's leaving lots of room for the nostalgia factor.
If they really, really wanted to crack down on "piracy" as they say, they would make it illegal to swap music online above a certain bitrate. This would not only draw the line between "sampling" and piracy, but as I suggested with my first adverb, it would most probably even help the sale of "real" music. Think to the "hearing it on the radio" days: Many of those who did and like the song would go to their Dr. Disc and shell out for the album. Mp3's are exactly this for me today.
If the music companies really wanted to get their [expletive]s out of the hole they'd go back to letting people make music instead of trying to mold the entire industry, from creation to sales, to what they think their increasingly younger lemming-audience are most likely to buy.
As for the tax bit: In any democracy, any charge taken from one party can only be justified by the costs it makes for another. This tax law is none of that, as it takes from an indistiguished everyone to deliver to a pre-prescribed... cause. Whether it be for the government's "anti piracy squad" or to the record labels themselves, any such law will but thievery to more than a few - rightful owners of music, for example, who like the handiness of an mp3 player - and thievery it is. I'm not sure who started this ball rolling, but as far as this law is concerned, I see it as one government copying another's (they did it first and no-one complained so it must be OK!) legislation.
Really, to be honest, I haven't the slightest how things should be set straight again. Toss it all and start from scratch, perhaps. I've still got my Fender and a wild hair-do - anyone good on the drums?
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
Fascism and Socialism are polar opposites. In fact, fascism developed in Italy as a direct response to socialist/communist worker movements.
Socialists believe in the inherent dignity of individual man as the core tenet to a successful society. In this, they view government as a tool of the people, a necessary evil entrusted to deliver liberation to common man, often oppressed by those with power. Many Socialists question the role of government altogether, believing that the natural state of man is to live free from all forms of hierarchical rule.
Socialism IS NOT Communism, although Communism certainly stems from socialist principles. This incorrect yet popular belief of many uneducated people, mainly in the US arose from certain agendas being forwarded under a fear of Communism. Communism believes basically in rule of the proletariat, by force. The people as a singular entity, as opposed to the individual becomes the focus. You can see how such a change can make communism a rather hypocritical form of socialism when compared to it directly. The many differing forms of communism speak to this, as do the failures of stalinism and lennism in recent history.
Back to fascism.
Fascism is a belief in the power of the State as natural; above both the (singular) people and the individual. But don't take my word for it:
- Mussolini
In saying this, fascists believe in the power of corporations as a reflection of state power and natural order. A great number of states have flirted with fascism, most of the time to the benefit of the free market.
In saying this, countries such as Japan and the US have economic policies that closely resemble those from fascist Italy. (I'm not saying they're fascist though.) Is it any wonder the support it recieved from prominent businessmen before it's splinter - Nazism - became the face of such unspeakable horror.
Fascim springs from strong business, a weak, propaganda filled media and an unconcerned populace. Socialist states tend to encorage diversity, weaker business and strong safety nets.
Knowing all of that, I'm sure you can now see how ludicrous your initial statement was.
If you're going to pay a tax for it, you should be entitled to it.
Actually, if you had went to the store and bought one of those songs, you might have seen some other things you liked. In fact, you might have been interested in the entire store. So, the price of each song you downloaded is $50,000. You can download one song, but then you owe the record industry $49742.
There's no reason I can't capture this, unless my OS and hardware prevent me. I DO NOT WANT AN OS OR A PLATFORM THAT WILL/CAN DO THAT.
Just like the copy controlled CD's, they only piss me off. For a minute I thought the industry had indeed found an effective way to stop me from listening to my fav. bands, even if I buy their CDs. But no, turns out I can copy them, and play the copies, while the originals don't work in my Linux box, Phillips discman (old) or (again old) Apple PowerMac.
So I just take the originals back for a refund, after all, they're useless to me. And I still have the Album! Bright critters, those industry folk.
This is why audio CDR media costs more than data CDR media -- but you can burn audio to data CDR media, and in fact audio CDR media is hard to find. So, in effect, while there is such a tax nobody pays it.
My city's local library renovation was paid for with state tobacco money. An iPod tax that goes to the musician's guild is at least as legit as a smoker's tax that pays for books.
"Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries!"
I didn't ask to be modded.
I said what I said because everyone is running around screaming MP3 TAX! when it is not a tax on MP3s, it is more or less a tax on portable music players utilizing digital formats.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
OGG is floating point based, MP3 and other similar formats are integer based. This means that, unless they added enough extra processing power (unlikely), you would only be able to play back low bitrate OGGs (if at all). They would need to ship out new hardware to do it. They probably have a contract with whoever supplies the chips.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
1. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures. 2. The Dutch. I think Mr Powers summed it up nicely.
Wasn't my intention. I've had maxed karma for a while now. I really wouldn't care if it droped either, so long as it stayed positive. (going negative incurres posting restrictions)
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Socialism requires government (see my definition, derived from Google's search, above);
Good god, let's not allow google to create our definitions shall we? Socialism has nothing to do with government at all, despite the prevailing opionion of the masses.
The stormy.org source that you quote doesn't return on my search result, but the site seems rather Libertarian (as in right-wing American Libertarian, as opposed to the socialist libertarian, from which the term first emerged); considering their inability to misappropriate terms, I have a tough time crediting them with an accurate defining of anything.
Your entire argument is based on a logical jump linking Government as required by Socialism, which is simply not true. The folks over at wikipedia do a better job than google on this one.
Your definition of socialism is much too narrow, hence your argument suffers.
I suggest some further reading, quite frankly.
Well, you're on the right track. After all, in the US, sharing one file is on par with manslaughter as far as the courts are concerned.
"There are more important things than stopping terrorism. Upholding the Constitution is one of them." - Ars Forumer.
It seems that everyone is missing the point even though they are right on target with consumer rights. But this isn't just an issue of the the bourgeous beating down on the working class, this is a plain out fascist policy.
First let me define how it is fascist by revealing fascist economic: the consumer is not important and should have no rights to protest the will of the corporations because the corporations support the state in ways greater than any individual could.
The intent of this law is obviously fascist in nature--for one it doesnot benefit the greater society in anyway (those that pay the tax, that is) and all the tax money goes to fund the RIAA and their artists. A tax on the people to support a coroporation is a strictly fascist ideal, and I am surprised to see something like this come out of such a usually liberal government. This is truely ashame. Hopefully our Fascist regime in America won't pick up this tactic.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This is cool, I mean yes you have to pay 200 more, but in return you get something that you can hold up in court if they ever try to sue you as proof that you already paid for your crimes. As far as I know this has been used at least once(with blank CD's). If, as i think it is, you basically get a license to pirate in exchange then it's well worth it. And it could almost make a competent buisiness if you cut out alot of people in the middle.
You forgot to label them as mindless jerks...
A relative of mine here in Ontario was in the operating room literally within days of her breast cancer diagnosis. Chemo started after she'd recovered from the surgery (I think, at any rate it was not long after).
Don't believe the lies they tell you. They just want to keep you running on the wheel, paying exorbitantly for private insurance that will try and dick you over when it comes to the crunch. Our way IS better, even if like all systems it has its hiccups. Your health is not a good like your stereo or your car; it is a fundamental part of your human existence, and it should not be subject to your ability to pay, or the whims of the "free" market.
Freedom: "I won't!"
I'll tell ya, if I got charged an extra $260 for an mp3 player as a 'piracy tax'...guess what? I'm pirating all my goddamn music. GOOD JOB!
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
And step 4:
/. after reading this article.
4) #$@%&!!!
Which represents
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
Personally, if it passed, I'd just buy in the US and bring it into Canada
I have absolutely no problem with that. Just so long as I get to buy my drugs in canada. In fact lets set up a program and call it, "Music for Meds". We'll start a website that matches up people who need drugs with people who need an mp3 player. We can exchange shopping lists by email, or by posting on the website. Then we just meet in a border town and make the exchange.
Opportunities multiply as they are seized. --Sun-Tzu
but the Dutch *are* entitled to "pirate" music! only it's not "pirating" because that word implies illegal activity. there is no "sin" - HOME COPYING IS LEGAL!
i wish Americans would stop assuming that just because something is illegal in *their* country, it's illegal everywhere. in the Netherlands, France, Canada, and many other countries, private home copying (including downloading) IS PERFECTLY LEGAL and therefore is not "pirating".
the money charged on blank media goes to pay the musicians for this use of their work. there is no concept in the law that says it is to compensate musicians for being "victims of theft", it is to pay them for LEGAL use of their works.
but that's a bad analogy. the tax (levy, actually) is not to pay for "stolen" items. first, it is *legal* for the Dutch (and the French, the Canadians, and a lot of other people) to make home copies. the levy is to pay musicians for this legal use.
second, copying, even if illegal, is not the same as "theft", where you remove the original from the store. me getting a copy of a song that i would never in a million years have paid money for, does not cost anyone anything.
finally, there are many studies and facts that show that home copying, far from "killing music", actually helps the music industry, by making music a more popular and desirable thing. the music industries' claims of billions in "lost revenue" are simply ridiculous (as if every download is a "lost sale"). since the introduction of cassette tapes, per-capita purchases of albums have doubled. since the introduction of the VCR, a whole new industry has grown, and the movie industry is making more money than ever. since the introduction of p2p, more CDs are being sold than ever before.
yes, overall revenue of the music industry has gone down in recent years, but that is compared to a period in the 90s when everyone was replacing their vinyl record collections with CDs, often buying 2nd copies of the same albums on CD (like i did). also, i believe that the actual number of CDs sold has increased, more people are buying more CDs, and naturally that leads to competition and lower per-CD prices. so the drop in revenue has more to do with Walmart's pricing structure than with p2p networks, which i believe have actually made music more popular and stimulated sales.
equating legal home copying with shoplifting is simply a bad analogy.
well, more specifically, i love the right to make legal home copies without being labelled a criminal. without the RIAA being able to threaten me with lawsuits, supoena my private information, and search/seize my computer.
if this means i have to pay a bit extra for blank CDs, even if i'm not using them for music, i don't mind. it's not very much, only a few cents. it's not the most ideal or fair way to collect the money, but it's better than the alternative of outlawing home copying. and yes, i would willingly pay a few dollars more for an ipod that i'm legally allowed to download music onto. although 200 euros seems a bit steep. in Canada it's only about 15 euros (that has been removed due to a technicality, but will come back the next time they ammend the copyright act).
however i do wish there was a better way of making sure that *all* the money collected really went to the musicians, and not the record labels and lawyers (who are the real criminals in all this).
I hate to pay a "steal" tax. But if I'd pay 258$ steal tax, I'd "steal"....
man, i'm just so amazed how people are brainwashed by the RIAA's "home taping is killing music" and "don't steal music" propaganda, or think that U.S. law applies to the rest of the world.
it is not a "stealing" tax!!!
the law says Canadians, Dutch, and many others can *legally* copy music. the "tax" (a levy, more like a user fee) is to pay musicians for these copies. there is absolutely no concept in the law that the levy is to compensate for "stealing" or any other illegal or wrong activity.
so if you live in Canada, or the Netherlands, just feel free to go ahead and copy all the music you want. you have that freedom!! and don't feel bad about it, it's not stealing, and it's not "free as in beer" because you're paying for it through the levy. and more than that, it's actually *good* for the music industry!!
so relax and enjoy the music!
It's a Slap in the face to every consumer. "We assume your going to steal music so were are going to just charge you up front"
no, it's more like "you have the legal freedom to copy music for your personal use. however, we are going to charge extra on your ipod to help pay musicians for this legal use".
you're telling me i can download what ever i want..
yes. you can legally download, or copy from a friend, whatever you want. that's what the law says.
it's not *stealing* because:
1. it's legal
2. the musicans are *paid for their work* (NOT *compensated for theft*), through the "tax".
so why would anyone pay for music through itunes?
i'm not exactly sure.
i would, if they provided a really good service. that means:
- a well-organized and researched site that helps me find the music i like, even if i don't know the filename.
- lets me preview full songs (perhaps at a lower bandwidth) before i buy them.
- guaranteed and consistent high-quality files.
- fast downloads.
- not crippled by DRM - i can be sure i will still be able to play my music in twenty years from now when apple has gone out of business.
- a reasonable price, relative to the competition of p2p networks and blank-media levies.
i would gladly pay a premium for the convenience of all these things, rather than waste my time wading through annoying crap on p2p networks.
once the music industry wakes up to this, they will have more of my money. if they can't compete or offer a product i want to pay for, they deserve to go out of business.
In Canada, the tax is on all mp3 players. Depends of the capacity. As in germany. Though, we have a 15$ top.
actually the mp3 player "tax" was struck down in court last year. it will probably be back again soon though, they have to change the wording of the law first.
But why has all this money go to the corporate major label? (Socan in Canadan, RIAA and so on) Same with CD-R, DVD-R....
SOCAN isn't a label. it's a royalty-collecting organization. any musican can join and register in order to receive royalty payments. you don't have to be on a corporate label. also, there is no "tax" on DVD-R because it is not considered an audio recording media. the levy (and the freedom to copy) only applies to music.
Also this tax pretty much legitimises copyright violations or in theory should.
yes, it actually does.
well to be more accurate, Dutch law (and Canadian, French, etc.) says that home copying of music is simply not a copyright violation in the first place.
the law also sets up a system for collecting royalties, much in the same way that radio stations pay royalties for broadcasting.
it's not about compensating victims for a crime. it's about paying musicians for the legitimate use of their work.
it's true that some people will pay this charge, who don't do home copying. and that kind of sucks i guess. still, i think it's a better system than making home copying illegal. i for one welcome the new tax overlords, if it stops the RIAA cops from breaking down my door and seizing my computer because i shared some music with my sister.
Yah, whatever. Doofuses like that are why the fine arts are becoming the marginalized province of society matrons, homosexuals, and incompetent but opinionated academics.
Crap like that doesn't speak to average people. It tells them that there is one kind of music for them and another that is decidedly not for them.
And guess what, some of that carries over to politics. One kind of politics for an effeminate, decadent fringe, and another for the regular guys.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
You sound like the old movie buffs who bitch about how movies are crap to how they "used to be", except they are comparing Stuff That Sucks To Stuff That's Good - they're comparing Casablanca to Biodome, Hitchcock to Micheal Bay.
This same argument is used against Canadaian healthcare - comparing the problems it has to the best the U.S. system has to offer, but that is a poor comparison. How about talking about patients who were denied treatments by their HMO's and suffered for it.
They could probably find room for one somewhere in the Power5 CPU.
Before we get too upset, let's look at the potential here for curing societies ills if we run with this concept (charging for wrong doing before it's done and compensating the "victims").
Look at the studies of lost work due to solitare. Just form an association of business owners (of course, the business would have to be of a certain "bigness" to qualify for membership), charge a, say , 200% tax on any games (or maybe operating systems that supply those games) that could be played at work, to be used to compensate those business owners for their lost productivity. Lost profits are a thing of the past!
Or maybe when a politician is elected, he could be taxed using a formula to predict how much he might make from shady campaign contributions or outright graft and use the funds for a tax rebate to his constituancy. The check might be enough to pay the tax on those games!
"They have gun control in Cuba. They have universal health care in Cuba. So why do they want to come here?"-Paul Harvey