Taxes on hard drives

[David Honig]

At 08:09 PM 2/14/01 -0800, Tim May wrote:
>Why should someone who is not downloading music or images (or 
>whatever it is the tax is allegedly meant to support) be taxed thusly?

Yep.  This is terrifically offensive.

>(But some of us had the last laugh. The "Home Recording Act" tax came 
>with the proviso that unlimited "non-commercial" copying was now 
>unprosecutable. A friend of mine copied more than 4500 CDs onto about 
>a thousand DAT tapes. The DAT tapes were purchased in bulk from a guy 
>in Nashville for about $2 per 4-hour (highest quality) tape. Now, of 
>course, CD-Rs can be purchased in bulk for about $0.28 per 80-minute 
>blank, so my friend is now making mostly CD-Rs. He makes extras for 
>me, for the cost of the materials, so I have about 500 CDs "for free" 
>that are perfectly legal under the Home Recording Act. Of the 28 
>cents per blank CD-R, how much is going to Limp Biskit?)

I'm not convinced this is legal[1], but if it is: then Napster tools that
work only for "buddy lists" would also be untouchable.  With what
constitutes a "buddy" decided by some judge, eventually.

I realize this is just a historical spur; the fate of copyright in
the era of crypto-equipt networked pcs etc etc...

[1] Not familiar with the HRA in detail... yes you can make personal 
backup or other-media copies for yourself, but distributing them while
you retain copies yourself?