CDR: Re: Germans to tax PCs for Lars

Roy M. Silvernail sc4tal19 at idt.net
Wed Sep 6 14:29:10 PDT 2000


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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 at idt.net
DNRC Minister Plenipotentiary of All Things Confusing, Software Division
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