Dutch iPod tax

[Martz]

Doesn't sound good for you dutchies!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/27/netherlands_ipod_tax/ (or Slashdot posts)

For every GB of capacity an ipod/mp3 player has, there will be a tax of €3.28. So for a 20 or 40GB ipod, thats an extra €65 or €131 respectively that will be going straight to the music labels to make them even wealthier.

Personally I would be furious if this was passed in the UK, and I expect it to do so now that NL has set the scene for taxing data storage.

Maybe the way to get around it, is to sell an MP3 player without any storage (so 0 GBs of space) and then purchase the hard disk or solid state media seperately. Either way it sucks that you guys will have to pay for the priviledge of music twice if you buy it legally.

 

[Cassius]

omg, the recordindustry never stops to piss about, they're just working against theirselves to stop piracy

 

[Martz]

Ice: please post something constructive, or even look into the fact that Germany pay a tax on hard disks already to fund music copyright infringement.

 

[Wintermute]

Nah, it's a good thing.

A much more sensible way to behave, imo.

Assume that it's only fair that musicians etc get paid for what they do - unless we want to just complain about not being able to thieve any more.

There are two models to adopt -

The US situation, where we have the record companies prosecuting children and families for downloading music... (and, now in the UK, people are being taken to court for thousands of pounds)

The flip side is the radio model - we don't pay for radio, and radio stations don't pay for every song they broadcast - they pay a flat licence, and record what they broadcast.

Think about it - how much better would it be if nobody got sued for downloading music, because the artists had already been paid formally?

A tax on blank DVDrs and CDrs, which then means nobody gets sued for making a copy of a CD/DVD (unless they try to sell the copies of course)

A tax on Ipods, but then the freedom to copy your music around the place withotu any further penalties?

Nah, sounds to me like the Dutch are going about this *exactly* the right way.

 

[Martz]

Well, i have done further reading - and this hasn't been passed yet - so it isn't law, it's just being suggested.

Wintermute: I disagree personally with you saying it is a good thing. The Netherlands, in this example, have a law which doesn't make it illegal to download music protected by copyright. It is however, illegal to upload copyright protected music to the 'net or other people.

With the addition of this law, it would still be illegal to upload or share music with other people. So not only would you be paying at least once for music by tax on your hard disk, your mobile phone, your laptop and each CDR you buy - you will also be doing it illegally since there is no talk of legalising downloads from the internet if this law is passed. It's simply a way to scrape more money from people. It is not a solution to the file sparing/P2P problem at the moment.

And I believe that in this example, it threatens to ruin the dutch IT economy - who the hell will buy an MP3 player or hard disk from NL when you could get a train to Germany in a couple of hours and buy it even cheaper, including the price of your traveling expenses.

No, this is one of the worst laws that I have seen suggested, and is rediculous on many many levels. A flat tax across all data storage systems would be fine.

Oh, and we are all copyright holders in our lives, we own the copyright to own own works regardless of their inflated comercial value. Should that mean that the Movie, software and pr0n industry should be due a cut of this, since their works are infringed upon? There has to be some sensible limit to this, or every single technology out there will end up with a tax to sustain someone elses failing business model .

 

[Wintermute]

The complete fix isn't in place, certainly - you need both the payment on one side and the freedom on the other... but this is a step in the direction.

There was a suggestion recently of introducing a tax on ISPs, that then acted as a shield for users and ISPs... they would pay a fee per user (which would be passed on to the end users), then endeavour to track the amount of data downloaded using P2P systems... essentially treating movies, music etc as bulk data.

The idea was to get to the same situation as the radio system, where the licence fees are divided up according to average air-play.

Personally, I'd love to see a more open system where ISPs would actually run Bittorrent Super-seeds of popular content, and host their own BT trackers, tracking what was downloaded - on the understanding that the monthly fees for accessing the tracker get divided up for the producers/artists according to how popular their stuff was.

Thing is, I am not looking at this in isolation - the "ipod tax" on it's own is not a good thing, but as part of a move to mroe liberal copyright regimes it would be an excellent step.

 

[Rob1000100]

What it really comes down to is data storage is not exclusive to the music industry, to tax it for such a cause would be wrong and theft on their part (maybe not legaly but ethically). If the tax is on products which are exclusive to muisc then fair enough, but then who gets the money? The band thats just setting up and is not with a record label will not get any of the money. The internet has made things better for upcoming artists, they no longer need a record label. *Cutting short, its tea time *

Just be glad your not Canadian...

http://www.sycorp.com/levy/