Taxes on hard drives

[Andrew Tonner]

On Fri, 16 Feb 2001, Sampo Syreeni wrote:

> On Wed, 14 Feb 2001, Tim May wrote:
> 
> >(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.

Many suggest that, when the decision in the Betamax case came along, this
freedom was granted de facto for any devices, with or without the
AHRA, making the consumer elecronics industry's caving-in over SCMS
and device taxes look pretty pathetic.
 
> Somehow I think no one even thinks about creating such a provision, here in
> Europe...

Many of the blank audio recording media taxes in place in Europe
actually do have a provision like this.  Similarly, the
recently-implemented Canadian blank audio recording media levy (which just
happens to be the one I know best for some reason... ) comes with a change
in copyright law making legal any personal (copies your use only) copying
of audio recordings from any source (even those you don't own).

The associated only recovers "losses" associated with this change in
the law. This creates a wierd situation where I can legally borrow a
friend's recording and make a copy, (and thus this falls under the
scope of the levy) but not have them make the copy and give it to me
(which doesn't). 

Generally, I disagree with laws like this one, because some of those
paying the levy are not necessarily benefitting proportionally from the
new freedom. (In practice, most of the people "benefitting" don't give a
wet slap one way or the other whether the copying they're doing is legal).  

Just my $0.02...
-aT