Austrian Collection Societies Want A 'You Must Be A Criminal' Tax On Hard Drives
from the pay-up dept
techflaws.org points us to the news that seven different collection societies in Austria are demanding a private copying levy on all hard drives (Google translation of the original German). Since seven different collection societies are involved, and each needs to get a cut, when you add all their fees up -- it means that all hard drives under 500 GB have 21.60 euros added to the bill, while hard drives over 750 GB get a whopping 43.74 euros added (it's not clear what happens between 500 to 750 GB). There's also some weirdness where hardware vendors who give up their right to sue can have the levy reduced by 2/3 -- which makes the whole thing seem even more sketchy. Apparently, similar plans have been rejected in the past, but the collection societies have claimed "times have changed." And, the response should be: so it's about time you learned to change as well.
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Filed Under: austria, collection societies, hard drives, levies
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Hard drive license
Otherwise, what the hell would they be paying for?
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Re: Hard drive license
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Re: Re: Hard drive license
FTFY
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Re: Re: Re: Hard drive license
The question still remains, though... Since you're not getting any sort of license to the societies' music, why the hell should you pay anything?
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Re: Hard drive license
You own a car in the UK, you pay road tax. You speed and get caught you pay a fine, get points on your license, go to prison.
You buy a hard disk, you pay the "content owner" tax. You download copyrighted material without permission, you get fined (sued), lose your internet connection, go to prison.
This is commonly referred to as - having your cake and eating it.
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Re: Re: Hard drive license
On the other hand, with this proposed hard disk tax, both the tax and the fine would be for the same thing.
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Re: Re: Hard drive license
The road tax pays to support the upgrades and maintenance of the roads. In the case of hard drives, you're already paying for that when you pay for the hard drive itself (without any tax involved).
If you speed you pay a fine - but you don't pay that price if you follow the speed limit. In this analogy, you're paying for a speeding ticket even if you don't speed.
Let's say a user doesn't download any music (e.g. if it's a hard drive for a private corporate server). Yet they still have to pay music collection agencies. How is that in any way justified?
The accurate analogy is: You have to pay a "speeding ticket" - whether you speed or not - no matter if you're a car, a truck, a train, a plane, or simply crossing the border on foot.
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Re: Hard drive license
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I wonder how this will work. In the European Union, you have the concept of free movement of goods i.e. you don't have to pay import duty if its from one EU member to another. So, if I live in Austria and order a hard drive from Germany, do I have to pay a tax?
Plus, where will it stop? Are they eventually going to run out of devices to collect on, and then say, "Let's tax paper too! People can write...oh...lemme think here...song lyrics! Yeah, lets go with that!"
Eventually, they will no longer be an entertainment industry. With all these taxes, they will no longer have the incentive to produce new content. They will just point at a device, say you and I owe them money because we might be pirates, and collect it. What would you do in their situation? Write a new song every once in a while, or release one, and collect a tax for it forever, regardless of the fact NO-ONE listens to your song?
Plus, how do these collection agencies determine how to split the money? Oh wait, I forget, they don't. These agencies have been exposed in the past as keeping the money they collect.
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Re:
It can be arranged the other way around - every HD sold in Austria (meaning by an Austrian company) will be taxed and the tax will be paid by the seller.
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The cost to the seller of paying this tax will then be tacked on to the selling price of the hard drive...so in the end, Average Austrian Joe still has to pay the tax.
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Old dog ... new tricks ...
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Sliding Scale?
So they’re driving up the costs of hardware, not solving the "problem" of infringement, saying to the consumer you're a criminal and this fee pays for your infringement which encourages more infringement, and making larger hard drives (to store all of the infringing files you paid for with this fee) more attractive.
This is a brilliant idea!! I’m sure it’s going to help them in the long run.
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Imagine the smuggling operation that's about to form...
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ENOUGH
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Re: ENOUGH
Just sayin'
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Re: Re: ENOUGH
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Re: Re: Re: ENOUGH
A car is a good analogy for copyright, except that it is not easily copyable, needs constant maintenance, uses up fuel, and can smash you under several tons of fast-moving metal.
Ok, maybe it is not that good of an analogy after all.
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Re: Re: Re: ENOUGH
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Re: Re: Re: Re: ENOUGH
Wait....
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Where does it end?
They should have a Bank tax on guns, because some people use them to rob banks. Some people pretend to have guns in their pockets as well, so the tax should also extend to:
- pens
- pencils
- bananas
- toy guns
- fingers
Don't forget other items such as knives, baseball bats, golf clubs. And a car tax, since getaways are often made in cars.
I'm sure there's more. Convenience stores should also be able to get a cut.
Some people don't pick up after their dogs when they go. Just fine everyone with a dog, much simpler than going after the actual offenders.
I could go on, but I think the point is made.
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Re: Where does it end?
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Re:
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Re: Re: Hungary is a Paradise
And who likes it? Those people, who convinced the politicians in the early 1990's that this is necessary, and they get this neat association which has legal power to decide how much you have to pay. The minister for culture is always their puppet. Nobody would pay for their 10 holidays a year otherwise.
ps. There is a single good thing in this mess: you can download music/movies etc. for *private* use. But what is the price? You have to pay the fee for a memory card which you are using in your camera.
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Hard drive tax
Politicians and bureaucrats will come up with even more creative ways to tax.
Hey, your brain is like a hard drive, so why don't we tax it's storage capacity?
Let's see, 2 trillion billion neurons... Hmmm... It should be a fee of about $500,000. So, let's span that out over say a 75 year lifetime and voila! You pay $6,661 a year because some copyrighted song that you despise might be playing in your head and some idiot thinks you are violating some bozos rights to rip us off as much as they possibly can.
By the way, I work for a label and I believe in giving the devil his due but this is getting downright ridiculous.
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Re: Hard drive tax
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The industry that trades in imaginary goods, have imaginary threats, keep moaning about imaginary harm and want to get paid for imaginary work.
F'ing unbelievable.
The next Uwe Boll is coming out of Austria for sure.
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FO
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Re:
Like a human brain?
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There is even a litte black market of non-imported-in-Italy-but-somewhere-in-the-EU disks sold in small shops. This is barely legal but can save you 20 or 30 euro on a disk that costs 80 euro.
And no, you do not get to download what you want.
And to add insult to injury, the levy is given to only one collection society that shares it only with the top-40 musicians of the last year. No video, no independant authors, no one else.
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talk to Stepehen Harper
up next for real is the copyright law bill c32 in canada even stricter then the DMCA and ACTA treaty....
end of the net and it will mean as people catch on LOADS just dropping it
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The Canadian Levy was bad
I've heard that the Canadian Levy is supposed to be paid out under the radio play formula. I've never seen anything definitively saying that creators have gotten paid out of the money that's been collected. The result has been that CD's have become more expensive than DVDs. The justification is that it is supposed to help finance creators, but if it helps anyone outside of the copyright collectives, it's the Top 40 as suggested by Anonymous Coward.
The actual Independent musicians, the ones who it ought to be for, the ones who actually distribute their music online and don't appear on the radio, not only don't get a piece of the action, they have to pay the levy when they are burning CDs to sell (or even promos to give away!)
Many Canadians believe that the Levy means we can copy movies as well.
There was a suggestion by Charlie Angus, the one Canadian politician who seems to understand this stuff, that the CD Levy should be expanded to cover all storage devices. Our Minister of Heritage (who blocks citizens from following his Twitter feed) very emphatically said that this "ipod tax" was not going to happen.
Meanwhile our current government is attempting to put through Bill C-32, a new copyright law (which appears to have been written by the MPAA/RIAA/USTR/CRIA) that will be worse than the DMCA as suggested by NAMELESS.ONE. When they aren't doing that, they keep ACTAing along.
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In Soviet Russia
Russian Collecting Society (RAO) and Nikita Mikhalkov's Russian Union of Right-holders (RUR) are now in the battle for the Grand-Prix of Copyright -- the right to legally collect the already infamous copyright tax from all importers of blank CDs, HDDs, flash drives, electronic devices (MP3 and DVD players, cell phones, etc.), computers and whatnot. The estimated amount of fees is about $100 million a year. This includes 1% tax on the imported devices and 3% tax on blank drives.
The two contenders claim they're acting in accordance with the Civil Code. They are awaiting a decision by the Rosokhrankultura, Russian government's "culture heritage" protection agency, that has to choose, which organization is to reap the benefits.
Read more here: http://j.mp/9EfJIw (Google Translation).
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Spain
In a series of cases, Spanish courts have ruled that file sharing for private use is legal. In 2006, the record industry's attempt to criminalize file sharing were disappointed when Judge Paz Aldecoa declared it legal to download indiscriminately in Spain, if done for private use and without any profit purpose.
Taken from this wikipedia entry. The small thought of "well, they deserve some money from what they have produced" is gone, as they are already taking money from me.
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Re: Spain
I actually think Spain's model is an OK one. Levy the media, but allow all non-commercial use as a condition of that levy.
Obviously, it's a stopgap measure, but at this point I'll take what I can get.
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