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Vendors Sue Dutch Government Over Media Levies
An anonymous reader writes with news that hardware vendors aren't too happy about expanded levies on media. From the article: "Hewlett-Packard, Acer, Dell, and Imation are suing the Dutch government over new levies on hard disks, smartphones, tablets, and MP3 players that are meant to compensate the music and movie industries for losses caused by home copying. The entertainment industry estimates lost income of €40 million, which is much too high, according to the hardware companies. 'That amount is excessive and completely unfounded,' they said. The €40 million also incorporates damages for illegally downloaded music and movies which, according to the companies, legally cannot be recovered by a levy on devices. Furthermore the Dutch government established a levy on all devices including devices for professional use that are not used for private copying, they said."
In the US the entertainment industry attributes losses of more 40 million to a single file-sharer.
Many people in the Netherlands now buy their electronics in Germany, where it's much cheaper thanks to less tax and the absence of this ridiculous levy.
-- Cheers!
Music and Movie Industry has a broken model, so everyone has to pay? How does that make sense?
If your product doesn't compete, it should fail. There is a rise of Indie music and movies which in many cases are better than the Main stream equivalent.
in canada the new copyright bill makes it illegal to download music then you go buy some blank cdrs and still pay a levy
its kinda like thieving X2 they screw ya in court with fines and jail then make ya pay for blanks regardless what you put on em
even if it was just a back up
So the same then apply to digital camera's and art galleries ?
Or all cars should be sold with some money for the banks as they could be used as part of a bank robbery ?
Or all guns should be sold with money going to victims of gun crime as they could be used for injuring people
Or all paper should be sold with money going to the government as it could be used for tax fraud...
Me thinks this list is endless
According to the article:
Presently, the Dutch see downloading and copying movies and music for personal use as “fair use” and not punishable by law.
I wouldn't mind paying an additional $2 for an MP3 player if it made all the ridiculous RIAA / MPAA lawsuits go away.
It is a ridiculous levy as you pay for your right to make home copies of the media you own. But really it is just a way to get money in the pockets of the entertainment industry that are the recipients of what is collected through these "Auvibel" taxes. Here in Belgium it was the works of Fientje Moerman of the liberal party OpenVLD that started this shenigans with their auvibel taxes. OpenVLD has a lot of ties with the entertainment industry or media in its whole.
... ) or people selling blank media on ebay with lawsuits for tax evasion, etc.
You pay for example 50 eurocent of taxes on an empty DVD. But 99% of the DVD productions are protected by anti copying measures. It is is illegal by Belgian law to circumvent those measures so in reality you can't execute that right which you pay for and that goes into the pockets of the entertainment industry...
When they started those taxes justice went in high gear (as a victim of abuse I can tell you that for other cases they aren't that fast... ) and threatened every single shop (even in our neighboring countries for example as a Belgian it is impossible to order blank media in the UK, germany,
In the end they totally destroyed the industry or sales of blank media in this country and a lot of people bought external hard drives that didn't had those taxes at the time. Now you pay on a HDD or usb stick larget then 1GB, 9 euro's / 11 dollars.
And the levies go to the artists of course. A whole 0% of them. Yup, the artists are totally taken care of.
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
They have a broken model, but is backed by their Politician/Law Maker teamsters with their broken laws.
The Media Corporations lobbies the corrupted Law Maker and the Law Markers make law favorable to the Media Corporations.
It is not like either parties are going down any time soon.
Imagine if every industry ran this way:
Oil companies could crank up gas/petrol prices to hundreds of dollars per gallon, and then impose levies on bicycles and shoes when people opt for alternative travel methods.
Montsano and their ilk could sue every small farm operation out of existence, and force price increases on all trowels, potting soil and miracle grow
In any other field, this practice would be instantly laughed out of court, but somehow the entertainment industry is a sacred cow?
Between the extra judicial punishment doled out via 3 or 6 strikes policies, draconian DRM schemes that trample fair use, government institutions being co-opted to enforce copyright under the guise of national security, John Doe lawsuits, secretly negotiated international treaties, SOPA, false DMCA takedowns, price fixing, perpetually extending copyright, vertical integration of ISPs, refusal to adapt to new technology, widespread use of accounting methods that never pay artists a dime and now these new taxes on hardware, I don't feel sorry for the entertainment industry and their mostly imagined losses due to piracy. If anything the media companies owe the citizens of the world reparations for the violations of their rights committed in the name of stopping piracy.
Fuck these guys.
The media companies do NOT compensate artists with any of the money collected, so their principal reason for getting this money is invalid.
As for their lost profits, study after study proves that file-copying actually increases their sales.
Screw them, we need to get rid of these leeches.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Actually, Stichting BREIN is a different kind of evil.
Although it's difficult to say which is more bad, I'm inclined to say that the RIAA is certainly worse.
Whereas the RIAA will happily target individuals and use their techniques to coerce people into paying a settlement fine rather than going through lengthy and very expensive litigation - and generally having the defendant end up paying great multiples of the settlement amounts... ...Stichting BREIN tends to target the entry points to distribution. I.e. TPB and various other torrent (indexing) sites, MasterNZB and various other usenet (indexing) sites.
The reason it's difficult to say which is worse is that while the RIAA goes after dead people, old grannies without computers, cats, etc. they do tend to 'only' target those people and there's no great erosion of fundamental concepts of copyright and the internet.
Stichting BREIN, on the other hand, has successfully managed to get courts to force ISPs to block sites, in one case even being allowed to add IPs to the list and the ISP must add those to the block list (though they can contest it if they feel the adding of an IP address is in err), has successfully managed to expand things from direct copyright infringement to the 'facilitating' argument (and continues to expand that), can happily get government officials to come along with them on 'raids' (no court order) making those they're raiding feel like they really have little choice but to allow e.g. computers to be taken, etc.
That said, BREIN isn't really the one to be targeting in this case. They just tend to catch the most flak (for the reasons outlined above). Stichting de Thuiskopie, SONT and Buma/Stemra (on the side of wanting levies) and STOBI (on the side of blank media producers/etc.) are the main players here , along with then-minister Fred Teeven for actually getting things signed into law a long time ago (an zero Euro levy, which formed the bridge to making it a non-zero Euro levy - whereas going directly for a non-zero Euro levy would have met with great resistance).
Note that what is described here as 'home-copying' (the law defines it along the lines of 'a copy made solely for own practice, study or use') here in The Netherlands includes downloading of both music and movies. But explicitly not software or sheet music.
However if you upload the same copyrighted works, it is against copyright law. But you can borrow someone's copy, then make a copy for your own personal use.
But using bittorrent for copyrighted works is a problem, because you generally upload as well.
However, I don't know of a single copyright case here against someone at home uploading a few songs or movies on bittorrent.
http://www.thuiskopie.nl/uploads/files/jaarverslag%202011.pdf
In 2011 they collected (regular collection, minus a collection of historic funds) E6.740M, and listed as distributable E4.723M
Perhaps also of interest: E0.774M of their total funds goes to fighting piracy (through contribution to BREIN - see other post).
Now, whether that E4.723 actually ends up at the artists rather than the deeper pockets of record companies, is another matter entirely. But then the artists did sign over the rights to those record companies.
The industry organisation that runs this scam in Sweden wants to extend it to mobiles phones and other devices. I hope they win this one in The Netherlands as it would encourage them to go after the copyright maffia in other countries as well.
If I'm paying taxes to the government, then I have the right to engage in the practice.
I don't think y'all get the gist. If the gubment collects the tax to compensate the artists, then they, their representatives and their agents no longer have anything to cry about, regardless of what I or anyone else does with the technology. Share, copy, duplicate and frollick at will!
Dancing in the streets ensues when everyone realizes that Holland has freed their people from the grips of the evil media companies by legitimizing the inevitable use of digital technology to duplicate and distribute tunes, movies and text.
The only thing left is intelligence, and for some reason that's harder to clone.
... Hewlett-Packard, Acer, Dell, and Imation, thank you!
Although, there goes my excuse for downloading stuff illegally without feeling bad about it :/
One of these days I want to get a bunch of my friends together and start printing our MP3s to see how long it will take all the various *IAAs around the world to start levying a tax on printer paper.
Who's with me?
If they are going to put on a tax like that, then it has to be because copying and downloading for personal use is allowed. However, as far as I'm aware, Holland has been on the forefront in blocking PirateBay, and prosecuting downloaders (with a couple of U-turns, if I'm not mistaken).
It is of course not surprising that the music industry want to have their cake and eat it, however, that seems to be the logic argument the those tech companies should go for; choose only one: Media tax or no fair use.
Now the fight isn't about consumers against the RIAA & MIAA, but other corporations are starting to feel the pinch of the bullshit that the RIAA and MIAA have been representing.
This is good, because sooner or later it will hopefully wake up everyone to that fact that the RIAA and MIAA need a new business model, one that doesn't involve suing consumers.
Be seeing you...
http://www.scribd.com/doc/114019639/Brandbrief-techbranche-aan-Teeven-over-Thuiskopie
In English, link published on http://www.webwereld.nl/