Taxes on hard drives

[Alan Olsen]

On Wed, 14 Feb 2001 George at Orwellian.Org wrote:

> May Man wrote:
> #
> #    Practically, did the "tax" on blank tapes ever "work"? Of course not.
> #    Metallica and Eminem did not see meaningful revenues. The tax
> #    vanished into the maw of the government, the RIAA and ASCAP
> #    bureaucracy, and the pockets of the shake down artists.
> 
> I once asked a musician here in NYC what became of the money.
> 
> Yeah, the local unions got it. ("shake down artists"?)
> 
> That's as close as it got to the musicians.
> 
> Yet another thing that should be put online
> for integrity: its distribution.

Of course, the actual "starving musicians", the ones who can really use
the money, will never see it either way.  The bigger groups will argue
that since they are more popular, they deserve more of it.  By the time
they get done feeding at the trough there will be nothing left.

The things I find most interesting in the way of the non-traditional music
distribution channels are the things I *cannot* buy.

-- Bands from countries that do not speak english.  (I have found some
great stuff from China, Sweeden and Finland, for example.)

-- radio shows not being distributed for various reasons. (Copyright
vagueness, lack of interest by the owners, or general lack of interest by
the record companies.) Try finding copies of "I'm Sorry I'll Read That
Again" for example.

-- Things being censored by way of copyright.  (The owner is preventing it
from seeing the light of day for some reason or another.) This does not
happen as much in music, but does happen alot in movies.  (A local theatre
shows a number of movies withdrawn due to copyright or other legal threats
on a regular basis.)

-- Bands you will hear no other way.  (Bands not to the taste of some
corporate middle manager.)

Of course none of these things even gets mentioned in the rush to  squeeze
even more money out of the music-buying public.

Of course, later this sort of tax will be extended to the software
industry with Microsoft getting the lion's share of the money.

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