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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 ;-)
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
1) Charge a ridiculous tax on iPods
2) Profit!
Wait a second, something's missing here.
Another good reason to use OGG... *ducks*
not 'pass' tax. Hasn't been passed yet.
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.
mmmmmmmm.....iPot.....
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
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.
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.
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..."
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.
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).
Since this isn't an iPod specific law, why is this in the Apple section?
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
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
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
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.
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
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.
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 $4000 tax!
While they're at it, why don't they just tack on a 10 cent tax per sheet of blank paper...maybe the book industry should claim that the reason sales of books are down is because of Internet file sharing.
Guess it's time to start marketing OGG players?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Translation of the nu.nl article for the English speaking crowd.
WOERDEN (city in NL) - Big IT companies such as Apple, Sony and Philips took action in the Netherlands against the plans to add a copying levy for mp3 players. Within two months such a levy is to be expected, so said B. Taselaar of ICT Office, the industry organisation that represents the companies.
At the moment there is a proposal for a levy of EUR 3,28 per Gigabyte of data storage. This proposal has been made by 'Stichting Thuiskopie' according to ICT Office, which is responsible for the collecting and distributing of payments to copyright holders for the copying of blank audio carriers.
An iPod music player from Apple with 40 Gigabyte of data storage would increase in price with EUR 131. This is unacceptable, according to ICT Office, also because introduction into multiple European countries looms on the horizon. The industry organisation thinks that IT companies will in the future choose to introduce new products first in the United States and Asia. New developments will pass by Europe, with all consequences for the Netherlands electronics sector.
(c) ANP
Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai
So, I bought my car in the Netherlands. They even have higher taxes on those, than here in Austria.
I paid my tax in austria and came away with a saving of somewhere in the 3000-4000 EUR (4000+ US$).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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?
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!
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Honestly, universal health care scares me a bit. I had cancer last year, and I'm on an email list of people with the same cancer. The people on the list from Canada have huge waits just to see doctors... Some of them had to wait a month to get a biopsy, then another 2-3 months to actually start chemo. I had my biopsy the same week the xrays found tumors, and I started chemo less than 2 weeks after my biopsy. My cancer was already at a very, very advanced stage - if I'd had to wait another 2-3 months to start chemo, I could have died. If universal health care comes with those kinds of problems, I don't want it.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
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.