France Planning Non-Windows Tablet Tax?

An anonymous reader writes "Lots of countries around the world have private copying 'levies,' which are effectively taxes on products that store data, which is put into a pool to be handed out to copyright holders, as a sort of payment for the 'copying' that individuals do. This was quite popular with blank CDRs, for example, but has been expanded in certain countries to cover hard drives, iPods and other such devices. Over in France, they're looking to expand the levy to tablet computers, but apparently if that tablet computer is running Microsoft Windows, it will be exempted from the tax. iPads and Android-powered tablets will have the tax. Why? Well, the argument is that if a tablet is running Windows, it's really a 'computer.' But if it's running one of those 'mobile' operating systems, suddenly it's a brand new category. Not surprisingly, makers of Android tablets — including the French company Archos — are not at all happy about this."

Comments

"Planing?"

[Ferzerp]

Was the initial design of the tax too rough or too thick that it needed planed?

Re:"Planing?"

[Anonymous Coward]

"needed planed"?

Grammar Nazi, I am disappoint.

Re:"Planing?"

[JonySuede]

something you don't want to be when you grow up !

Re:"Planing?"

[PatPending]

It's like a Soup Nazi.

Re:"Planing?"

[Creepy]

That was grammatically correct, I believe, just spelt wrong. And yes I used spelt intentionally - it is the equivalent of spelled despite Firefox dictionary not recognizing it OotB (it is a rarely used, yet still correct form). Spelt is also a form of wheat my grandpa used to grow in the US, mainly to sell to the German community in South Dakota, though the majority of his wheat was bread grain like most farmers.

Planed was obviously incorrect spelling, but was corrected by the time I read the headline.

Re:"Planing?"

[Fnordulicious]

As a real linguist, I feel I should point out that there are dialects of American English which have a “need Verb-ed” construction which is approximated by “need to be Verb-ed” elsewhere. Thus one can say “the dishes need washed” or “the dog needs walked” rather than “the dishes need to be washed“ or “the dog needs to be walked”. This construction is perfectly grammatical in such dialects, and is possibly spreading so that it will become grammatical throughout much of North America in the next few generations. There’s no semantic difference apparently, it’s a purely syntactic distinction.

It *is* however dialectal at this point, and hence should be avoided in most written contexts.

Those cheese eating surrender monkeys fail again

[Iphtashu Fitz]

So because it's a computer it's unable to distribute copyrighted materials? Now that is some pretty twisted logic right there.

And what the hell does a "clean operating system" mean?

From the Google translation of the French article:

"Windows 7 will not be affected by the fee for private copying, which by definition is adopted touch pads "provided with an operating system for mobile devices or a clean operating system".

Need a computer to do the copying

[GreatDrok]

Devices like the iPad are just holders and consumers of media. A Windows PC is the usual culprit when it comes to actually defeating copy protection and doing the duping. This seems bass ackwards to me as they should be taxing the computer, not that they should be taxing either.

Re:Need a computer to do the copying

[betterunixthanunix]

Devices like the iPad are just holders and consumers of media

No, the iPad is a tablet computer, albeit one that Apple designed to thwart attempts by its users to control. Hard drives and SSDs are holders of media, people are consumers of it, who use software to aid them in that consumption. Dividing tablet computers into different classes based on what some corporation thinks you should use it for is not a game I want to play, and it is frankly counter-productive. The sooner we start calling the iPad what it is, the better.

A Windows PC is the usual culprit when it comes to actually defeating copy protection and doing the duping

As are a number of other systems -- routers, switches, etc. -- which operate the Internet and enable the existence of file sharing networks and hosting services. Why leave out all of the other computers and operating systems involved in the process? Why single out "consumer" computers?

This seems bass ackwards to me as they should be taxing the computer, not that they should be taxing either.

Now there I agree with you. Frankly, I think it is time to start asking why we are continuing to placate the recording industry. Nobody shed a tear for all those typewriter companies, or those film manufacturers, or those buggy whip producers and horse breeders, when their industries became obsolete. They either learned to adapt and play by the new rules (e.g. Kodak seeking other ways to make money on photography) or they went out of business. Why should we not expect the recording industry to do the same? The age of CDs is long gone, we just continue to cling to it because the record executives are whining about how awful it is that all these horrible computer users are destroying their business. If they want to stay in business, they need to find a new way to make money on recorded music, rather than trying to fight back against the new technological reality that is here to stay.

From TFA comments

[C_amiga_fan]

"Good for microsoft. Legislation is an easier way to get rid of pesky competition than work is."

That's about right..... and no this isn't just an anti-MS slap. Lots of Megacorps do the same thing, like how McDonalds bought an exemption from the health insurance requirement. Don't play on an even field IF you can get lawmakers to give you special exemptions or favorable laws.

Re:From TFA comments

[PatPending]

McDonalds didn't "buy" an exemption; the Department of Health and Human Services said it granted waivers in late September so workers with such plans wouldn't lose coverage from employers who might choose instead to drop health insurance altogether.

I found it interesting that you chose to mention "Lots of Megacorps" but failed to mention all the unions that "bought" their exemptions too! And, oh, by the way, waivers are available until 2014.

From FactCheck:

Q: Has the Obama administration allowed corporations to "opt out" of the new health care law?

A: No. The government has granted more than 200 waivers, but these merely give companies a temporary delay before being required to improve the coverage of cheap, bare-bones plans they currently offer.

Not buying it

[DoofusOfDeath]

This has the smell of something that's so moronic that (for real) it will never get very far.

That, and I'm sure makers of non-Windows devices will be exercising the EU court system like it's going out of style.

Re:Those cheese eating surrender monkeys fail agai

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, I think you fail more than them if you run an article through Google Translate and then complain about the writing because you don't understand something.

Re:Apple Tax

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

So people have to pay an Apple Tax for owning a iPod XL (err, I mean iPad)? Yeah, I can live with that.

Until it extends to a product you wish to have.

taxes are needed to fund executive pay

[Anonymous Coward]

Canada has had a copying-tax for many, many years. It's worked very well for the executives of the RIAA and the CRIAA:

Canadian Recording Industry Faces $6 Billion Copyright Infringement Lawsuit

Monday December 07, 2009
Chet Baker was a leading jazz musician in the 1950s, playing trumpet and providing vocals. Baker died in 1988, yet he is about to add a new claim to fame as the lead plaintiff in possibly the largest copyright infringement case in Canadian history. His estate, which still owns the copyright in more than 50 of his works, is part of a massive class-action lawsuit that has been underway for the past year.

As my weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) notes, the infringer has effectively already admitted owing at least $50 million and the full claim could exceed $6 billion. If the dollars don't shock, the target of the lawsuit undoubtedly will: The defendants in the case are Warner Music Canada, Sony BMG Music Canada, EMI Music Canada, and Universal Music Canada, the four primary members of the Canadian Recording Industry Association.

The CRIA members were hit with the lawsuit [PDF] in October 2008, after artists decided to turn to the courts following decades of frustration with the rampant infringement (I am adviser to the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, which is co-counsel, but have had no involvement in the case). The claims arise from a longstanding practice of the recording industry in Canada, described in the lawsuit as "exploit now, pay later if at all." It involves the use of works that are often included in compilation CDs (ie. the top dance tracks of 2009) or live recordings. The record labels create, press, distribute, and sell the CDs, but do not obtain the necessary copyright licences.

Instead, the names of the songs on the CDs are placed on a "pending list", which signifies that approval and payment is pending. The pending list dates back to the late 1980s, when Canada changed its copyright law by replacing a compulsory licence with the need for specific authorization for each use. It is perhaps better characterized as a copyright infringement admission list, however, since for each use of the work, the record label openly admits that it has not obtained copyright permission and not paid any royalty or fee.

Over the years, the size of the pending list has grown dramatically, now containing over 300,000 songs. From Beyonce to Bruce Springsteen, the artists waiting for payment are far from obscure, as thousands of Canadian and foreign artists have seen their copyrights used without permission and payment.

It is difficult to understand why the industry has been so reluctant to pay its bills. Some works may be in the public domain or belong to a copyright owner difficult to ascertain or locate, yet the likes of Sarah McLachlan, Bruce Cockburn, Sloan, or the Watchmen are not hidden from view.

The more likely reason is that the record labels have had little motivation to pay up. As the balance has grown to over $50 million (Universal alone owes more than $30 million), David Basskin, the President and CEO of the Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency Ltd., notes in his affidavit that "the record labels have devoted insufficient resources to identifying and paying the owners of musical works on the Pending Lists." Basskin adds that some labels believe addressing the issue would be "an unproductive use of their time."

Having engaged in widespread copyright infringement for over 20 years, the CRIA members now face the prospect of far greater liability. The class action seeks the option of statutory damages for each infringement. At $20,000 per infringement (the amount owed on some songs exceed this amount), potential liability exceeds $6 billion. These numbers may sound outrageous, yet they are based on the same rules that has led the recording industry to claim a single file sharer is liable for millio

Hadopi and copy tax...

[FranckMartin]

What I don't understand, you pay a tax on any digital media to compensate for artists loss of revenue and then you go after people for copying materials via hadopi.

I think we should have one, but not both?

Sounds to me like double jeopardy.

What do you think?

Re:Hadopi and copy tax...

[Kjella]

Sounds to me like double jeopardy.

What do you think?

No. Double jeopardy has a specific legal meaning, and this is not it. Some forms of private copying may be legal but taxed while others can be illegal under Hadopi, at best you have a conflict between two laws/regulations that need resolving. In any case a tax is not a legal punishment, and double jeopardy means being punished twice by the legal system for the same crime.

Re:What is Apple's iPad OS?

[cyranix]

ahem... If windows makes it a real computer, I'd love to know what the "entirely new category" is...

Re:Those cheese eating surrender monkeys fail agai

[Lunix Nutcase]

And what the hell does a "clean operating system" mean?

It means you're relying too heavily on a shitty machine translation that just picked the first meaning of "propre" it could find.

Re:I've said it before, I'll say it again

[DoofusOfDeath]

Fuck the French.

If you mean literally, absolutely!

and this is why...

[chaboud]

This is why these taxes were ridiculous in the first place. Take money from one industry or product to give to another for the crimes that might leverage the first's? This should immediately freak any sane uninterested party right the hell out.

It is really not the place of good government to make "crimes" (unproven) right by stealing from one industry to placate another. If your government does this (and yours probably does), your government is corrupt.

Define Computer

[Archangel Michael]

If you design a piece of hardware, capable of running Windows 7, but DOESN'T is it a computer? What if it runs Windows 7 in a VM on another OS?

I hate governments more each day.

Re:What is Apple's iPad OS?

[h4rr4r]

The non marketing name for the OS it runs. IOS is actually what runs on Cisco Routers, apple pays to use that name since it fits the i$thing theme they have.

Re:Apple Tax

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I am not too worried about that.

Yet.

You should think a little bit more about wishing for things like that. Every single thing you said "does not apply" to only means "does not apply today".

Re:Those cheese eating surrender monkeys fail agai

[Lunix Nutcase]

Or it can actually just mean "proper" as it is a cognate of the English word. This would also make sense since many people do view a mobile OS as not really being a "proper" computer OS considering most mobile OSes have reduced functionality compared to what most people are used to on a full-blown desktop.

Re:Those cheese eating surrender monkeys fail agai

[Anonymous Coward]

In the french text it says "d’un système d’exploitation propre". In this context "propre" means "of it's own". So if it has an operating system for mobile devices or it has it's own operating system (so develloped with the touchpaddevice in mind) it is taxable. Since windows seven is develloped for personal computers this supposedly does not apply.

The voters get the government they deserve

[n6kuy]

... even in France.

iOS is not Mac OS X

[perpenso]

What is Apple's iPad OS?

That should matter here.

iOS, formerly iPhone OS, is the operating system for iPad. It is related but different and distinct from Mac OS X. The French could make a similar exception for Mac OS X as they have for Windows 7 and iOS and Windows CE would still be taxed.

Re:iOS is not Mac OS X

[TheRaven64]

Kind of. It's the same XNU kernel as desktop OS X, running more or less the same userland, including the window server. On top of this are the same CoreFoundation (C) and Foundation (Objective-C) APIs for userspace programmers. Just like desktop OS X, your communication with the window server is via the CoreGraphics / Quartz framework and related frameworks like CoreAnimation. iOS uses the same Objective-C runtime as desktop OS X, but does not support garbage collection. It omits a number of legacy APIs, such as the Carbon[1] frameworks for porting old MacOS Classic apps (and the Classic layer for emulating MacOS 9). Instead of the NeXT-inherited AppKit framework for interacting with the GUI and related services, it provides UIKit, which is largely a slimmed-down version of AppKit. Quite a few classes in UIKit are directly equivalent to AppKit ones, just with s/NS/UI in the source, although others (such as the ones dealing with multitouch) are new in UIKit and some (like NSTextStorage / NSTextView) have no direct equivalent in UIKit (you use the lower-level CoreText framework if you need nontrivial text layout in iOS).

So, basically, it's the same OS with the legacy stuff ripped out, anything that won't work in a small memory footprint ripped out, and a new UI toolkit. It's far less different to desktop OS X than Ubuntu is to Android.

[1] Apple is a bit confused about what exactly Carbon is. Some versions of the documentation call all Apple C APIs (including CoreGraphics and CoreFoundation) Carbon, while the newer ones only use Carbon to refer to the Mac Toolbox based APIs.

Re:Apple Tax

[MickyTheIdiot]

First they came for the iPods, and I did not speak out --
Because I didn't own a crummy iPod

Then they came for the Android phones, and I did not speak out --
Because I don't like Google and I don't have a smart phone

Then they came for the flash drives, and I did not speak out --
Because I still use CD-Rs, so screw it

Then they came for all non-Windows devices -- and Bill Gates just laughed his ass off.

This is important...

[benjamindees]

This is one of the most important things for supporters of Free Software to understand: businesses are subsidized by the tax code. All businesses, even the terrible ones. Especially the terrible ones.

It doesn't matter which country you're talking about. The economies of nearly every Western government are equally hosed up in the same ridiculous way. Tax agencies assume that everything an individual purchases is consumed, and that everything a corporation purchases is an investment. As far as taxing authorities are concerned, a Windows computer is an investment. It is capital. It fits the obsolete model of production that governments know: labor + capital == profit. When you buy anything as a business, you write it off your taxes and pat yourself on the back.

A non-corporate, non-business operating system, on the other hand, is a toy. It's a distraction, a hobby. Governments consider it not to be an investment, but a consumer item. Same goes for an Android phone. It's assumed to depreciate in value. A Windows phone, though, is for business. It's assumed to produce value. Nevermind the fact that most Windows phones are unproductive toys, or that most Windows computers are inefficient cludges. Nevermind the fact that free and open source software can be orders of magnitude more efficient and productive than proprietary, closed source software. Windows is a capital investment. Free software is a toy.

The result should be obvious. Responsible, non-consumer individuals are punished. Wasteful, non-producing companies are subsidized. Long term investments in things like open standards are discouraged. Short term speculation is encouraged.

It really is as simple as that. Governments don't consider it further. The idea of a Windows computer running a nuclear power plant, therefore, seems perfectly natural. Debian? A toy. Red Hat? One of the most expensive operating systems ever. They are 99% the exact same code. One is a tax write-off produced by a legitimate company. The other is a toy produced by a bunch of hobbyists. In the US, we see all of these crap small businesses that can no longer afford their rent. Corporate real estate is about to take a dump all over itself. Banks are over leveraged, and it turns out they own no real assets. They were subsidized. They bought a bunch of consumable junk like Windows computers, shoddy houses and uninsulated office buildings, wrote it off as a brilliant investment, and waited for the profit to roll in. Unfortunately, everyone else did the same, all the real assets went overseas, and now the US economy is utter crap.

Unix tablets

[tepples]

my server is Unix (does not apply), my netbook is Windows (does not apply), and I have no use for a tablet.

Until the netbook and tablet sectors merge and someone tries selling (GNU's Not) Unix tablets. Oh wait, this has already started to happen. Then once your netbook breaks, the successor to your netbook might be a tablet.

Re:Article Title

[matazar]

Not to provoke further, but an I don't consider an iPad a 'real computer'. It's running the same OS as an iPhone.
I also wouldn't consider a tablet running Windows Mobile xx (or Windows Mobile CE) a real computer anymore than my phone (which is not a real computer).

If they are taxing iPads, they better be taxing Windows Mobile devices, along with Android devices. If they aren't taxing Windows 7 (XP/Vista) devices, then they shouldn't be taxing systems running Mac OSX or systems with whatever the Google operating system is called nor anything sold with Unix/Linux on it.

The tax is stupid, but as long as it follows the same rules across all platforms then people should be upset about that, not comparing iOS to Windows 7...

Of course, the linked article doesn't actually give versions of windows this applies to, which is an important point.So I assume this is just to start a flame war because someone said their iPad is not a real computer...

Re:Those cheese eating surrender monkeys fail agai

[Yvanhoe]

Actually France is showing the finest mix of incompetence and corruption in the latest internet/copyright laws.

Re:Those cheese eating surrender monkeys fail agai

[dbIII]

And what the hell does a "clean operating system" mean?

No grep, touch, strip, finger, mount or fsck.
That's why Apple's OS is X rated.

Re:What is Apple's iPad OS?

[Lobachevsky]

Not to mention Android isn't an os, it's a platform involving the linux os, some device drivers, and libraries. Moreover, Android and iPad prevent copying because device manufacturers heavily lock those devices down.

Re:The intent would seem to include Win7

[Smask]

Sarkozy isn't an MS shill, he's a shill for the french equivalent of the RIAA.

Sarkozy is a MS shill. Remember when MS bought the ISO standard? The French ISO members were supporting ODF, but were ordered by the French government to vote for MS. The boss of MS France and Sarkozy are old friends.

Re:What is Apple's iPad OS?

[LaRainette]

No it doesn't.
Actually it's not at all a question of true computer or not since the guys designing the piece of legislation couldn't tell the difference between a computer and a microwave hoven, it's more about who enforces all the "anti-piracy" policies and technologies ( such as DRM rofl...) and who doesn't.
Microsoft Does so they get a free pass, the others don't so they have to pay.
This is an OUTRAGEOUS example of how french poilitics is becoming more and more like American politics, big company lobbies to have a stupid and unfair law, other big companies sue, big company conter-sues etc...
Meanwhile the consumers get fucked in the ass, and the citizen pay for all the legal crap...