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Spain Adds 'Copyright Tax' to Blank Media
Poker Forums writes "Just read on Zeropaid that Spain has recently voted in compulsory copyright licensing, levying a tax on all blank media. This includes cd-r, dvd-r, flash media, printers, scanners, cell phones, everything. The tax will be collected by the government and 'given to the copyright holder.'"
open source and fsf and gnu? If someone buys soem cdr's and burn copies of free software, who gets paid?
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
If your business model can't survive, get the government to legislates mandatory taxes that get passed onto you. I believe this concept is called either Communism (or similiar controlled economy) or Welfare. I don't know which.
I would have people make copies of my photos/minor_software_project/whatever on CD-R and then sue the Spanish RIAA if they don't send me my portion of payments. It's really odd that they represent ALL copyright holders. Like they represent ALL musicians, even the ones not signed up with RIAA companies. This RIAA racket has to be taken on and bought down in flames like the Hindenburg one day.
What about business uses? If I am cutting DVD's to be shipped to a client that contains blueprints, materials analysis results etc.. I have to pay the tax or bill my customer for it most likely? If all you put on your recordable DVD's are photos's of you family and home movies you have to pay the tax, or do you get to collect the money since you have the creative rights to your home movies? What determines who gets money? Does anyone with a movie camera get to collect?
Business are not allowed to carry out a private copy, and so the tax won't be applied to them. Hell, find someone who works for his own (my father does) and ask them to buy media for you ;)
My 0.02 cents
Following history, revolutions and revolts, society usually seems to get to a certian point before collectivley it gets sick of tax burdons, restrictions on speech and creativity and then either a revolt or a revolution is staged.
In a digital age where we are dealing with Intellectual Property, digitial censorship and hidden taxes it makes me wonder just what excatly a revolt or revolution against it would be like?
I can't imagine thousands of people marching through the streets finding government officals and decapating them, but you would think we will eventually get to a point where everything just gets too much.
We are now in the 21st century and are beginning to see the downsides of all the technology we have adopted, in the late 90's it was promosing, now we are seeing new emerging ways to control us, deny us of fundamental rights and governements seem to be finding new ways to write laws and profit from it.
I thought the same thing when similar taxes in other countries were passed. If I'm paying for it when I buy blank media, shouldn't I be able to download or copy anything I want since I've already paid for it.
As a canadian who pays a similar tax on media, I have to disagree with your assesment.
This tax is one step further *away* from loosing your right to copy audio files. A step away from legally protected DRM.
And if you don't like the tax, buy harddrives. They are cheap, less likely to fail, and a lot easier to use. I have 30 movies and 8 *seasons* of television shows on one of my harddrives. Heck I'm too lazy to convert movies to XVID, I just dump them out raw. I have a flash based mp3 player and I set the auto-play options for audio cd's on my PC to just rip the thing. I view CDs/DVDs as an incovenince I am glad to be rid of.
Considering the pending obsolecence of shiny platic disks, this seems like a good thing for Spain. Enjoy the freedom to do what you want with your data while you have it.
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what about if you pay the tax, does that then give you the right copy whatever you want? you've paid the copyright holder for the privilege.
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17 USC, Chapter 10, Subchapter A, Section 1008 specifically states:
No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings.
Section 1001 defines a "digital audio recording medium" to be:
any material object in a form commonly distributed for use by individuals, that is primarily marketed or most commonly used by consumers for the purpose of making digital audio copied recordings by use of a digital audio recording device.
In more common language, this refers to audio/music CD-R discs, which are made to work in digital audio recorders. These discs are different from the more common data CD-Rs, in that they contain special digital markings (standard data CD-Rs won't work in digital audio recorders). In addition, by law a royalty has been paid on this blank media. These royalty payments are in turn distributed to copyright holders (see Section 1006 of the law cited above). They usually cost slightly more than data CD-R discs, but they can be found for less than $0.50 each.
So go ahead, make copies onto music/audio CD-R discs, even give copies to your friends. You can do so legally and without any moral problems - you've paid for the right to do so. (And the RIAA fought for this law. Thanks, RIAA!)
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Because some non-infringing uses do, nonetheless, in theory lessen the revenue available to the copyright holder?
One of the purposes of copyright is to ensure a stream of revenue that can used to fund the creation of the works copyrighted. You can do this by making draconian laws that make it impossible for people to use any copy of anything without the copyright holder's permission, or you can loosen the laws a little but do something to ensure the creators lose nothing from the liberalization of the law. When CDR copying became a substantial phenominem, the imbalance was seen to be upset, and many governments are using a compulsory royalty system to rebalance the system rather than "the other options" which are either to see a net decrease in revenue for copyright holders, or to introduce draconian laws banning CDR copying.
I'm sure many Slashdotters would rather see a net decrease in revenue for copyright holders, but that isn't a universally held opinion. There are many in the content industry that wish that the government would butt-out, and simply pass on all responsibility for licensing content to them, banning unlicensed CDRs. This is a middle ground that allows the technology to continue to exist while ensuring the content industry doesn't suffer for it.
Now watch me get modded down for stating the obvious, again.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Since the SGAE represents *all* copyright holders and collects funds on their behalf, we should expect the FSF (as the copyright holder of vast amounts of GNU software) and Linus (as the primary copyright holder for Linux) to receive a proportion of that income.
I actually believe that if there is a branch of the EFF in Spain, they should argue exactly this. Does the law explicitly state what determins is a copyright holder?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.