No way! They've been doing it for a while in Spain and now blank CDs/DVDs cost at least twice more: The SGAE (local RIAA) even managed the government to pass the law with retroactivity and lots of family stores went broke facing canon (CD tax) bills of $50000 and up.
The only ones that sell untaxed blank media are the chinese stores (free from taxes because China "asked" Spain to be so) and... the pirates. They buy and produce their CDs/DVDs en masse elsewhere.
What's worse: Because their experiment was a success and the socialists are in power, they next version (canon v2) to be approved by the end of this month is intended to even tax the desktop printers with a 20% because, they argue, they can be used to print covers. It will also tax hard drives, mobile phones, digital cameras, memory cards... everything you can name.
If you think letting "just one" tax in is worth it, remember this case. It only takes a good lobby from a powerful sector to turn it into almighty by the government's greed.
From the way things are now, I'd say the main dogma of the left is to give each and every person the same exact value; whilst the dogma of the right is to give each person a different value according to his/her abilities, knowledge, etc. This would amount to a janitor, an sports star and a rocket scientist getting the same exact pay.
Both systems can be socialist: the left would rely on "the regime" to equal everyone out (like in Cuba) and the right would also rely on "the regime" to evaluate the "worth" of everyone (like fascism). Still only the right can be liberal which is not the same as libertarian.
Libertarians have been a radical branch of the left that oppose the system as it is: with its traditions, its dogmas and its taboos. In fact, for many libertarians the "liberty" they struggle for is just freedom from work whilst still being fed by the system.
Liberals, on the other hand, look for a diminished state to uphold a simple set of laws. They want the interaction among citizens to depend upon a few rules and to have individual contracts for whatever the rules don't cover. In fact, liberals hold the conviction that each law passed by the state is just an attempt to regulate a distortion caused by another law that was passed before. The obvious flaw in this way of thinking has to do with the question: "Which basic rules to write down".
Right now in Europe there's lots of intellectuals that have made a small fortune by working in arts, the government, NGOs, etc. which lean strongly to the left. In Spain they're called progres or leftists-on-BMW. They use to live en grande and get along with the bourgeois and still blame the rich people or the big corporations. They are exactly the kind of people that use MS Office to write long articles against Bill Gates, and many of them push for the mandatory use of open software in every level of the government by sending mails through MS Outlook. They've become a caricature of leftism, as shown by the Sokal affair.
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No way! They've been doing it for a while in Spain and now blank CDs/DVDs cost at least twice more: The SGAE (local RIAA) even managed the government to pass the law with retroactivity and lots of family stores went broke facing canon (CD tax) bills of $50000 and up.
... the pirates. They buy and produce their CDs/DVDs en masse elsewhere.
... everything you can name.
The only ones that sell untaxed blank media are the chinese stores (free from taxes because China "asked" Spain to be so) and
What's worse: Because their experiment was a success and the socialists are in power, they next version (canon v2) to be approved by the end of this month is intended to even tax the desktop printers with a 20% because, they argue, they can be used to print covers.
It will also tax hard drives, mobile phones, digital cameras, memory cards
If you think letting "just one" tax in is worth it, remember this case. It only takes a good lobby from a powerful sector to turn it into almighty by the government's greed.
From the way things are now, I'd say the main dogma of the left is to give each and every person the same exact value; whilst the dogma of the right is to give each person a different value according to his/her abilities, knowledge, etc. This would amount to a janitor, an sports star and a rocket scientist getting the same exact pay. Both systems can be socialist: the left would rely on "the regime" to equal everyone out (like in Cuba) and the right would also rely on "the regime" to evaluate the "worth" of everyone (like fascism). Still only the right can be liberal which is not the same as libertarian. Libertarians have been a radical branch of the left that oppose the system as it is: with its traditions, its dogmas and its taboos. In fact, for many libertarians the "liberty" they struggle for is just freedom from work whilst still being fed by the system. Liberals, on the other hand, look for a diminished state to uphold a simple set of laws. They want the interaction among citizens to depend upon a few rules and to have individual contracts for whatever the rules don't cover. In fact, liberals hold the conviction that each law passed by the state is just an attempt to regulate a distortion caused by another law that was passed before. The obvious flaw in this way of thinking has to do with the question: "Which basic rules to write down". Right now in Europe there's lots of intellectuals that have made a small fortune by working in arts, the government, NGOs, etc. which lean strongly to the left. In Spain they're called progres or leftists-on-BMW. They use to live en grande and get along with the bourgeois and still blame the rich people or the big corporations. They are exactly the kind of people that use MS Office to write long articles against Bill Gates, and many of them push for the mandatory use of open software in every level of the government by sending mails through MS Outlook. They've become a caricature of leftism, as shown by the Sokal affair.