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Download Taxes As a Weapon Against File-Sharing
An anonymous reader writes "An examination of a new "digital downloads" taxation law in Washington State suggests that files downloaded via file sharing programs may be covered by the law — meaning that you may be expected to pay taxes based on 'the value of the digital product ... determined by the retail selling price of a similar digital product.' Thus, if you were to download music or movies and not pay the taxes, would you be liable for tax evasion charges? How much do you want to bet the RIAA will push exactly that claim?"
Don't forget to buy your drug tax stamps while you're at the post office.
Technically whenever you order a product from another state and the seller doesn't withhold sales tax on the purchase, you're required to pay that sales tax in your state. Nobody does this -- so technically nearly everyone is guilty of this kind of tax evasion. How is this any different?
But you didn't download the song. You downloaded several chunks of random (encrypted) data which could be assembled into a song. The chunks didn't even all come from the same place.
Also, if these downloads are illegal or part of illegal activity, there's a conceptual issue of being able to tax them in the first place, and secondly, an issue with the state using funds derived from the proceeds of crime.
There are 1.1... kinds of people.
It occurs to me that if this happens, it has the potential to be applied to anything else that's covered by copyright. Consider the results.
If you check a book out from your local library and read it, you'll be liable for the sales tax on the retail price of the same book (at a book seller of the prosecution's choice).
If you leave a newspaper (hey, remember them?) lying around in your house and a visitor reads it, they'll be liable for the sales tax on not just that paper, but for a subscription to the newspaper.
If your local school has textbooks that they let students study from, those students (or their parents) will be liable for the sales tax on the price of the books.
If a store is playing music audible from wherever you may be (sitting at a table in a restaurant, using an elevator, walking by on the sidewalk), you are liable for the sales tax on the album that contains the music that you heard.
Since everything is by default copyrighted as soon as it's "published" (whatever that actually means), any time you read anything from any source or hear anything that was recorded, you will be required to learn the retail price for the copyrighted work, and pay the sales tax on it.
We've been in the habit of being a bit bemused by the fact that, when the authorities don't have any evidence against some supposed criminal, they customarily just charge them with tax evasion. But this is no longer just something that big-time Mafia capos and politicians have to worry about. Now we can all be tax evaders, by merely reading something somewhere and neglecting to determine its retail sales price so we can pay the sales tax.
And I can make you a criminal by merely putting copyrighted text somewhere that you read it, or by putting recorded sound somewhere that you hear it.
It can be fun to think of what might be the ultimate motive for passing laws like this. Look up the phrase "nuisance law" for further explanation.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
They'll make a lot of money off downloads of OpenOffice.org... which is similar to the outrageously priced Microsoft Office.
It isn't the government's fault. It is the people. Collectively we make unreasonable demands and expect government to magically meet those demands. We want the best roads, best fire departments, best police, etc, etc etc, but we aren't willing to do anything ourselves about the problems.
In Hawaii there was a bridge out that lead to an important tourist area, no bridge meant no business. The government said $4 million and 2 years. The locals people got together and did it in 8 days for "free" with donations from the community.
Our government is only "out of control" because we have demanded that it fill every whim and desire we have.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
If computer software is not a digital good, what the hell is it? Do legislators live on a planet even remotely similar to ours?