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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 ($258), all of it going to the record industry's copyright collection agencies. And they call file sharers thieves?"
I hate to pay a "steal" tax. But if I'd pay 258$ 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.
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 ;-)
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.
The US doesn't have a CD-R/MP3 player tax like other countries. This proposal is just absurd.
mmmmmmmm.....iPot.....
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
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).
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
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.
You know what? If I bought an mp3 player in Netherlands and got taxed under the new law, I would feel it's my legal right to copy, distribute and share all my mp3s on p2p networks and also to download as many as I like. Because, after all, I already paid the music industry.
But the whole thing is just utterly ridiculous. I don't download any music of p2p now, but I had to pay a tax like this I'm sure I'd start just to stir things up a bit.
Btw. or I could buy the iPod in some other country.
Is it just me or does it seem as if this is gonna give the dutch citizens the feeling that they're entitled to pirate music. I know if I lived there this would upset me so much that I'd never have the urge to buy another piece of music in my life. How does the RIAA, et al. get this sense of granduer that they're "owed" all this money. They're charging innocent customers for the sins of others and I know my views are not original towards them (especially here on /.) but they have gotten ridiculously out of hand.
"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
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
addendum: I shouldn't say another piece of music. What I should say is; another piece of RIAA owned music. I wouldn't want to be a hypocrite and charge the innocent independent artists for the sins of the RIAA and their various counterparts.
"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
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.
Well, that's nothing. Wait for the music industry for taxing your ears. Because after all, you can use them to listen to illegally copied music!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Interesting that you should mention such a bizarre term as "illegal downloading".
As of June 1st, downloading copyrighted material without permission will also be illegal in Sweden. Progressive indeed...
(Distributing (spreading, uploading, selling et c.) someone else's intellectual property without permission has naturally "always" been illegal here.)
Help savingAmigaOS and a free PowerPC market
Please keep in mind that:
1. This is just a proposal, and already heavily critized.
2. It is legal in the Netherlands to make private copies of any audio/video, EVEN IF YOU DO NOT OWN AN ORIGINAL! This means effectively that there's no such thing as illegal downloading of songs/movies in the Netherlands; it's legal. The levy system is the opposed measure set up to make this legal.
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
As said: DOWNLOADING of audio/video is legal here. Uploading however is not. Placing stuff on a public webserver would fall under the uploading category.
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.
We already have to pay a levy on blank CDs in most European countries today, same as it was with blank magnetic media before.
And of course, iPod sales in the Netherlands would suffer a huge drop... in such a small country, you can never be far away from the border.
You know what? If I bought an mp3 player in Netherlands and got taxed under the new law, I would feel it's my legal right to copy, distribute and share all my mp3s on p2p networks and also to download as many as I like. Because, after all, I already paid the music industry.
But think about the enormous economical losses of this tax. People will stop buying MP3 players in the Netherlands. Instead they will be buying in Germany or Belgium. Same thing for the DVD tax: I buy all my DVD_Rs from Germany, not in the local shop.
Most resellers are very afraid of this kind of taxes.
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.
how do you spell "something from Nederlands"?
:o)
"Dutch".
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
I'd completely go for the iPod tax.
Now I've paid for music, it's no longer illegal for me to go out and download it.
I know that's not really how it'll work legally, but I've always strongly felt that if any standard tax is passed on devices for listening to music, then anyone in possession of such devices are free to access all the music with out limit. Why else have a tax if not to remove the individual purchase rate.
I'd gladly give up $200 one-time for indefinate no-further-charge unlimited access to all the RIAA (or whatever it is in the Netherlands) music.
All that said, it is a mockery of justice to have ANY corporation able to levy a tax on citizens for any reason. If this was a tax so the government could afford to cover the legal costs that *it* is incurring, then it falls well within what most standard taxes are for. But if it's a tax that presumes purchasers of a consumer device are going to use it for illegal ends, and compensate the, erm, "victims" in advance, then you've just created a "Guilty until proven innocent" model.
Personally I have a 40g iPod which is about 2/3 full. Every single bit of data on it is something which I have a right to place there. I do believe in paying for music (though actually most of what I have on there is audio books -- which I've paid for). This sort of law would charge people like me, who are wholly operating within our rights within the law, for the crimes of others, with the presumption that I'm too weak minded to resist the temptation to break the law.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
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
Actually, that's becoming a very popular model. It has been in use for traffic rules violations for many years now (you have to prove yourself innocent), and there are several other areas where the Dutch government wants to apply it. The most recent example is for "unwanted intimacies" (ongewenste intimiteiten) at work. If the secretary files a complaint that the boss is harassing her, the boss will have to prove he didn't or otherwise he'll be considered guilty.
Musicians don't die. They just decompose.
On an interesting sidenote, for example Hungary already has this proposed dutch system, and it sucks.
There is a lovely organization called Artisjus, which managed to put a tax on every cd, dvd, memory card (like the ones used it _cameras_). This essentially doubles their price, and they are doing this on the grounds that it's a compensation for the losses in piracy. Now, the further outrageing thing is, that this is only about music. They collect the money and check the current music market from _their_ statistics and distribute _some_ of the money that way.
The bad thing about is that they are assuming that people are breaking the law in advance! The bad thing is that they don't assume people make backups of personal data, burn any other legal things, which _does_ happen. Also, if people burn software or movies to the cd/dvd, shouldn't the movies industry get compensation by the same logic? Or if i burn a linux dvd, shouldn't i GET MY MONEY BACK? It's all or none. Another outrageous event was when they added the memory cards, which are 90% used in cameras. Sure, someone will pirate mp3s in that...
The irony in that, people would assume that they can pirate legally then, since they got the price paid for it already, well, wrong. There is another nice organization in Hungary, called ASVA, which goes after even legal "piracy". In hungary you can download music and videos, as long as you don't upload. Still, this ASVA goes after people, not just those who for example run ftp servers, but the common downloaders aswell. They "teach" and "lecture" the police about the dangers of violating IP, and basically bribe the police. It is a sad and outrageous legal state.
This is honestly a fucked up system, which is there in Hungary, and i don't wish the dutch to have this, further more, when we have an example that some people have done it already, so don't discard that proposal on "it won't pass" or something right away. This thing needs to be fought, and burned to the ground. Also some EU action against that kind of thing happening in Hungary would be good.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Yeah, it's legal, but is ain't a hundred percent legal. I mean you can't log into any computer, open up a p2p app, and start downloadin' away. You're only supposed to download in your home or certain designated places.
Those are p2p bars?
Yeah, it breaks down like this: it's legal to buy it, it's legal to own it and, if you're the proprietor of a p2p bar, it's legal to sell it. It's legal to carry music, which doesn't really matter 'cause -- get a load of this -- if the cops stop you, it's illegal for this to search you. Searching you is a right that the cops in Amsterdam don't have.
That did it, man -- I'm fuckin' goin', that's all there is to it.
You'll dig it the most. But you know what the funniest thing about Europe is?
What?
It's the little differences...
!hoD
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?
Paper is not an audio storage medium.
Ever heard of sheet music?
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.