Dutch Pass iPod Tax 873
An anonymous reader writes "The Register is reporting that in a few short months a proposal to tax all MP3 players in the Netherlands will become law. The levy taxes 3.28 euros ($4.30 US) for every gigabyte of capacity. This means a 60GB iPod Photo will be hit for an additional 196 euros ($258), all of it going to the record industry's copyright collection agencies. And they call file sharers thieves?"
258$ "stealing" tax?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate to pay a "steal" tax. But if I'd pay 258$ steal tax, I'd "steal"....
wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think SOMEONE didn't quite think this through. I don't doubt that consumers will simply revolt, either running across the border to purchase their electronics, or just not buying them, until some idiot politicians receive enough letters and this whole measure is canned.
story seems dubious (Score:2, Insightful)
Big Deal (Score:4, Insightful)
and: people will just buy them by mail order, because there is no customs check inside the EU.
How about an MP3 player with a drive bay? (Score:5, Insightful)
When I first read this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Like the article says, what happens when we get 100gb, or 200gb ipods (it'll happen eventually), then we're talking about not just doubling the cost of an Ipod but tripling it.
Don't they realise this amazingly exorbitant taxation will only lead to illegal importing? And I thought the U.S. Government had lost its way....
Levy *and* copyright infringement (Score:5, Insightful)
But, I honestly don't see how they can justify having a levy on media that can be used for assumed copyright infringement, and at the same time seek redress for copyright infringement - isn't the levy supposed to be a sort of "shared" payment for the copyright infringement that occurs?
I mean, they can't have both. Either they have un-levied media, and sue copyright infringers. Or the other way around. Having both is getting paid twice for the same supposed loss.
And that looks like fraud to me.
Seems wrong on so many levels (Score:3, Insightful)
Headline should read 'Propose' tax. (Score:5, Insightful)
Great move (Score:5, Insightful)
It's always great to see how the recording industry penalizes a system that allows people to legally listen to music.
I'm sure that the record industry's copyright collection agencies will hand the money gathered through this tax to needy musicians.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for musicians being able to make a living, but penalizing a system that encourages people to buy music online is just plain stupid.
Re:The result... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:258$ "stealing" tax?!? (Score:1, Insightful)
Taxation without representation? Hmm... Maybe there'll be a Rotterdam iPod party. I'd buy that for a dollar.
quite ridiculous ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Just a proposal, hopefully... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
If they expect something like this to work, it needs to be worked out on a European scale, not just a national one...
Re:258$ "stealing" tax?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
The only solutions are to reduce the power of the government, and/or to move these powers to more regional authorities (thus increasing the cost require to influence the entire nation).
Apple/iPod... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:258$ "stealing" tax?!? (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally, if it passed, I'd just buy in the US and bring it into Canada (Canada Customs does NOT apply levies to purchases, just taxes). This sort of thing makes Canadian Retailers scream bloody murder.
But the fact remains, the music industry can't have it both ways. If I pay the "MP3 player/media tax", then I have no moral issue at all with downloading or sharing files. If they want to revoke the levy, then I won't download. Simple as that.
If they try and increase the levy AND ban file sharing, I'll buy my media/MP3 players out of the country AND still share files.
N.
good trade possibilities (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:258$ "stealing" tax?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
But the news mentioned further that it goes for all players, and then it might also get applied to:
USB keys, hard disk drives, cellular phones.
But it is plain idiocy. I *CAN* use an USB key for storing illegal content, yes. But what about my recovery tools for systems I do administering for?
I swear, where the photo industry has seen new opportunities now that digital photography is a hard reality the music industry is still a bunch of clueless morons living in the early 1920's.
Re:Just a proposal, hopefully... (Score:5, Insightful)
But the whole thing is just utterly ridiculous. I don't download any music of p2p now, but I had to pay a tax like this I'm sure I'd start just to stir things up a bit.
Btw. or I could buy the iPod in some other country.
Recording industry damages (Score:3, Insightful)
Guy puts a song on his server, gets hauled into court and is ordered to pay the RIAA (or the equivalent in whatever country we are talking about this week) for the lost revenue ie "damages"
However, said country has a law in place that assumes all MP3 player owners will steal music and preemptively compensates the industry when the user buys the player. How then could the industry argue that people who share music are depriving them of revenue - they've already had it!
The register must know something we dont... (Score:5, Insightful)
You're telling me that in two years, we'll have 1000GB laptop drives (~10x up) and 1000000GB desktop drives (~2000x up)? Man, Moore must have been a pessimist. Particularly since HDDs have been slowing down *greatly*. Since the first 3x83=250GB HDDs came in 2003, the GB/platter count has been inching along (as far as computers are concerned, at least) with Seagate leading the pack with 133GB/platter. The only real "growth" has been from pushing the number of platters back up to 5 (The IBM GXP75 series had 5*15GB), leading to 5*100GB HDDs. Even hitting 1TB in 2007 seems optimistic just about now. I'd guess more like 800GB, unless there's a "TB race" on the way there was a "GHz race".
Kjella
Re:An idea.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just a proposal, hopefully... (Score:5, Insightful)
ridiculous (Score:3, Insightful)
There are allready taxes (small, but they are there anyway) on CDR(W) tapes etc... for the same purpose. People should start demanding those taxes back when they can prove that they burned data/audio on it they have either already paid for or does not require any payments (backups, linux distro etc). Better yet... remove these taxes altogether... as they are demonstrating the hideous way the world is turning into : a 'firewall' concept. Deny everyone, not only the 'bad' people, but also the good), and let the good people demand access, then grant them access.
People are not computers. Rules (Laws) should be trying to prevent or punnish bad things, not to hinder good things.
Put extra money into catching the bad guys, but don't get to much in the way of the good guys.
I don't have anything to hide, but that doesn't mean you can invade my privacy.
I don't have illegal music, so don't tax me like I do.
Re:258$ "stealing" tax?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Good grief, if they applied that to regular hard drives, you'd be paying $160 for the drive and over $1000 in music taxes for a 250GB drive! Drives are up to 500GB now, and are expected to be up to a TB in 2006, that would be a $4000 tax!
While they're at it, why don't they just tack on a 10 cent tax per sheet of blank paper...maybe the book industry should claim that the reason sales of books are down is because of Internet file sharing.
Re:258$ "stealing" tax?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just a proposal, hopefully... (Score:3, Insightful)
If this tax comes live, I guess the Belgian and German MP3-player markets will suddenly flourish while the neder??? (how do you spell "something from Nederlands"?) will drop to death.
Good for germans & belgians, I guess...
Re:Just a proposal, hopefully... (Score:5, Insightful)
We already have to pay a levy on blank CDs in most European countries today, same as it was with blank magnetic media before.
And of course, iPod sales in the Netherlands would suffer a huge drop... in such a small country, you can never be far away from the border.
so? (Score:2, Insightful)
5 euro's.
it didn't come with storage; it uses SD cards. so no tax applicable here.. because i just add my own 1gig SD cards, and away we go
all this means is, in the netherlands, mp3 playing capability won't be paired with storage.. it'll be a user-add.
Re:Just a proposal, hopefully... (Score:5, Insightful)
But think about the enormous economical losses of this tax. People will stop buying MP3 players in the Netherlands. Instead they will be buying in Germany or Belgium. Same thing for the DVD tax: I buy all my DVD_Rs from Germany, not in the local shop.
Most resellers are very afraid of this kind of taxes.
I wouldn't want to be a Dutch iPod salesman... (Score:5, Insightful)
My worry is that the UK will end up being forced to adopt similar levies in the name of "harmonisation", which would be ruinously expensive for those of us who only buy blank CD-Rs to use for data rather than music.
Scary? This is great news! (Score:1, Insightful)
Or maybe the Register got some of the details wrong in this article...
Re:Just a proposal, hopefully... (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem is, there is already tax on CDs and DVDs. It's just a few cents, so while some cry about the injustice, most don't really care. So it's only natural to extend this towards MP3 players as they perform the same function of carrying music.
This is just a proposal, and it seems like the proposers were thinking about flash-based players, not about harddisk-based MP3 players, as the price is $4 per gig. They have no choice to adapt the proposel, since killing the harddisk-based MP3 player market (maybe along with several other markets such as harddisk recording VCRs; i actually don't know those are covered as well) is clearly not the idea.
Re:Just a proposal, hopefully... (Score:2, Insightful)
Dammit, english is tough
Re:Just a proposal, hopefully... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you've already been to jail for 3 months for it, wouldn't you do the shoplifting?
Re:Just a proposal, hopefully... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now I've paid for music, it's no longer illegal for me to go out and download it.
I know that's not really how it'll work legally, but I've always strongly felt that if any standard tax is passed on devices for listening to music, then anyone in possession of such devices are free to access all the music with out limit. Why else have a tax if not to remove the individual purchase rate.
I'd gladly give up $200 one-time for indefinate no-further-charge unlimited access to all the RIAA (or whatever it is in the Netherlands) music.
All that said, it is a mockery of justice to have ANY corporation able to levy a tax on citizens for any reason. If this was a tax so the government could afford to cover the legal costs that *it* is incurring, then it falls well within what most standard taxes are for. But if it's a tax that presumes purchasers of a consumer device are going to use it for illegal ends, and compensate the, erm, "victims" in advance, then you've just created a "Guilty until proven innocent" model.
Personally I have a 40g iPod which is about 2/3 full. Every single bit of data on it is something which I have a right to place there. I do believe in paying for music (though actually most of what I have on there is audio books -- which I've paid for). This sort of law would charge people like me, who are wholly operating within our rights within the law, for the crimes of others, with the presumption that I'm too weak minded to resist the temptation to break the law.
Just cross the border (Score:5, Insightful)
Genius business move... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just a proposal, hopefully... (Score:4, Insightful)
So whilst the conspiracy theory might not make sense...it is one which is correct (just ask senator disney or the **AA).
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, they can tax all thety want, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean, there's no more customs between countries in "Europe" so what's to prevent people from having their iPods shipped from Belgium or Germany or Dänmark???
Re:Just a proposal, hopefully... (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a lovely organization called Artisjus, which managed to put a tax on every cd, dvd, memory card (like the ones used it _cameras_). This essentially doubles their price, and they are doing this on the grounds that it's a compensation for the losses in piracy. Now, the further outrageing thing is, that this is only about music. They collect the money and check the current music market from _their_ statistics and distribute _some_ of the money that way.
The bad thing about is that they are assuming that people are breaking the law in advance! The bad thing is that they don't assume people make backups of personal data, burn any other legal things, which _does_ happen. Also, if people burn software or movies to the cd/dvd, shouldn't the movies industry get compensation by the same logic? Or if i burn a linux dvd, shouldn't i GET MY MONEY BACK? It's all or none. Another outrageous event was when they added the memory cards, which are 90% used in cameras. Sure, someone will pirate mp3s in that...
The irony in that, people would assume that they can pirate legally then, since they got the price paid for it already, well, wrong. There is another nice organization in Hungary, called ASVA, which goes after even legal "piracy". In hungary you can download music and videos, as long as you don't upload. Still, this ASVA goes after people, not just those who for example run ftp servers, but the common downloaders aswell. They "teach" and "lecture" the police about the dangers of violating IP, and basically bribe the police. It is a sad and outrageous legal state.
This is honestly a fucked up system, which is there in Hungary, and i don't wish the dutch to have this, further more, when we have an example that some people have done it already, so don't discard that proposal on "it won't pass" or something right away. This thing needs to be fought, and burned to the ground. Also some EU action against that kind of thing happening in Hungary would be good.
Re:258$ "stealing" tax?!? (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, the city government in Chicago weren't corrupt. And the corruption at our federal level is nothing compared to many county and city governments in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana,... The corruption in Florida was so bad that we passed a 'Sunshine Law' to prevent out-of-the-public-eye meetings of government decision makers. There is some question as to whether three city councilmen are allowed to have breakfast together.
Our national politicians are pandering to corporate interests, but most of this is above board, "We worship your ability to earn money, let us kiss your ass." rather than actual corruption (aka pay-for-performance). As long as campaign contribution caps are not being violated, is it right to call this 'corruption'?
Re:258$ "stealing" tax?!? (Score:3, Insightful)
2) Profit??
Because I doubt they will see more than $10,000 of this iPod tax.
Re:Not in the US (Score:3, Insightful)
That said, I just don't get this. Lets say there's a tax on MP3 players. That's fine, there's a tax on cigeretts too. But the taxes on cigeretts go to support publicly funded health care systems like Medicade which are designed to assist people who are dieing of things like lung cancer.
See how that works? Buy cigeretts, pay a tax, help fund your care when you have lung cancer. Have health insurance (through the government after your funds are exhosted) when you are dieing.
But when I pay taxes for an MP3 player (hypotheticly speaking) what do I get? Nothing. The money goes to the music people and I'm left out in the cold.
So let me rephrase your quip.
-shrug- I'd accecpt an iPod tax if I was given blanket copyright immunity for the device.
Not quite. (Score:5, Insightful)
1. If universal health care worked as well in the US as universal education, I want no part of it. 2.You might have a point if the money from the iPod tax went to universal health care in any of those countries. It doesn't. It goes to the recording industry.
Anything else?
Re:An idea.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not saying it's something you couldn't get away with, but just see tax stamps on cigarrettes, lots of people try to avoid the insane taxes the gov puts on them, and lots of people go to jail for smuggling untaxed packs or for buying them.
The sad part is the costs associated with administering a tax like this soaks up most of the revenue it generates. Total freaking waste, and just makes people pissed.
Crazy Dutch (Score:2, Insightful)
Still, given the location of the Netherlands, would you rather spend Eu. 258 on the tax, or Eu. 100 to go to Belgium or Germany and buy it there?
Hell, wait til you're on holiday anywhere else in the european union.
Re:goods and services are allowed to flow..... (Score:3, Insightful)
Under EU law, you cannot stop someone from buying something in one country for use in another. Of course, if it's actually illegal to possess that something in the country that the goods are going to then you'd have to be an idiot to do it, but the flow of the goods must be unimpeded in terms of trade restrictions - that's what the whole single market is about.
Re:Just a proposal, hopefully... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Just a proposal, hopefully... (Score:2, Insightful)
And if people didn't pirate copyrighted stuff, then organizations like the RIAA, MPAA, etc, wouldn't exist....
The RIAA, MPAA, etc existed long before portable MP3 players and broadband networking. Did they have fake vinyl back in the 70s?
Re:Just a proposal, hopefully... (Score:3, Insightful)
Hopefully you're being sarcastic. Otherwise, something tells me that you've taken a few too many of those presciptions. You need to put the pills down and just slowly back away from the counter.
Seriously, the whole reason that prescription drugs can cost many times more than their Canadian counterparts is *because* America tampers with the market. The US government extends an unfair level of protection to the pharmaceutical industry that allows them to gouge American citizens. Other countries do not allow them to do this and thus, prices are more affordable.
Swinging back to the topic at hand, if America didn't cottle the media industries (**AA), stories like the headline above wouldn't be happenning. It's only through America's tampering and corruption that the RIAA feels so emboldened.