-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 03:56 PM 9/6/00 -0400, Tim wrote:
The U.S. have done this many times, of course. In particular, the Home Recording Act of 1991, or thereabouts, which slapped a tax on blank tapes and let home recording folks copy as much as they wanted (so long as they don't sell the tapes). (A friend of mine has over 4500 CDs copied digitally onto DAT and CD-R. I'm just a piker, having only about 500 CDs copied onto DAT and CD-R. Why _buy_ a CD when our libraries have tens of thousands of CDs available for borrowing and copying?)
Interesting to note that the same type tax applies to "music CD-R" blanks (of the type required by the Phillips-Magnavox style music CD burners, which won't burn onto a data blank). Last I looked, such blanks were still >$1.00, where data CD-R blanks are down to ~$0.39. And, of course, computer-based burners have no problem burning audio onto a data CD-R.
And from a practical standpoint, this bad tax (bad in the decorrelation, nonmarket sense) also leads us in the wrong direction. Instead of the recording companies figuring out technological and market solutions, they are relying on "men with guns" to collect taxes and, hopefully, with enough lobbyists in Bonn and Berne and D.C., to dribble some of these taxes back to the recording companies.
Where they doubtless stay. It's pretty well known how little artists make from their corp-owned recorded works. - -- Roy M. Silvernail [ ] sc4tal19@idt.net DNRC Minister Plenipotentiary of All Things Confusing, Software Division PGP Public Key fingerprint = 31 86 EC B9 DB 76 A7 54 13 0B 6A 6B CC 09 18 B6 Key available from pubkey@scytale.com I charge to process unsolicited commercial email -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGPfreeware 6.5.8 for non-commercial use <http://www.pgp.com> iQEVAwUBOba3JmCl9Uka85MxAQEAywf/XMMC0nvBoIzJ1ulRanBATG8S75tlHbFp wW1D93v8UqRdGsi5kRvrKfB5dfU/NIQg8hWxGnw0KhsgEtNbCzJUkdaIbAfDL9vm FkWQEChe3KHLSzc+OhFwq632heuTKSkAyCmt9qNg8S3BeLs/BXgVywZZLmEDeJB9 JfmevrxALZ+917v/GteD1jusFOZM8PonKfYtuxhEwW3hGXOo2AmQm1Hj/drZjXkS bD1EEN0opWkoq0RqXOqDeDVZHDA6owkUiPXCULabznLqTMpbFt43d3Gcrk0zhaOH VQMbzvKZ1z4bFt+6CZqpZVLmZiDcVL2e9fwCCFkFlQNo1uPPhh0AfA== =eWI3 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----